Miranda Green "Caesar's Druids"

[mwyalchen]

This is a new and substantial book on the "historical" Druids. (Shame about the title!)

Ronald Hutton's recent books on Druidry have moved on quickly from Iron-Age Druidry, discounting all the classical accounts as fictions, and concentrated on more recent conceptions of the Druids.

This book is perhaps the antidote. Miranda Green makes it clear that she disagrees with "the arguments of those who wish not only to deny past Celts, but also, in so doing, to see ancient Druids as creations of fictive writing" (p266). She combines material from the classical sources and modern archaeology with a fairly liberal use of analogy and informed speculation, to produce a very interesting look at who the Druids may have been, and what they may have done.

If you've already looked into the classical sources or the archaeology some of this will, of course, be familar ground; while speculation, for example into possible shamanic aspects of druidry, is inevitably uncertain and open to challenge. But at every point in this book, I've encountered something I didn't already know, or an interesting view about the possible meaning of something more familiar; I think it's going to become a standard reference.

Here's the Amazon page; though, as ever, if instead you can get it from your local friendly bookshop...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Caesars-Druids- ... 930&sr=1-1

[Frog]

Thanks wmyalchen for the link.

Having listened to Prof. Hutton on more than one occaison, he is a very good lecturer who I believe can back up his ascertations with documents to prove his belief and understanding; he is not someone (because this is his specialist field) that can allow himself to be given over to speculation. He noted in a lecture I saw a couple of years ago that many books focus on the "old druidry" and 'sort of' mention the neo-druidry of today - so his newer books are to reverse that process.

That's not to say he's right - or wrong - but just that's how he writes.

With blessings and good wishes
Frog
/|\

[mwyalchen]

I have every respect for Ronald Hutton - he's done some wonderful work, and it's also good that someone so prominent in his field is also pagan-friendly.

But I did find his total dismissal of all the ancient sources over the top.

[Badger Bob]

I've not read Hutton's latest book but did he really dismiss the ancient sources or just say that we can't take them at face value. I have been studying classics for a while now and the biggest surprise I got on my first classics course was that what we call classics are about as truthful as the average tabloid newspaper today. The basic facts are often there but overlaid with lots of political spin, prejudice or just plain ignorance of the whole truth. Dissecting ancient sources is one field and writing about the development of the concept of the Druid in a sociological sense is very definitely another and I can't find fault with either Green or Hutton wanting to stay in their own particular field. Green's previous books in this area have been very good so I will certainly be ordering this in the near future. Must get Hutton's book as well, plenty of reading!

PS. Apologies for the fire and forget posting but I'm away at the Acoustic Festival for the weekend, starting in fifteen minutes - YAY!

[mwyalchen]

I've not read Hutton's latest book but did he really dismiss the ancient sources or just say that we can't take them at face value.

A bit of both.

For example, in The Druids, (Chapter 1 - The Patriotic Druids - pp 3-6) he discusses Tacitus' description of the Roman attack on Anglesey. He points out that the components of Tacitus' description (wild tribes, raving women, horrible religious customs) can be seen as part of a narrative of what it means to be Roman as opposed to barbarian. He then cites two classicists, one of whom believes that Tacitus seldom used first-hand evidence, the other of whom sees Tacitus as someone who "employed historical issues to make moral and emotional points" and emphasises that "we can never know the truth of the actual episodes that he portrays". Hutton's conclusion is then that "the actual evidence for druids as heroic champions of native independence, or even for their existence in Britain at all at the time of the Roman conquest, therefore consists of a molehill of completely unreliable material".

In Blood and Mistletoe, the first chapter (The Raw Material) is a more systematic discussion of the range of classical material, the archaeological evidence, and the mediaeval texts. Pages 1 - 23 give a useful summary of the classical sources, discussing their value. His conclusion: "Readers unfamiliar with the ancient sources for Druids, and who were following this discussion comfortably until about the point at which it passed Strabo, may now be completely bewildered by the number of authors presented, and the problems with each. What needs to be clear is that all of them may be correct or all may be wrong. We may be in possession of a relatively large quantity of valuable data, or we may have none at all. Although the information is collectively internally compatible, some of it may be wildly inaccurate and some accurate in the last detail. We have no objective means whatever of consigning any of it to one category or the other."

Now, this position suits Hutton very well, since both of his books concern, not so much the historical Druids themselves, as narratives about the Druids, and the use that later generations have made of such narratives.

But if we are to be this sceptical, most of history before relatively modern times must be equally open to question! And the same sources which he distrusts when they write about Druids describe other features of Celtic culture which can be corroborated (admittedly sketchily at times) from archaeological evidence; for example, deposits of valuables in lakes, or the use of lyres and battle trumpets. Does the fact that these writers (like any writers) had their own culture and their own agenda really invalidate everything they say so completely?

Hutton gives lots of reasons why we should not trust the sources, and should be alert to what kinds of narrative strategy they use, and how we ourselves construct our own narratives around them.

Miranda Green is more concerned to tease out what we can discover from them; and, to be fair, Hutton has provided a very generous recommendation for the back cover of her book.

Both approaches, I think, are useful; but I wouldn't want to do without the positive side!

[Attila]

I have never read either and by the sounds of things am quite glad of that. I’ll quite happily go with ‘there just were’ druids, and they were as we think of them and as we are, to some degree. We don’t need to know more [?] as we are creating our own new version of it, and we will never be like druids of old, it was simply a different culture etc.

All things change ~ all things stay the same.

[wolf560]

Miranda Green makes it clear that she disagrees with "the arguments of those who wish not only to deny past Celts, but also, in so doing, to see ancient Druids as creations of fictive writing" (p266).

I have always loved reading Miranda Green, especially from the aspect of it being a more historical rather than esoteric or "magical" writing. I am troubled with the notion that there is a movement now to totally dismiss Druids as a mere "fiction of Greco-Roman authors". I do however agree that a harsh look into the writings should be undertaken so as to at least cull from the list the books that are mere fabrications and flights of fancy.

/|\ Mark