Druid, member of the learned class among the ancient Celts. Perhaps best remembered as religious leaders, they were also legal authorities, adjudicators, lorekeepers, medical professionals and political advisors. The earliest known records of the Druids come from the 3rd century bce. Their name may have come from a Celtic word meaning “knower of the oak tree.” Very little is known for certain about the Druids, who kept no records of their own.
According to Julius Caesar, who is the principal source of information about the Druids, there were two groups of men in Gaul that were held in honour, the Druids and the noblemen (equites). Caesar related that the Druids took charge of public and private sacrifices, and many young men went to them for instruction. The Romans reported that victims were tied to wicker effigies and burned alive, a report substantiated by archaeological remains. As Caesar comments: 'The cardinal doctrine which they seek to teach is that souls do not die, but after death pass from one to another. . . the fear of death is cast aside." Often, sacrifice involved a spiritual trade of sorts, sacrificing a less prominent member of society so that someone more important might survive. Further evidence has been found of 'triple deaths' where a victim was simultaneously stoned, drowned, and impaled on a spear.They judged all public and private quarrels and decreed penalties. If anyone disobeyed their decree, he was barred from sacrifice, which was considered the gravest of punishments.Druidic law forbade its followers to write down any of the religious teachings, a rule that has unfortunately prevented us from having firsthand knowledge of their Celtic religion.
Caesar also recorded that the Druids abstained from warfare and paid no tribute. Attracted by those privileges, many joined the order voluntarily or were sent by their families.
After Emperor Claudius declared Druidic practices illegal in AD 54, the Druids' future in Roman Britain became increasingly uncertain. In AD 61, the Romans planned a massacre of the defiant Druids at Anglesey, the centre of their culture, and their last stronghold in consolidated Britain. Following the Roman invasion of Gaul, the druid orders were suppressed by the Roman government under the 1st-century CE emperors Tiberius and Claudius, and had disappeared from the written record by the 2nd century.