Pausodonius was a state philosopher from Apomare in Syria, it was Greek. He spent most of his time on the island of roads in the sort of university atmosphere of roads. But he was writing a history of the ancient world, and like a good historian, he actually did his field work. And he put a lot of new information into the pot. The Greeks were very impressed, they compared Druids rather to Pythagoras. They had these strange ideas that the soul was immortal and so on. Did Pausodonius later take up, did he build on Pythagoras ideas, or did he do some original work of his own?
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Druids, the priests of ancient Europe. Active in Ireland, Britain and Gaul, the Druids were first written about by Roman authors including Julius Caesar and Pliny, who described them as wearing white robes and cutting mistletoe with golden sickles. They were suspected of leading resistance to the Romans, a fact which eventually led to their eradication from ancient Britain. In the early modern era, however, interest in the Druids revived, and later writers reinvented and romanticised their activities. Little is known for certain about their rituals and beliefs, but modern archaeological discoveries have shed new light on them.
With:
Barry Cunliffe
Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of Oxford
Miranda Aldhouse-Green
Professor of Archaeology at Cardiff University
Justin Champion
Professor of the History of Early Modern Ideas at Royal Holloway, University of London
Producer: Thomas Morris.