Misplaced Pages

#795204

134-440: Posidonius ( / ˌ p ɒ s ɪ ˈ d oʊ n i ə s / ; Ancient Greek : Ποσειδώνιος Poseidṓnios , "of Poseidon ") "of Apameia" (ὁ Ἀπαμεύς) or "of Rhodes " (ὁ Ῥόδιος) ( c.  135  – c.  51 BC ), was a Greek politician , astronomer , astrologer , geographer , historian , mathematician , and teacher native to Apamea , Syria . He was considered the most learned man of his time and, possibly, of

268-648: A philosopher , he took genuine interest in natural science, geography, natural history, mathematics and astronomy . He sought to determine the distance and magnitude of the Sun, to calculate the diameter of the Earth and the influence of the Moon on the tides. Posidonius, nicknamed "the Athlete" (Ἀθλητής), was born around 135 BC. He was born into a Greek family in Apamea , a Hellenistic city on

402-537: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in

536-710: A band of druids, who, with hands uplifted to the sky, poured forth terrible imprecations on the heads of the invaders. He says these "terrified our soldiers who had never seen such a thing before". The courage of the Romans, however, soon overcame such fears, according to the Roman historian; the Britons were put to flight, and the sacred groves of Mona were cut down. Tacitus is also the only primary source that gives accounts of druids in Britain, but portrays them negatively, as ignorant savages. In

670-590: A categorization subsequently adopted by Piggott, divided the Classical accounts of the druids into two groups, distinguished by their approach to the subject as well as their chronological contexts. She calls the first of these groups the "Posidonian" tradition after one of its primary exponents, Posidonious, and notes that it takes a largely critical attitude towards the Iron Age societies of Western Europe that emphasizes their "barbaric" qualities. The second of these two groups

804-417: A course of Posidonius' lectures, and later invited Posidonius to write a monograph on Cicero's own consulship (Posidonius politely refused). In his later writings Cicero repeatedly refers to Posidonius as "my teacher" and "my dear friend". Posidonius died in his eighties in 51 BC; his grandson, Jason of Nysa , succeeded him as head of the school on Rhodes . Posidonius was celebrated as a polymath throughout

938-406: A druid, for they were the intermediaries between the people and the divinities. He remarked upon the importance of prophets in druidic ritual: These men predict the future by observing the flight and calls of birds and by the sacrifice of holy animals: all orders of society are in their power ... and in very important matters they prepare a human victim, plunging a dagger into his chest; by observing

1072-432: A kind of scientific prediction. Posidonius was one of the first to attempt to prove Euclid's fifth postulate of geometry . He suggested changing the definition of parallel straight lines to an equivalent statement that would allow him to prove the fifth postulate. From there, Euclidean geometry could be restructured, placing the fifth postulate among the theorems instead. In addition to his writings on geometry, Posidonius

1206-564: A king who was a bishop and a complete sage." The druids often appear in both the tales from Irish mythology first written down by monks and nuns of the Celtic Church like the " Táin Bó Cúailnge " (12th century), but also in later Christian legends where they are largely portrayed as sorcerers who opposed the introduction of Christianity by missionaries. In the wake of the Celtic revival during

1340-420: A lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and

1474-419: A lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in

SECTION 10

#1732844396796

1608-487: A number of female druids, often sharing similar prominent cultural and religious roles with their male counterparts. The Irish have several words for female druids, such as bandruí ("woman-druid"), found in tales such as Táin Bó Cúailnge ; Bodhmall , featured in the Fenian Cycle , and one of Fionn mac Cumhaill 's childhood caretakers; and Tlachtga , daughter of the druid Mug Ruith who, according to Irish tradition,

1742-625: A part of their environment. For example, Posidonius considered the climate of Arabia and the life-giving strength of the sun, tides (taken from his book on the oceans), and climatic theory to explain people's ethnic or national characters. Of Posidonius's work on tactics, The Art of War , the Greek historian Arrian complained that it was written 'for experts', which suggests that Posidonius may have had first hand experience of military leadership or, perhaps, used knowledge he gained from his acquaintance with Pompey . In his own era, his writings on almost all

1876-457: A persistent confusion around Posidonius's result. Ptolemy used Posidonius's lower value of 180,000 stades (about 33% too low) for the Earth's circumference in his Geography . This was the number used by Christopher Columbus to underestimate the distance to India as 70,000 stades. In his Histories , Posidonius continued the World History of Polybius . His history of the period 146–88 BC

2010-495: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment

2144-539: A prescribed number of years they commence a new life in a new body". In 1928, the folklorist Donald A. Mackenzie speculated that Buddhist missionaries had been sent by the Indian king Ashoka . Caesar noted the druidic doctrine that the original ancestor of the tribe was the god that he referred to as " Dispater ", which means "Father Dis". Diogenes Laertius , in the 3rd century CE, wrote that "Druids make their pronouncements by means of riddles and dark sayings, teaching that

2278-476: A professor of archaeology at Cardiff University, has noted that Suetonius's army would have passed very near the site while travelling to deal with Boudicca , and postulates that the sacrifice may have been connected. A 1996 discovery of a skeleton that was buried with advanced medical and possibly divinatory equipment has, however, been nicknamed the " Druid of Colchester ". An excavated burial in Deal, Kent discovered

2412-608: A separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek . There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek

2546-609: A standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c.  300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as

2680-861: A study of magic widely attributed to Aristotle . Both texts are now lost, but are quoted in the 2nd century CE work Vitae by Diogenes Laërtius . Some say that the study of philosophy originated with the barbarians. In that among the Persians there existed the Magi, and among the Babylonians or Assyrians the Chaldaei, among the Indians the Gymnosophistae, and among the Celts and Gauls men who were called druids and semnothei, as Aristotle relates in his book on magic, and Sotion in

2814-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and

SECTION 20

#1732844396796

2948-556: Is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in the epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of

3082-418: Is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r , however, add er ). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei . The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w , which affected

3216-729: Is associated with the Hill of Ward , site of prominent festivals held in Tlachtga's honour during the Middle Ages . Biróg , another bandruí of the Tuatha Dé Danann , plays a key role in an Irish folktale where the Fomorian warrior Balor attempts to thwart a prophecy foretelling that he would be killed by his own grandson by imprisoning his only daughter Eithne in the tower of Tory Island , away from any contact with men. Bé Chuille (daughter of

3350-644: Is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to

3484-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in

3618-488: Is no more than that which is due to a bóaire (an ordinary freeman). Another law-text, Uraicecht Becc ('small primer'), gives the druid a place among the dóer-nemed , or professional classes, which depend upon a patron for their status, along with wrights, blacksmiths, and entertainers, as opposed to the fili , who alone enjoyed free nemed -status. While druids featured prominently in many medieval Irish sources, they were far rarer in their Welsh counterparts. Unlike

3752-432: Is said to have filled 52 volumes. His Histories continue the account of the rise and expansion of Roman dominance, which he appears to have supported. Posidonius did not follow Polybius's more detached and factual style, for Posidonius saw events as caused by human psychology; while he understood human passions and follies, he did not pardon or excuse them in his historical writing, using his narrative skill in fact to enlist

3886-530: Is termed the "Alexandrian" group, being centred on the scholastic traditions of Alexandria , Egypt ; she notes that it took a more sympathetic and idealized attitude toward these foreign peoples. Piggott drew parallels between this categorisation and the ideas of "hard primitivism" and "soft primitivism" identified by historians of ideas A. O. Lovejoy and Franz Boas . One school of thought has suggested that all of these accounts are inherently unreliable, and might be entirely fictional. They have suggested that

4020-629: Is the only ancient author drawing the association between oaks and druids and the intensifying modifier sense of the first element fits better with other similar compounds attested in Old Irish ( suí 'sage, wise man' < *su-wid-s 'good knower', duí 'idiot, fool' < *du-wid-s 'bad knower', ainb 'ignorant' < *an-wid-s 'not-knower'). The two elements go back to the Proto-Indo-European roots *deru- and *weid- "to see". Both Old Irish druí and Middle Welsh dryw could refer to

4154-544: The Historia Augusta , Alexander Severus received a prophecy about his death from a Gallic druidess ( druiada ). The work also has Aurelian questioning druidesses about the fate of his descendants, to which they answered in favor of Claudius II . Flavius Vopiscus is also quoted as recalling a prophecy received by Diocletian from a druidess of the Tungri . The earliest surviving literary evidence of druids emerges from

Posidonius - Misplaced Pages Continue

4288-628: The Coligny calendar , with druidic culture. Nonetheless, some archaeologists have attempted to link certain discoveries with written accounts of the druids. The archaeologist Anne Ross linked what she believed to be evidence of human sacrifice in Celtic pagan society (such as the Lindow Man bog body) to the Greco-Roman accounts of human sacrifice being officiated-over by the druids. Miranda Aldhouse-Green –

4422-453: The Earth's circumference by the arc measurement method, by reference to the position of the star Canopus . As explained by Cleomedes, Posidonius observed Canopus on but never above the horizon at Rhodes, while at Alexandria he saw it ascend as far as 7½ degrees above the horizon (the meridian arc between the latitude of the two locales is actually 5 degrees 14 minutes). Since he thought Rhodes

4556-652: The First Mithridatic War when Roman rule over the Greek cities was being challenged by  Mithridates VI  of Pontus and the political situation was delicate. Under Posidonius, Rhodes eclipsed Athens to become the new centre for Stoic philosophy in the 1st century BC. This process may have already have begun under Panaetius , who was a native of Rhodes, and may have fostered a school there. Ian Kidd remarks that Rhodes "was attractive, not only as an independent city, commercially prosperous, go-ahead and with easy links of movement in all directions, but because it

4690-745: The Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as the Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect

4824-585: The Roman Empire " and one that required civilizing with Roman rule and values, thus justifying his wars of conquest. Sean Dunham suggested that Caesar had simply taken the Roman religious functions of senators and applied them to the druids. Daphne Nash believed it "not unlikely" that he "greatly exaggerates" both the centralized system of druidic leadership and its connection to Britain. Other historians have accepted that Caesar's account might be more accurate. Norman J. DeWitt surmised that Caesar's description of

4958-558: The Stoic categorization of philosophy into physics (natural philosophy, including metaphysics and theology), logic (including dialectic), and ethics. These three categories for him were, in Stoic fashion, inseparable and interdependent parts of an organic, natural whole. He compared them to a living being, with physics the flesh and blood, logic the bones and tendons holding the organism together, and finally ethics—the most important part—corresponding to

5092-600: The ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c.  1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c.  1200–800 BC ), the Archaic or Epic period ( c.  800–500 BC ), and the Classical period ( c.  500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been

5226-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)

5360-514: The tide is caused by the Moon. Posidonius was, however, wrong about the cause. Thinking that the Moon was a mixture of air and fire, he attributed the cause of the tides to the heat of the Moon, hot enough to cause the water to swell but not hot enough to evaporate it. He recorded observations on both earthquakes and volcanoes, including accounts of the eruptions of the volcanoes in the Aeolian Islands , north of Sicily . Posidonius calculated

5494-494: The wren , possibly connected with an association of that bird with augury in Irish and Welsh tradition (see also Wren Day ). Sources by ancient and medieval writers provide an idea of the religious duties and social roles involved in being a druid. The Greco-Roman and the vernacular Irish sources agree that the druids played an important part in pagan Celtic society. In his description, Julius Caesar wrote that they were one of

Posidonius - Misplaced Pages Continue

5628-415: The " Deal Warrior "– a man who was buried at around 200–150 BCE with a sword and shield, and wearing an almost unique head-band, which is too thin to be part of a leather helmet. The crown is bronze with a broad band around the head, and a thin strip that crosses the top of the head horizontally. Since traces of hair were left on the metal, it must have been worn without any padding beneath it. The form of

5762-474: The 18th and 19th centuries, fraternal and neopagan groups were founded based on ideas about the ancient druids, a movement known as Neo-Druidism . Many popular notions about druids, based on misconceptions of 18th-century scholars, have been largely superseded by more recent study. The English word druid derives from the Latin word druidēs (plural), which was considered by ancient Roman writers to come from

5896-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and vocative ), three genders ( masculine , feminine , and neuter ), and three numbers (singular, dual , and plural ). Verbs have four moods ( indicative , imperative , subjunctive , and optative ) and three voices (active, middle, and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"):

6030-490: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from

6164-680: The Celts honored the Druids , whom Posidonius saw as philosophers, and concluded that, even among the barbaric, "pride and passion give way to wisdom, and Ares stands in awe of the Muses." Posidonius wrote a geographic treatise on the lands of the Celts which has since been lost, but which is referred to extensively (both directly and otherwise) in the works of Diodorus of Sicily , Strabo , Caesar and Tacitus ' Germania . In Rhodes , Posidonius actively took part in political life, and he attained high office when he

6298-638: The Classical period of ancient Greek. (The second line is the IPA , the third is transliterated into the Latin alphabet using a modern version of the Erasmian scheme .) Ὅτι [hóti Hóti μὲν men mèn ὑμεῖς, hyːmêːs hūmeîs,   Druids The earliest known references to the druids date to the 4th century BC. The oldest detailed description comes from Julius Caesar 's Commentarii de Bello Gallico (50s BCE). They were described by other Roman writers such as Cicero , Tacitus , and Pliny

6432-466: The Earth's circumference to be 180,000 stadia or 18,000 mi (29,000 km). Pliny the Elder mentions Posidonius among his sources and without naming him reported his method for estimating the Earth's circumference. He noted, however, that Hipparchus had added some 26,000 stadia to Eratosthenes's estimate. The smaller value offered by Strabo and the different lengths of Greek and Roman stadia have created

6566-469: The East. On this latter occasion the subject of the lecture was "There is no good but moral good". Posidonius was probably in his seventies at this time and was suffering from gout . He illustrated the theme of his lecture by pointing to his painful leg and declaring "It is no good, pain; bothersome you may be, but you will never persuade me that you are an evil." When Cicero was in his late twenties, he attended

6700-413: The Elder . 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. In about 750 AD, the word druid appears in a poem by Blathmac , who wrote about Jesus , saying that he was "better than a prophet, more knowledgeable than every druid,

6834-568: The Gauls' teaching that the souls of men are immortal, and that after a fixed number of years they will enter into another body Caesar made similar observations: With regard to their actual course of studies, the main object of all education is, in their opinion, to imbue their scholars with a firm belief in the indestructibility of the human soul, which, according to their belief, merely passes at death from one tenement to another; for by such doctrine alone, they say, which robs death of all its terrors, can

SECTION 50

#1732844396796

6968-505: The German tribes to the east of the Rhine . According to Caesar, many young men were trained to be druids, during which time they had to learn all the associated lore by heart. He also said that their main teaching was "the souls do not perish, but after death pass from one to another". They were concerned with "the stars and their movements, the size of the cosmos and the earth, the world of nature, and

7102-801: The Graeco-Roman world because he came near to mastering all the knowledge of his time, similar to Aristotle and Eratosthenes . He attempted to create a unified system for understanding the human intellect and the universe which would provide an explanation of and a guide for human behavior. Posidonius wrote on physics (including meteorology and physical geography ), astronomy , astrology and divination , seismology , geology and mineralogy , hydrology , botany , ethics, logic , mathematics, history, natural history , anthropology , and tactics . His studies were major investigations into their subjects, although not without errors. None of his works survives intact. All that have been found are fragments, although

7236-459: The Greco-Roman writers were accurate in their claims. J. Rives remarked that it was "ambiguous" whether druids ever performed such sacrifices, for the Romans and Greeks were known to project what they saw as barbarian traits onto foreign peoples including not only druids but Jews and Christians as well, thereby confirming their own "cultural superiority" in their own minds. Nora Chadwick , an expert in medieval Welsh and Irish literature who believed

7370-580: The Greek historian Strabo , who wrote that their island was forbidden to men, but the women came to the mainland to meet their husbands. Which deities they honored is unknown. According to Pomponius Mela, the Gallizenae acted as both councilors and practitioners of the healing arts: Sena, in the Britannic Sea, opposite the coast of the Osismi, is famous for its oracle of a Gaulish god, whose priestesses, living in

7504-475: The Irish Language defines a druí (which has numerous variant forms, including draoi ) as a magician, wizard, or diviner. In the literature, the druids cast spells and turn people into animals or stones, or curse peoples' crops to be blighted. When druids are portrayed in early Irish sagas and in saints' lives that are set in pre-Christian Ireland, they are usually given high social status. The evidence of

7638-505: The Irish texts, the Welsh term commonly seen as referring to the druids, dryw , was used to refer purely to prophets and not to sorcerers or pagan priests. Historian Ronald Hutton noted that there were two explanations for the use of the term in Wales: the first was that it was a survival from the pre-Christian era, when dryw had been ancient priests; the second was that the Welsh had borrowed

7772-518: The Middle Ages, after Ireland and Wales were Christianized , druids appear in a number of written sources, mainly tales and stories such as Táin Bó Cúailnge , and in the hagiographies of various saints. These were all written by Christian monks. In Irish-language literature, druids ( draoithe , plural of draoi ) are sorcerers with supernatural powers, who are respected in society, particularly for their ability to do divination . Dictionary of

7906-467: The Moon's orbit, while tidal heights vary with the cycles of the Moon, and he hypothesized about yearly tidal cycles synchronized with the equinoxes and solstices. In Gaul , he studied the Celts . He left descriptions of customs such as nailing skulls to doorways as trophies, which he witnessed, and vivid legends told to him by the Celts, such as a story that in the past, men were paid to allow their throats to be slit for public amusement. But he noted that

8040-444: The Roman world, and he became well known to many leading men, including Pompey and Cicero . His works are now lost, but they proved a mine of information to later writers. The titles and subjects of more than twenty of them are known. In common with other Stoics of the middle period, he displayed syncretic tendencies, following not just the earlier Stoics, but making use of the works of Plato and Aristotle . A polymath as well as

8174-529: The Sun emanated a vital force that permeated the world. He attempted to measure the distance and size of the Sun . In about 90 BC, Posidonius estimated the distance from the Earth to the Sun (see astronomical unit ) to be 9,893 times the Earth's radius. This was still too small by half. In measuring the size of the Sun, however, he reached a figure larger and more accurate than those proposed by other Greek astronomers and Aristarchus of Samos . Posidonius also calculated

SECTION 60

#1732844396796

8308-499: The accuracy of his accounts by highlighting that while he may have embellished some of his accounts to justify Roman imperial conquest, it was "inherently unlikely" that he constructed a fictional class system for Gaul and Britain, particularly considering that he was accompanied by a number of other Roman senators who would have also been sending reports on the conquest to Rome, and who would have challenged his inclusion of serious falsifications. Other classical writers also commented on

8442-413: The actual circumference of 24,901 mi (40,074 km). Posidonius was informed in his approach to finding the Earth's circumference by Eratosthenes , who a century earlier arrived at a figure of 252,000 stadia; both men's figures for the Earth's circumference were uncannily accurate. Strabo noted that the distance between Rhodes and Alexandria is 3,750 stadia, and reported Posidonius's estimate of

8576-550: The aorist. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry , especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has

8710-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in

8844-434: The boundary between the clouds and the heavens lies about 40 stadia above the Earth. Posidonius's fame beyond specialized philosophical circles had begun, at the latest, in the eighties with the publication of the work " About the ocean and the adjacent areas ". This work was not only an overall representation of geographical questions according to current scientific knowledge, but it served to popularize his theories about

8978-438: The center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West

9112-761: The classical world of Greece and Rome. Archaeologist Stuart Piggott compared the attitude of the Classical authors toward the druids as being similar to the relationship that had existed in the 15th and 18th centuries between Europeans and the societies that they were just encountering in other parts of the world, such as the Americas and the South Sea Islands. He highlighted the attitude of " primitivism " in both Early Modern Europeans and Classical authors, owing to their perception that these newly encountered societies had less technological development and were backward in socio-political development. Historian Nora Chadwick , in

9246-631: The climatic central position of Italy was an essential condition of the Roman destiny to dominate the world. As a Stoic, he did not, however, make a fundamental distinction between the civilized Romans as masters of the world and the less civilized peoples. Posidonius's writings on the Jews were probably the source of Diodorus Siculus 's account of the siege of Jerusalem and possibly also for Strabo 's. Some of Posidonius's arguments are contested by Josephus in Against Apion . Like Pytheas , Posidonius believed

9380-687: The course of study. What was taught to druid novices anywhere is conjecture: of the druids' oral literature , not one certifiably ancient verse is known to have survived, even in translation. All instruction was communicated orally, but for ordinary purposes, Caesar reports, the Gauls had a written language in which they used Greek letters. In this he probably draws on earlier writers; by the time of Caesar, Gaulish inscriptions had moved from Greek script to Latin script. Caesar believed that this practice of oral transmission of knowledge and opposition to recording their ideas had dual motivations: wanting to keep druidic knowledge from becoming common, and improving

9514-611: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of

9648-470: The druids and their practices. Caesar's contemporary, Cicero , noted that he had met a Gallic druid, Divitiacus , of the Aedui tribe. Divitiacus supposedly knew much about the natural world and performed divination through augury . Whether Diviaticus was genuinely a druid can however be disputed, for Caesar also knew this figure, and wrote about him, calling him by the more Gaulish-sounding (and thereby presumably

9782-535: The druids as being concerned with "divine worship, the due performance of sacrifices, private or public, and the interpretation of ritual questions". He said they played an important part in Gaulish society, being one of the two respected classes along with the equites (in Rome the name for members of a privileged class above the common people, but also "horsemen") and that they performed the function of judges. Caesar wrote that

9916-456: The druids recognized the authority of a single leader, who would rule until his death, when a successor would be chosen by vote or through conflict. He remarked that to settle disputes between tribes, they met annually at a sacred place at the borders of the Carnute territory, which is said to be the center of Gaul. They viewed Britain as the centre of druidic study; and that they were not found among

10050-407: The druids to be great philosophers, has also supported the idea that they had not been involved in human sacrifice, and that such accusations were imperialist Roman propaganda. Alexander Cornelius Polyhistor referred to the druids as philosophers, and called their doctrine of the immortality of the soul and metempsychosis (reincarnation), " Pythagorean ": The Pythagorean doctrine prevails among

10184-725: The druids' faculties of memory. Caesar writes that of the Druids "a large number of the young men resort for the purpose of instruction". Due to the privileges afforded to the druids he tells us that "many embrace this profession of their own accord", whereas many others are sent to become druids by their families. Greek and Roman writers frequently made reference to the druids as practitioners of human sacrifice . Caesar says those who had been found guilty of theft or other criminal offences were considered preferable for use as sacrificial victims, but when criminals were in short supply, innocents would be acceptable. A form of sacrifice recorded by Caesar

10318-575: The entire Stoic school . After a period learning Stoic philosophy from Panaetius in Athens , he spent many years in travel and scientific researches in Spain , Africa , Italy , Gaul , Liguria , Sicily and on the eastern shores of the Adriatic. He settled as a teacher at Rhodes where his fame attracted numerous scholars. Next to Panaetius he did most, by writings and personal lectures, to spread Stoicism to

10452-564: The established tradition. Ethics, Posidonius taught, is about practice not just theory. It involves knowledge of both the human and the divine, and a knowledge of the universe to which human reason is related. It was once the general view that Posidonius departed from the monistic psychology of the earlier Stoics. Chrysippus had written a work called On Passions in which he affirmed that reason and emotion were not separate and distinct faculties, and that destructive passions were instead rational impulses which were out-of-control. According to

10586-410: The ethical works of Posidonius, including Cicero and Seneca , grouped Chrysippus and Posidonius together and saw no opposition between them. The philosophical grand vision of Posidonius was that the universe itself was interconnected as an organic whole, providential and organised in all respects, from the development of the physical world to the behaviour of living creatures. Panaetius had doubted both

10720-538: The following centuries, the new rulers of Roman Gaul subsequently introduced measures to wipe-out the druids from that country. According to Pliny the Elder , writing in the 70s CE, it was the emperor Tiberius (ruled 14–37 CE) who introduced laws which banned not only druidic practices, but also other native soothsayers and healers– a move which Pliny applauded, believing that it would end human sacrifice in Gaul. A somewhat different account of Roman legal attacks upon

10854-537: The future. In the tale of Deirdre of the Sorrows  – the foremost tragic heroine of the Ulster Cycle  – the druid prophesied before the court of Conchobar that Deirdre would grow up to be very beautiful, and that kings and lords would go to war over her, much blood would be shed because of her, and Ulster's three greatest warriors would be forced into exile for her sake. This prophecy, ignored by

10988-531: The gods must be worshipped, and no evil done, and manly behavior maintained". Druids play a prominent role in Irish folklore , generally serving lords and kings as high ranking priest-counselors with the gift of prophecy and other assorted mystical abilities – the best example of these possibly being Cathbad . The chief druid in the court of King Conchobar mac Nessa of Ulster , Cathbad features in several tales, most of which detail his ability to foretell

11122-515: The headdress resembles depictions of Romano-British priests from several centuries later, leading to speculation among archaeologists that the man might have been a religious official– a druid. In the Gallic Wars of 58–51 BCE, the Roman army, led by Julius Caesar , conquered the many tribal chiefdoms of Gaul, and annexed it as a part of the Roman Republic . According to accounts produced in

11256-526: The highest form of human courage be developed. Subsidiary to the teachings of this main principle, they hold various lectures and discussions on the stars and their movement, on the extent and geographical distribution of the earth, on the different branches of natural philosophy, and on many problems connected with religion. Diodorus Siculus , writing in 36 BCE, described how the druids followed "the Pythagorean doctrine", that human souls "are immortal, and after

11390-556: The historical Dorians . The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from

11524-472: The historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasions —and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to

11658-501: The holiness of perpetual virginity, are said to be nine in number. They call them Gallizenae, and they believe them to be endowed with extraordinary gifts to rouse the sea and the wind by their incantations, to turn themselves into whatsoever animal form they may choose, to cure diseases which among others are incurable, to know what is to come and to foretell it. They are, however, devoted to the service of voyagers only who have set out on no other errand than to consult them. According to

11792-540: The horizon. Ptolemy's approval of Posidonius's result, rather than Eratosthenes's earlier and more correct figure, caused it to become the accepted value for the Earth's circumference for the next 1,500 years. Posidonius fortified the Stoicism of the middle period with contemporary learning. Next to his teacher Panaetius, he did most, by writings and personal contacts, to spread Stoicism in the Roman world. A century later, Seneca referred to Posidonius as one of those who had made

11926-477: The hypothetical proto-Celtic word may be reconstructed as * dru-wid-s (pl. * druwides ), whose original meaning is traditionally taken to be " oak -knower", based upon the association of druids' beliefs with oak trees, which was made by Pliny the Elder , who also suggested that the word is borrowed from the Greek word δρῦς ( drỹs ) 'oak tree' but nowadays it is more often understood as originally meaning 'one with firm knowledge' (ie. 'a great sage'), as Pliny

12060-454: The idea of the druid might have been a fiction created by Classical writers to reinforce the idea of the barbaric "other" who existed beyond the civilized Greco-Roman world, thereby legitimizing the expansion of the Roman Empire into these areas. The earliest record of the druids comes from two Greek texts of c. 300 BCE: a history of philosophy written by Sotion of Alexandria, and

12194-482: The internal connections of the world, to show how all the forces had an effect on each other and how the interconnectedness applied also to human life, to the political just as to the personal spheres. In this work, Posidonius detailed his theory of the effect on a people's character by the climate, which included his representation of the "geography of the races". This theory was not solely scientific, but also had political implications—his Roman readers were informed that

12328-626: The king, came true. The greatest of these mythological druids was Amergin Glúingel , a bard and judge for the Milesians featured in the Mythological Cycle . The Milesians were seeking to overrun the Tuatha Dé Danann and win the land of Ireland but, as they approached, the druids of the Tuatha Dé Danann raised a magical storm to bar their ships from making landfall. Thus Amergin called upon

12462-475: The largest contribution to philosophy. His influence on Greek philosophical thinking lasted until the Middle Ages , as is demonstrated by the large number of times he is cited as a source in the Suda (a 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia). Ancient Greek language Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and

12596-424: The law-texts, which were first written-down in the 600s and 700s CE, suggests that with the coming of Christianity, the role of the druid in Irish society was rapidly reduced to that of a sorcerer who could be consulted to cast spells or do healing magic, and that his standing declined accordingly. According to the early legal tract Bretha Crólige , the sick-maintenance due to a druid, satirist, and brigand ( díberg )

12730-496: The leading figures of late republican Rome, including Cicero and Pompey, both of whom visited him in Rhodes. In his twenties, Cicero attended his lectures (77 BC) and they continued to correspond. Cicero in his De Finibus closely followed Posidonius's presentation of Panaetius's ethical teachings. Posidonius met Pompey when he was Rhodes's ambassador in Rome and Pompey visited him in Rhodes twice, once in 66 BC during his campaign against

12864-751: The leading institution of the time. Around the 90s BC Posidonius embarked on a series of voyages around the Mediterranean gathering scientific data and observing the customs and people of the places he visited. He traveled in Greece, Hispania , Italy, Sicily , Dalmatia , Gaul , Liguria , North Africa , and on the eastern shores of the Adriatic . In Hispania , on the Atlantic coast at Gades (the modern Cadiz ), Posidonius could observe tides much higher than in his native Mediterranean. He wrote that daily tides are related to

12998-539: The more authentic) Diviciacus, but never referred to him as a druid and indeed presented him as a political and military leader. Another classical writer to take up describing the druids not too long afterward was Diodorus Siculus , who published this description in his Bibliotheca historicae in 36 BCE. Alongside the druids, or as he called them, drouidas , who he believed to be philosophers and theologians, he remarked how there were poets and singers in Celtic society, who he called bardous , or bards . Such an idea

13132-441: The native Gaulish word for these figures. Other Roman texts employ the form druidae , while the same term was used by Greek ethnographers as δρυΐδης ( druidēs ). Although no extant Romano-Celtic inscription is known to contain the form, the word is cognate with the later insular Celtic words: Old Irish druí 'druid, sorcerer'; Old Cornish druw ; and Middle Welsh dryw ' seer ; wren '. Based on all available forms,

13266-499: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which

13400-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i . A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c.  1450 BC ) are in

13534-445: The pirates and again in 62 BC during his eastern campaigns, and asked Posidonius to write his biography. As a gesture of respect and great honor, Pompey lowered his fasces before Posidonius's door. Other Romans who visited Posidonius in Rhodes were Velleius, Cotta, and Lucilius . Ptolemy was impressed by the sophistication of Posidonius's methods, which included correcting for the refraction of light passing through denser air near

13668-572: The power and might of the immortal gods", indicating they were involved with not only such common aspects of religion as theology and cosmology , but also astronomy . Caesar held that they were "administrators" during rituals of human sacrifice , for which criminals were usually used, and that the method was by burning in a wicker man . Though he had first-hand experience of Gaulish people, and therefore likely druids, Caesar's account has been widely criticized by modern historians as inaccurate. One issue raised by such historians as Fustel de Coulanges

13802-600: The principal divisions of philosophy made Posidonius a renowned international figure throughout the Graeco-Roman world and he was widely cited by writers of his era, including Cicero , Livy , Plutarch , Strabo (who called Posidonius "the most learned of all philosophers of my time"), Cleomedes, Seneca the Younger , Diodorus Siculus (who used Posidonius as a source for his Bibliotheca Historia ["Historical Library"]), and others. Although his ornate and rhetorical style of writing passed out of fashion soon after his death, Posidonius

13936-450: The readers' approval or condemnation. For Posidonius "history" extended beyond the earth into the sky; humanity was not isolated each in its own political history, but was a part of the cosmos. His Histories were not, therefore, concerned with isolated political history of peoples and individuals, but they included discussions of all forces and factors (geographical factors, mineral resources, climate, nutrition), which let humans act and be

14070-504: The reality of divination and the Stoic doctrine of the future conflagration ( ekpyrosis ), but Posidonius wrote in favour of these ideas. As a Stoic, Posidonius was an advocate of cosmic "sympathy" (συμπάθεια, sympatheia )—the organic interrelation of all appearances in the world, from the sky to the Earth, as part of a rational design uniting humanity and all things in the universe. He believed valid predictions could be made from signs in nature—whether through astrology or prophetic dreams—as

14204-499: The region of the Belgae chiefdom. The excavator of these sites- Jean-Louis Brunaux, interpreted them as areas of human sacrifice in devotion to a war god, although this conclusion was criticized by another archaeologist- Martin Brown, who believed that the corpses might be those of honoured warriors who were buried in the sanctuary, rather than sacrifices. Some historians have questioned whether

14338-730: The river Orontes in northern Syria. As historian Philip Freeman puts it: "Posidonius was Greek to the core". Posidonius expressed no love for his native city, Apamea, in his writings and he mocked its inhabitants. As a young man he moved to Athens and studied under Panaetius , the leading Stoic philosopher of the age, and the last undisputed head ( scholarch ) of the Stoic school in Athens. When Panaetius died in 110 BC, Posidonius would have been around 25 years old. Rather than remain in Athens, he instead settled in Rhodes , and gained citizenship. In Rhodes, Posidonius maintained his own school which would become

14472-529: The role of druids in Gallic society, stating that the druids were held in such respect that if they intervened between two armies they could stop the battle. Diodorus writes of the Druids that they were "philosophers" and "men learned in religious affairs" who are honored. Strabo mentions that their domain was both natural philosophy and moral philosophy , while Ammianus Marcellinus lists them as investigators of "obscure and profound subjects". Pomponius Mela

14606-458: The role of druids in Gaulish society may report an idealized tradition, based on the society of the 2nd century BC, before the pan-Gallic confederation led by the Arverni was smashed in 121 BC, followed by the invasions of Teutones and Cimbri , rather than on the demoralized and disunited Gaul of his own time. John Creighton has speculated that in Britain, the druidic social influence

14740-459: The same meridian as they were assumed to be. The longitude difference of the points, slightly less than 2 degrees, is not negligible compared with the latitude difference. Translating stadia into modern units of distance can be problematic, but it is generally thought that the stadium used by Posidonius was almost exactly 1/10 of a modern statute mile. Thus Posidonius's measure of 240,000 stadia translates to 24,000 mi (39,000 km) compared to

14874-537: The size and distance of the Moon . Posidonius constructed an orrery , possibly similar to the Antikythera mechanism . Posidonius's orrery, according to Cicero , exhibited the diurnal motions of the Sun, Moon, and the five known planets. Posidonius in his writings on meteorology followed Aristotle. He theorized on the causes of clouds, mist, wind, and rain as well as frost, hail, lightning, and rainbows. He also estimated that

15008-429: The soul. Although a firm Stoic, Posidonius was syncretic like Panaetius and other Stoics of the middle period. He followed not only the earlier Stoics, but made use of the writings of Plato and Aristotle . Posidonius studied Plato's Timaeus , and seems to have written a commentary on it emphasizing its Pythagorean features. As a creative philosopher, Posidonius would however be expected to create innovations within

15142-455: The spirit of Ireland itself, chanting a powerful incantation that has come to be known as The Song of Amergin and, eventually (after successfully making landfall), aiding and dividing the land between his royal brothers in the conquest of Ireland, earning the title Chief Ollam of Ireland . Other such mythological druids were Tadg mac Nuadat of the Fenian Cycle , and Mug Ruith , a powerful blind druid of Munster . Irish mythology has

15276-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks , interword spacing , modern punctuation , and sometimes mixed case , but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies

15410-506: The term from the Irish, as had the English (who used the terms dry and drycraeft to refer to magicians and magic respectively, most probably influenced by the Irish terms). As the historian Jane Webster stated, "individual druids ... are unlikely to be identified archaeologically". A. P. Fitzpatrick, in examining what he believed to be astral symbolism on late Iron Age swords, has expressed difficulties in relating any material culture, even

15544-625: The testimony of Galen (an adherent of Plato), Posidonius wrote his own On Passions in which he instead adopted Plato's tripartition of the soul which taught that in addition to the rational faculties, the human soul had faculties that were spirited (anger, desires for power, possessions, etc.) and desiderative (desires for sex and food). Although Galen's testimony is still accepted by some, more recent scholarship argues that Galen may have exaggerated Posidonius' views for polemical effect, and that Posidonius may have been trying to clarify and expand on Chrysippus rather than oppose him. Other writers who knew

15678-402: The titles and subjects of many of his books are known. Writers such as Strabo and Seneca provide most of the information about his life and works. For Posidonius, philosophy was the dominant master art and all the individual sciences were subordinate to philosophy, which alone could explain the cosmos. All his works, from scientific to historical, were inseparably philosophical. He accepted

15812-453: The tradition of the philosophical school to which he belonged. David Sedley remarks: On the vast majority of philosophical issues, what we know of both Panaetius and Posidonius places them firmly within the main current of Stoic debate. Their innovatively hospitable attitude to Plato and Aristotle enables them to enrich and, to a limited extent, reorientate their inherited Stoicism, but, for all that, they remain palpably Stoics, working within

15946-444: The twenty-third book of his Succession of Philosophers . Subsequent Greek and Roman texts from the 3rd century BCE refer to " barbarian philosophers", possibly in reference to the Gaulish druids. The earliest extant text that describes druids in detail is Julius Caesar 's Commentarii de Bello Gallico , book VI, written in the 50s or 40s BCE. A general who was intent on conquering Gaul and Britain, Caesar described

16080-479: The two most important social groups in the region (alongside the equites , or nobles) and were responsible for organizing worship and sacrifices, divination, and judicial procedure in Gallic, British, and Irish societies. He wrote that they were exempt from military service and from paying taxes , and had the power to excommunicate people from religious festivals, making them social outcasts. Two other classical writers, Diodorus Siculus and Strabo , wrote about

16214-401: The way his limbs convulse as he falls and the gushing of his blood, they are able to read the future. Archaeological evidence from western Europe has been widely used to support the theory that Iron Age Celts practiced human sacrifice. Mass graves that were found in a ritual context, which date from this period, have been unearthed in Gaul, at both Gournay-sur-Aronde and Ribemont-sur-Ancre in

16348-613: The woodland goddess Flidais , and sometimes described as a sorceress rather than a bandruí) features in a tale from the Metrical Dindshenchas , where she joins three other of the Tuatha Dé to defeat the evil Greek witch Carman . Other bandrúi include Relbeo– a Nemedian druid who appears in The Book of Invasions , where she is described as the daughter of the king of Greece, and the mother of Fergus Lethderg and Alma One-Tooth. Dornoll

16482-460: Was 5,000 stadia due north of Alexandria, and the difference in the star's elevation indicated the distance between the two locales was 1/48 of the circle, he multiplied 5,000 stadia by 48 to arrive at a figure of 240,000 stadia for the circumference of the Earth. His estimate of the latitude difference of these two points, 360 degrees/48=7.5 degrees, is rather erroneous. (The modern value is approximately 5 degrees.) In addition, they are not quite on

16616-475: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric ), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian ,

16750-458: Was a bandrúi in Scotland, who normally trained heroes in warfare, particularly Laegaire and Conall ; she was the daughter of Domnall Mildemail. According to classical authors, the Gallizenae (or Gallisenae) were virgin priestesses of the Île de Sein off Pointe du Raz, Finistère , western Brittany . Their existence was first mentioned by the Greek geographer Artemidorus Ephesius and later by

16884-494: Was acclaimed during his life for his literary ability and as a stylist. Posidonius was the major source of materials on the Celts of Gaul and was profusely quoted by Timagenes , Julius Caesar , the Sicilian Greek Diodorus Siculus , and the Greek geographer Strabo . Posidonius appears to have moved with ease among the upper echelons of Roman society as an ambassador from Rhodes. He associated with some of

17018-420: Was already in decline by the mid-1st century BCE, in conflict with emergent new power structures embodied in paramount chieftains. Other scholars see the Roman conquest itself as the main reason for the decline of the druid orders. Archaeologist Miranda Aldhouse-Green (2010) asserted that Caesar offered both "our richest textual source" regarding the druids, and "one of the most reliable". She defended

17152-509: Was appointed as one of the Prytaneis . This was the most important political office in Rhodes, combining presidential and executive functions, of which there were five (or possibly six) men holding the office for a six-month period. He was chosen for at least one embassy to Rome in 87/86, during the Marian and Sullan era. Although the purpose of the embassy is unknown, this was at the time of

17286-528: Was credited for creating some mathematical definitions, or for articulating views on technical terms, for example 'theorem' and 'problem'. Some fragments of his writings on astronomy survive through the treatise by Cleomedes , On the Circular Motions of the Celestial Bodies , the first chapter of the second book appearing to have been mostly copied from Posidonius. Posidonius advanced the theory that

17420-403: Was expanded upon by Strabo , writing in the 20s CE, who declared that amongst the Gauls, there were three types of honoured figures: The Roman writer Tacitus , who was himself a senator and historian, described how when the Roman army, led by Suetonius Paulinus , attacked the island of Mona ( Anglesey ; Welsh : Ynys Môn ), the legionaries were awestruck on landing, by the appearance of

17554-561: Was that while Caesar described the druids as a significant power within Gaulish society, he did not mention them even once in his accounts of his Gaulish conquests. Nor did Aulus Hirtius , who continued Caesar's account of the Gallic Wars after Caesar's death. Hutton believed that Caesar had manipulated the idea of the druids so they would appear both civilized (being learned and pious) and barbaric (performing human sacrifice) to Roman readers, thereby representing both "a society worth including in

17688-422: Was the burning alive of victims in a large wooden effigy , now often known as a wicker man . A differing account came from the 10th-century Commenta Bernensia , which stated that sacrifices to the deities Teutates , Esus , and Taranis were by drowning, hanging, and burning, respectively (see threefold death ). Diodorus Siculus asserts that a sacrifice acceptable to the Celtic gods had to be attended by

17822-514: Was the first author to say that the druids' instruction was secret and took place in caves and forests. Cicero said that he knew a Gaulish druid who "claimed to have that knowledge of nature which the Greeks call physiologia, and he used to make predictions, sometimes by means of augury and sometimes by means of conjecture". Druidic lore consisted of a large number of memorized verses, and Caesar remarked that it could take up to twenty years to complete

17956-417: Was welcoming to intellectuals, for it already had a strong reputation particularly for scientific research from men like Hipparchus ." Although little is known of the organization of his school, it is clear that Posidonius had a steady stream of Greek and Roman students, as demonstrated by the eminent Romans who visited it. Pompey sat in on a lecture in 66 and did so again in 62 on return from campaigning in

#795204