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keepers of the laws. The Druids also had power to impose the most severe punishments to
those who refused to be submitted to their decisions.
Amongst the penalties that they could impose the most feared was the expulsion of the
society. The Druids didn’t form a hereditary caste, they were exempt of the service in the field
and the payment of taxes and for these exceptions and privilegues all the young men of the
Gaul aspired to be admitted in the Order. The tests to which a novice had to be subjected
sometimes lasted twenty years. All the instruction o Druidic science was communicated orally,
but for certain propositions they had a written language, in which they used Greek character.
The president of the Order, whose charge was elective and lifelong, exerted over the
individuals that formed a supreme authority. The Druids taught that soul was immortal. The
Astrology, Geography, Theology and Physical Sciences were their favourite studies. The Gauls
didn’t do human sacrifices but only very rare cases, and on them great criminals were
sacrifriced. All what it is known in regard to the religious doctrines taught by the Druids is
reduced to some fragments that are found in many works of writters of the antiquity, and
particullary in Caesar, Diodorus Siculus, Valerius Maximus, Lucan, Cicero, etc. From these
fargments result that they believed, as have been said, in the immortality of the soul and its
existence in another world, not being the death more than the point or moment of separation
between two existances. From this belief is natural that would appear the one of the reward
and the punishment in the other life, belief that explains naturally the indomitable courage of
the Gauls and their contempt for the death. They taught the position and the movement of the
stars and the magnitude of Heaven and Earth, it measn that they were dedicated to the study
of the Astronomy, and undoubtedly to the study of the secrets of the nature and of the
Physiology. From this emerged their pretension to possess the science of the Prophecy and
Magic. Their most important study was the theological study, but about there’s none certain
data, being very little known its theological system, because the Greek and Latin writers, at
talking about name and functions and attributes of the Druidic divinities, they referred them
to their own theogony; therefore only can be made conjetures to which the etymologic study
can give some probabilities. Caesar says that his main divinity was Mercury, who chaired the
Arts, the travels and the Commerce. Then were in order of importance Apollo, Mars, Jupiter
and Minerva. Lucan and other writers put at the head of the Gods to Teutates, and after him
Hesos, Beleno, Taranis and then Heracles Ogmios. Caesar adds that the Druids pretented to
descend from Dis, name that translated as meaning Pluton, and for this origin was that they
reckoned by nights and not by days. The opinion is evidently erroneous, and the error appeared
from that Dis or Day was amongst the Gauls one of the names of the Supreme Beign, to whom
they called also Esar or the Eternal and Abais or Aiboll, the infinite. Belenos or Beal or Beas, was
one of the names of the Sun, to which they called Ablis or Atheithin the warm as well, and
Granius or Grianu the luminous. Teutates or Tuitheas was the God of fire, the death and
destruction.
To treat about the religious beliefs of the Gaul it is required to quote the opinion of the
distinguished writer Thirrey. According to him, the religious beliefs of Gauls were referred to
two bodies of symbols and supersticions, two religions completely different: one very ancient,
founded on a polytheism derived from worshipping of the natural phenomenons, and the other
the Druidism, introduced lately by the immigrants of the Cumbric Race, founded on a material
pantheism metaphysical and mysterious. The main divinities of the Celtic populations were the

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