103 
frequently in averting when they were on the point of break- 
ing out. . . . These Iasi, as well as the others, believed that 
souls and the world are imperishable , but that there are epochs 
in which fire and water will predominate. . . . 
“ The Gauls have, moreover, as well as the most part of the 
people of the north, strange customs which announce their 
barbarity and ferocity. Such, for instance, is that of hanging 
to the necks of their horses, in returning from war, the heads 
of the enemies which they have killed, and afterwards to 
fasten them as ornaments before their doors. Posidonius 
says that he has been a witness in several places of this cus- 
tom, which at first was revolting’, but became familiar by 
degrees. When amongst these heads there were those of men 
of distinction, they embalmed them with resin of cedar, and 
showed them to strangers. They would not part with them for 
their weight in gold. 
“Nevertheless, the Komans have obliged them to renounce 
this ferocity, as also the customs which belong to sacrifices 
and divinations wholly contrary to our manners. Such was, 
for instance, their habit of opening, with one blow of a sabre, 
the back* * * § of the victim, and drawing predictions from the 
manner in which he fell. They only made these sacrifices by 
the ministry of the Druids 
The fourth book of Strabo is known from internal evidencef 
to have been written in the year a.d. 19. So that we have 
clear evidence of the state of things at the commencement 
of our era amongst our neighbours as well as (we must con- 
clude) amongst all the Celtic tribes. 
We have thus a tolerably complete account of the Druids 
from contemporary writers when their order was approaching 
towards its final extinction under King Lucius in England, 
a.d. 177, according to Borlase^s Ant., p. 149; but not till 
many centuries later in Mona and in Ireland. The earlier 
notices are more obscure. Diodorus Siculus quotes from 
Hecateus the Milesian, who was a great traveller, and accurate 
in his description of that which fell under his own observation.! 
He wrote about b.c. 500. He describes the Hyperboreans as 
living in an island in the ocean over against Celtica, not smaller 
than Sicily. 
“Amongst the Hyperboreans were men, priests as it were of Apollo, 
constantly hymning lyric songs in his praise. § Also in that island was a 
* “ The part above the diaphragm.” — Diodorus of Sicily, 
t Smith’s Diet . , sub voce , “ Strabo.” 
X Smith’s Diet., sub voce, “ Hecataeus.” 
§ Taliesin , by D. W. Nash, London, 1858, p. 10. 
