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Silius Italicus [first century AD] (Punica 3.340-43):

The Celts known as Hiberi came also.

To them it is glorious to fall in combat,

but they consider it wrong to cremate a warrior who dies in this way.

They believe he will be carried up to the gods if his body, lying on the field of battle, is devoured by a hungry vulture.



Historia Augusta [fourth century AD] (Alexander Severus 59.5):

(AD 235) The Druidess exclaimed to him as he went, "Go ahead, but don't hope for victory or put any trust in your soldiers."

(Numerianus 14):

While Diocletian was still a young soldier he was staying at a tavern in the land of the Tongri in Gaul. Every day he had to settle his account with the landlady, a Druidess. One day she said, " Diocletian, you are greedy and cheap!" Jokingly he responded to her, "Then I'll be more generous when I'm emperor." "Don't laugh," she said, 'for you'll be emperor after you've killed the boar."

(Aurelianus 43.4):

(AD 270) On certain occasions Aurelian would consult Gaulish Druidesses to discover whether or not his descendants would continue to rule. They told him that no name would be more famous than those of the line of Claudius. And indeed, the current emperor Constantius is a descendant of his.

Ausonius [late fourth century AD] (4.7-10, 10.22-30):


You are descended from the Druids of Bayeux, if the stories about you are true,

and you trace your sacred ancestry and renown from the temple of Belenus.


Nor will I forget the old man

by the name of Phoebicius.

Though he was priest of the god Belenus, he received no profit from the position. But nonetheless this one, who descended, it is said, from the Druids of Brittany, did receive a professorship at Bordeaux with the help of his son.

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