ould lessen the
cultivation of the memory. To this risk Caesar could testify from his
own knowledge. Their cardinal doctrine was that souls did not perish,
but that after death they passed from one person to another; and this
they regarded as a supreme incentive to valour, since, with the prospect
of immortality, the fear of death counted for nothing. They carried on,
moreover, many discussions about the stars and their motion, the
greatness of the universe and the lands, the nature of things, the
strength and power of the immortal gods, and communicated their knowledge
to their pupils. In another passage Caesar says that the Gauls as a
people were extremely devoted to religious ideas and practices. Men who
were seriously ill, who were engaged in war, or who stood in any peril,
offered, or promised to offer, human sacrifices, and made use of the
Druids as their agents for such sacrifices. Their theory was, that the
immortal gods could not be appeased unless a human life were given for a
human life. In addition to these private sacrifices, they had also
similar human sacrifices of a public character. Caesar further contrasts
the Germans with the Gauls, saying that the former had no Druids to
preside over matters of religion, and that they paid no attention to
sacrifices.

In his work on divination, Cicero, too, refers to the profession which
the Druids made of natural science, and of the power of foretelling the
future, and instances the case of the AEduan Diviciacus, his brother's
guest and friend. Nothing is here said by Cicero of the three classes
implied in Diodorus, but Timagenes (quoted in Ammianus) refers to the
three classes under the names 'bardi,' 'euhages' (a mistake for 'vates'),
and 'drasidae' (a mistake for 'druidae'). The study of nature and of the
heavens is here attributed to the second class of seers (vates). The
highest class, that of the Druids, were, he says, in accordance with the
rule of Pythagoras, closely linked together in confraternities, and by
acquiring a certain loftiness of mind from their investigations into
things that were hidden and exalted, they despised human affairs and
declared the soul immortal. We see here the view expressed that socially
as well as intellectually the Druids lived according to the Pythagorean
philosophy. Origen also refers to the view that was prevalent in his
time, that Zamolxis, the servant of Pythagoras, had taught the Druids the
philosophy of Pyth