The driving force that drove the Celts - this amazing people to fulfill their lofty mission - was the powerful corporation of the Druids, the presence of which represented the most striking aspect of the culture created by the Celts. Druids were not just keepers and interpreters of ancient wisdom, like the gamers of any people. Judging by the reports of ancient authors, the Druids were the owners of a special teaching, in relation to which Caesar uses the word disciplina. [6 - Caes, BG, VI, 14, 3.] It indicates the orderly nature of Druidic knowledge, the presence of a known doctrine. Druids expounded this knowledge to their students far from people and their homes, in silence and in direct communication with the "sacred", in the depths of caves and forests. [7 - Mela, III, 2, 19.]
Lucan alludes to this mysterious and solemn teaching of the Druids, saying that their dwellings are the hidden groves and forests, where they retire. [8 - Luc, I, 452-454.] The lesson was held in the form of an exciting introduction to the truths, the only guardian and interpreter which the priest was, and which he confided in secret to his disciple.
Caesar reports that it was forbidden to write down the poems of the Druids. [9 - Caes., BG, VI,.14, 3.] He explains the prohibition of the Druids to write down the main provisions of their teachings as follows: so that their pupils, relying too much on writing, pay less attention to strengthening their memory”[10 - Caes, BY, VI, 14.]. This reluctance of the druids to profane their teachings can be explained by the fact that druidic knowledge was the lot of the spiritual aristocracy. Therefore, the priests forbade writing anything down so that the teaching would not spread among the uninitiated.
In connection with this secrecy, the ancient authors could not say anything definite about the inner content of the Druidic teachings. Nevertheless, both in antiquity and in modern times, various hypotheses were created on this score by both ancient writers and researchers of modern times. The most accessible side of the teachings of the Druids was, apparently, that part of it, which the Druids expounded to all the Gallic noble youth, and not only to the neophytes of the "order". It was a whole system of excellent education and upbringing. The young aristocrats were familiar with the sacred secrets of nature by the Druids, in particular, the Druids had deep knowledge of astronomy and astrology and human life. They learned about their duties, of which the main one was to be a warrior. [11 - Mela, III, 2, 18, 19.] and know how to die (metu mortis neglecto). [12 - Caes., B. G, VI, 14, 6.] Although the Druids themselves were exempted from military service, [13 - Caes., B. G, VI, 14, 1-2.] They raised the youth of a warlike people, as they were "warriors of knowledge."
In addition to this knowledge, which had, above all, practical application and determined the most important social function of the Druids as educators of the Celtic youth, the ancient authors attributed to the Druids a doctrine of a special kind, sublime and deep. True, almost the only feature of this doctrine of the Druids, known to ancient writers, but extremely striking their imagination, was the belief of the Druids in immortality. Caesar reports that the main aspect of the teachings of the Druids is the belief in the immortality of the soul. [14 - Caes., BG, VI, 14.] The Druidic belief in the immortality of the soul is recorded by ancient authors, whose texts belong to two large groups of sources according to the classification adopted in modern celtology.
These are the texts of authors belonging to the so-called Posidonian group or the Posidonian tradition, at the origins of which was the ancient Greek philosopher-Stoic Posidonius (c. 135 51/50 BC), who was at the same time a famous and versatile scientist, traveler, historian, ethnographer. This tradition includes Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Caesar, Lucan, Pomponius Mela, Ammianus Marcellinus and others, in addition to personal observations and other sources, who used the material of Posidonius.
The second large group of ancient sources on the Druids and Celts, called the Alexandrian tradition of the scholars of the Alexandrian school, starting from the 1st century AD. e. and so on. These are the works of Dion Chrysostomus and Hippolytus, Diogenes Laertius and Alexander Polyhistor. Their research paves the way for the work of the early church fathers in the 3rd century CE. BC: Clement, Cyril and Origen.
Both traditions not only record the Celts' idea of the immortality of the soul in the teachings of the Druids, but draw analogies between the Druidic belief in immortality and Pythagorean metempsychosis. This is natural, since it was the closest parallel that, in this case, occurred to the intellectuals of the classical world. In the Posidonian tradition, generally quite restrained in relation to the Celts and Druids, he most figuratively spoke on this score in the 1st century AD. e. Valery Maxim: “They say that they lend each other amounts that will be paid in another world, they are so convinced that the souls of people are immortal. I would call them insane if these barbarians dressed in trousers did not believe the same thing that the Greek Pythagoras believed. " [15 - Valer. Max., II, 6, 19.]
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Alexandrian sources are much more enthusiastic about the Druids. According to Hippolytus (III century BC), “the Druids among the Celts are highly inclined towards Pythagorean philosophy, while the culprit for this way of thinking was Zamolxis, a servant of Pythagoras, a Thracian by birth, who, after the death of Pythagoras, coming there, he became the founder of a similar philosophy with them. " [16 - Hipp., Philosophum. I, XXV.]
Not long before this was written, Clement of Alexandria [17 - Strom., I, XV, 7.1,. 3.] also spoke about the connection between the Druids and Pythagoras: “Pythagoras was the listener of the Galatians and Brahmins. Thus, philosophy, a very useful science, flourished in antiquity among the barbarians, shining its light on the peoples, and later it came to the Hellenes. The first in its ranks were the prophets of the Egyptians and Chaldeans of the Assyrians, the Druids of the Galatians and Semanei of the Bactrians and the philosophers of the Celts, and the magicians of the Persians. These were the hypotheses of antiquity about what the teachings of the Druids were.
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