'How often do you think of the Roman Empire?' Simon : Delivers his best vocal narration in years. Fantastic script and intense narration. Great episode.
@@darcybissonpullen7125 If you participate in literally anything in Western society then you're already subconsciously thinking about it's foundations. Roma... Aeterna. Well at least until we collapse ourselves and the East transplants it.
Kind of a shame that all the big blockbuster movies that deal with Roman conquest pretty much paint it as expanding their land, generic putting down of rebellions. Everyone knows they intentionally wiped out the druids, but somehow Hollywood hasn't capitalized on that.
@@sea_triscuit7980 as op mentioned Hollywood, 110% can confirm that the US doesn't idolize the Romans at all. It comes down due to a lack of knowledge. European history isn't taught in as much detail as the US/North American history. Hollywood gets upset when a non white gets arrested for armed robbery
@@alejandromaldonado6159the druids became a threat when rome subjugated gaul and germany. It's like the US attacking mexico and wiping out every native because "the mexicans threatened violence"😂
The idea that the romans, one of the most bloodthirsty societies in history, which killed people in games for fun, demonized druids because of human sacrifice... Hypocrisy much?! 🤦
No, the gladiator games were not to the death, with the only exception being murderers sentenced to death. In the Roman world, there was a clear difference between war and cooking your fellow countrymen for spiritual blessing.
Oh the hypocrisy was much more blatant than that. You known, because of that whole thing where the Romans ritually murder of enemy combatants for the glory for their gods during the Triumphs.
Um, all cultures were bloodthirsty, and to a large degree...that's still around in some form. You can't say one culture had a monopoly on that, especially when your example isn't even right since most gladiators did it as a profession, meaning...they didn't die, it was a fight to when you were incapacitated. Really goes to show how you extremists on both sides of the political spectrum fail to really learn about history with the broader context. You just regurgitate things you heard offhand in some random video
Plus they likely overexaggerated the Celts sacrifical practices to make them seem barbaric but the likelihood is they wouldn't have sacrificed more people than Romans. Especially when it comes to prisoners of war.
Yeah, you might look into the Albigensian Crusade, when the Catholic Church committed genocide against the Cathars, for the crime of not being Catholic...aka heresy.
Another group of Europeans believing in reincarnation, decimated to keep all focused on death to achieve eternal life via the gateway that is “The Church.” What would happen if a large group of people endeavoured to consciously reincarnate? Well, we would have Eternal Life in every sense of the term as soon as someone succeeds where Casanova and La Marquise d’Urfe failed.
Thank you for not confusing the Irish druids with the British ones. Different culture, different language, different ideals. And Ireland never fell to Rome.
In pre-Roman times, Irish and British druids shared a similar core set of beliefs, rooted in the wider Celtic religious and cultural framework that spanned much of Iron Age Europe. The Irish and British druids likely spoke closely related languages within the Celtic language family, though there would have been distinct dialectal differences. Not as different as you seem to think.
@@vids595being able to communicate and sharing some basic beliefs does not make them part of the same culture. The United States and England share a language, dominant religion, and a lot of history and beliefs. It'd still be ridiculous to treat the two countries like they're the same.
Ireland was counted as a Celtic Isle by itself and Celts in general since the Celtic culture and its language dialects existed. Ireland is visible from England and Wales, and v.v. Most of Great Britain did NOT fall to Rome BTW.
In spite of Irish being a Celtic language, linguistically (an archaic one tracing back to the steppes more than 4,000 years ago), the Irish were not Celts and the Celts did not invade or occupy Ireland. Material culture demonstrated this for decades before modern genetic research finally confirmed it. There may have been the occasional individual immigrant but the Irish did not adopt Celtic culture. There's no evidence of their culture or genome changing at all during the period when Celts arrived and spread throughout Britain. The Irish had arrived over a thousand years prior, with their more archaic form of a related language, and they show amazing cultural continuity and genetic insularity basically until the Viking incursions and ultimate Norman conquest.
After first studying Celtic History, I noticed a stunning similarity between what happened to the Native Americans in North America, and the Celts. I was fortunate to continue my studies in a very Celtic/Romanic city in Germany (Bad Kreuznach) from 1998-2001. The eradication of Native American culture for Christianity's sake in the U.S. was very similar to what the Romans did in conquering Britain in my view. Thanks for this video, cheers.
@@toomanymarys7355 Christians also have ritualistic sacrifice under the pretense of heresy laws. You'll burn and behead anyone to appease God and drive out the demons as Jesus did, but I guess we can pretend that's not the same as any other fanatic cult.
The Romans also completely wiped out the Phoenecian Religion and unlike Druidism not even their gods were safe from Roman annihilation. The Romans incorporated the gods of the Druids and their faithful such as Epona. The Romans wiped out the entire Phoenecian religion including their gods alongside wiping out all the Phoenecians by enslaving them, killing them, and destroying all their written history.
@ The Lebanese of Lebanon are Lebanese not Phoenecian for they do not speak Phoenecian, they do not write Phoenecian, they possess nothing of Phoenecian culture nor religion, their civilizations are entirely different, the only thing they share is relativistic geographic symmetry.
I would love to hear your script writers deep dive into Henry Morton Stanley & his infamous expedition into Africa. Your brand blend of intense, sincere, and powerful writing, narrative, and story telling would make it an excellent listening/learning experience.
Well... rest in peace to the Druids man. Ancient Romans destroying cities, culture, civilizations... now, entire religions. The grind doesn't stop, I guess...
They didn't necessarily destroy the religion, itself. The whole point was that the druids had a high level of political sway & were inspiring violent rebellion amongst the Celtic provinces. But, the religion it continued going for a fair time afterwards.
@@MrChristianDT It melted with the Greek and Roman pantheon but their ancient rites and mythologies disappeared, the Romans were not tolerant people but syncretic ones, they believed that all the people on earth believe in the same gods but with different names ( of course, since the Romans were jingoist, they think they got them in the right way). That is why the Jews and the Christians were discriminated against in the Roman Empire because their monotheism and the belief that there was only one god worthy of veneration destroyed the image the Romans had of themselves. That explained why the druids were all but killed.
What a fascinating exploration of such a significant moment in history! I really appreciate how you presented the complexities involved. That said, I can't help but wonder if the portrayal of Rome's actions might come off as a bit one-sided. Many might argue that every major empire has its own narrative when it comes to such conflicts. Just something to think about!
The Romans did not annihilate the ancient Egyptians nor their religion. It was the Arab Muslims that did that. The Ptolemaic Kingdom ended in 30 BC when Cleopatra VII died.
@@Reina.Nijinsky except the Romans did end their religion seeing as how around 30BC they were conquered by the Roman Empire and begin introducing Christianity in Egypt. And around the 530s nobody really practiced that religion anymore
Don't trust anyone, ancient or modern, who tells you "what the Druids believed." Yes, the destruction of Druidic worship and belief really was completely "comprehensive," and what little was written down at the time by those who might know, was done so for explicitly propagandistic purposes by their pagan or Christian adversaries to justify their elemination. This dearth of knowledge also covers the "Celtic revival" of the 19th and 20th centuries. Like "Neopaganism" generally, but even more completely so in the case of Druidism, modern romanticizers had essentially zero reliable information to work with. What they created and pushed into the modern popular consciousness bears basically no relation to the ancient reality whatsoever. And the Druids of the Celts and their Germanic neighbors who together populated all of Western Europe left no writings regarding their beliefs and practices. So, unless someone can directly cite specific archeological discoveries, and can also be trusted to be interpreting them accurately given our dearth of historical contextual information, no discussion of what these people actually believed and their rites is remotely trustworthy. Simon's talk here is mostly in line with this, but he does mention their supposed belief in something we can vaguely and anachronistically liken to reincarnation, as well as that their human sacrificial behavior "probably" existed while not being as extreme as the Roman depictions of it, and that they were essentially animists "close to nature." But even such minimal assertions are guesses based on conjecture and not to be taken as factual.
Much later, the Christian Romans also wiped out the Manichaeans. These were a gnostic religion related to Buddhism and for a long time they were the greatest competitors to Christianity. The Christians persuaded Theodosius I to outlaw the religion and decree death for all Manichaean monks in 382, and the religion died out from Europe sometime in the 500s AD.
Their are parallels: the Spanish destruction of the Aztecs, and the Brittish colonists' subjugation of native American people. When visiting New Zealand in the 1980's, it was refreshing to see that the Maoris are respected and allowed to maintain their culture. The Australians also allow the Aboriginal people to carry on their culture, but not all Australians seemed to be on board.
Wow! Nice to see someone talking about the actual Druids and not a video game or movie character. Druidism is actually part of my core beliefs and practice.
The last Druid lived on Hirta / St Kilda island in the early 1800s, were he and the other islanders practiced a syncretic Druid /Catholic belief system complete with Pagan altars , animal sacrifices and a stone circle . It was then that protestant missionaries ended what Rome began all those years ago , destroying the stone circle for good measure .
It reveals something significant of the importance of Druidism that the Romans felt they had to wipe it out entirely. Other religions were left to their own devices within the empire, with client kings utilised for mediation. As troublesome as Judaism was for them, they still didn’t try and wipe it out entirely. Druidism was certainly a religion where central to its practices was a respect for the very fabric of nature. One might imagine there were religious caveats within Druidism around the extraction of resources from the Earth, and the resource hungry Roman Empire felt they had to remove this obstacle in order to exploit it. We might only imagine what the Earth would look like today if these ancient nature venerating religions had continued to hold sway over the spiritual imaginations of human beings.
Meh. If you want to paint a narrative that Druidism was significantly important or unique, you can spin it any which way you want. But the Romans certainly destroyed other cultures and religions in their time, pre and post Caesar. Look at your own example - the Jews. Do you really think it’s reasonable to say that Hadrian didn’t try to wipe out?
@ well, the Romans were reasonably pragmatic when it came to other people’s beliefs and were even known to venerate local gods and meld equivalent gods etc. Unless a culture and their beliefs were seen to threaten their rule the Romans were characteristically tolerant.
The did try to destroy Judaism a few times. The main problem, I think, with the Druids was their oral tradition, it's way easier to censure and erase a culture with no written records.
@ good point about the oral tradition. Especially considering Hebrew has been brought back from extinction solely because it existed in written form. The British all but kept their language despite Roman control. Modern Welsh is still ostensibly a Brythonic language with some Latin nomenclature here and there
A segment of the Golden Book is set in 1 BC... And Petibonum is the local trading center, the village's palisade is in disrepair, and there's no druid around. The implication is that at some point the Romans won... And while how they did it isn't shown, they could have turned the village against Panoramix.
@@thcusandsunnyYep. Getafix is captured by the Romans in Asterix The Gaul and The Big Fight. Fulliatomatix bashes Cacofonix and hates fish. Chief Vitalstatistix is hen pecked by wife Impedimenta.
The Druids were more than mere priests, or judges, or advisors, they were doctors, philosophers, poets musicians, keepers of tribal history, memory, dispensers of Culture and enforcers of tradition. They were seers, diviners and interpretors of natural phenomena, and dreams. No wonder the Roman's feared and hated them! Their power was soft but impactive, while Roman might was hard and destructive. I guess we do have the Roman to thank for this illustrative example of Genocide and Culturecide.
I know the "fairy doctor" thing would seem to be some sort of continuation of the druids medical knowledge, & the celtic countries kept alive several non-christian religious rituals, but I wouldn't know about much else with that regard.
"...it is doubtful human sacrifice was as common or grotesque as the Romans described." Um. So they did sacrifice people? Even if it isn't 'as bad as the Romans described', that's still no bueno.
Latin and Latino aren't interchangeable either but people use it as such. Latin = Portugal, Spain, Italy, France and Romania (i.e. the successor states of Western Rome) Latino (Short for Latinoamericano -Latin + American ) = Someone from America that Speaks a Latin Language. Under the strict definition of Latinoamerican, the one Napoleon III wanted when he made the term up, Quebec is in fact a part of Latinamerica. (Is in the American continent and Speaks a Latin language)
Druids seem to be distant cousins of Indian Sadhus and Sanyasis with their yogic and spiritual knowledge -- even the sense fashion with long beards and flowly robes seems remarkably similar. 😅
@@DenSchimmige gladiators rarely died, because they were expensive to train and maintain for their owners. Their owners didnt want their expensive (in both money and time) gladiators to just die like that.
@@togiielectricboogaloo6875 so you claim prisoners/prisoners of war and the religious that were persecuted in Rome at any given moment never got fed to lions or "executed" by gladiators as a sacrifice to sate the entertainment demands of the cities populations? I'm not saying it's millions or even hundreds of thousands of times, But It Did Happen and you can't rewrite history dude. But by all means it's the internet, Insult the dead.
@@B-I-G-N-A-S-T-Y. Not so, as druids believed in their souls being subsumed back into the earth that made them. Essentially making all living things interconnected. By most historians accounts any young man could become a druid as long as he has the patience to memorize the inherited knowledge given by a druid. It's probably the reason why early humans understood about changing seasons and what flora and fauna was safe to consume
Don't forget Rome also tortured and destroyed Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Persian polytheism on a mass scale. This was one of the first genocides in history
The Romans, who often adopted aspects of other cultures they conquered, made an exception with the Druids. They systematically destroyed Druidic sites, rituals, and sacred groves to erase their influence. Unlike other conquered peoples, the Druids left no written records of their own, as their knowledge was passed down orally. The Romans’ destruction of Druidic practices led to the loss of an entire body of spiritual and cultural knowledge.
i read it as The Time Dome Destroyed an Entire Religion. The people of wales and cornwall is my ancestors, they werent wiped out due to violence, it was due to trade and commerce over several generations
Considering Rome in that period typically preferred to integrate local religions and customs rather than wipe them out.....those Druids must have been seriously powerful and dangerous. Rome saw them as a huge threat. Similar to Carthage, they were afraid of them and that's why they had to get got.
I think the Druids were basically prototype hippies, and it always amuses me how modern Druids congregate at Stonehenge even though it was built at least 2000 years before Druidism was even a thing!!
Cultures and religions always change and incorporate new elements. There's nothing especially weird or silly about their affinity for Stonehenge. We also don't actually know when druidic practice started, or HOW it started. By its very nature, it is extremely hard to study and track through historical sources. Throughout history, whole deities have merged with others, or disappeared, developed brand new associations that wipe out their old ones, and have been added to different pantheons. That's how it always works. Catholicism now looks absolutely nothing like early Christianity, doesn't even share many of the core beliefs they would have held, and most of the practices that we're familiar with are extremely recent. Living practices are never static, and even before the original druids were wiped out, I can guarantee that their practices also changed significantly and incorporated different elements over time.
Something about this video really makes me feel skeptical. It makes so many specific claims about the druids when I had always heard there was very little reliable information about them. Add to that this seems to romanticize them as avatars of a green lifestyle in the same way that native Americans are romanticized... And yeah, something about this feels untrustworthy.
It's possible that the druids' influence no longer agreed with the popular will though. When you consider how fast Gaullic elites adhered to the Roman way in the wake of the Julian conquest, there's hardly any reason to think it would have been different elsewhere in the Celtic world. Perhaps their time simply had come.
It's really something how worldwide, those that were more in tune with nature and more spiritual we're wiped out and made to follow and worship a more rigid authoritarian life style.
It makes sense romans were bloodthirsty against those people. Rome was pillaged by gauls so much in their early days that they had to pay tribute so that the left. No wonder why they decided to make the best army possible and exact revenge, even if it took time. It is similar as to why Genghis Khan left a pile of skull on Khwarazm: he went from a slave to a king and attempted to make friends with an empire that answered peace and commerce offers with hostility. Amir Timur Taragay Barlas once lost 3.000 of his best 10.000 men after a treacherous attack from a surrendered city, and he went to leave piles of skull after piles of skull wherever he could conquer. It is not justifiable, but understandable. Every dark, nihilistic view has some source. Even evil has roots.
The Romans also completely destroyed their main competitor, the Phoenicians , who were a worthy rival, having defeated the Romans in battles as much as the other way around. But when Rome finally got the edge and invaded their capital city, they killed everybody and burnt it to the ground, so that literally nothing was left of this civilization. Their brutal, revengeful destruction was complete and total. This was the Romans.
The more I learn about European culture and history the most I realize that the treatment of the indigenous peoples of Africa, and the Americas was just adding more to an already immense list of atrocities. Genocide seems to be a large part of their culture going back thousands of years
"Their", all empires and wannabe empires bud, look what the zulus did to other African tribes, the Arabs with Islam, the Mongols and turks. Your view of history is warped
Interesting. I've always been told (berated for, as though it was personally my fault), that the eradication of Druidism was the doing of the Christians
do you mean 'the second time' Rome destroyed an Entire Religion, don't forget they also eliminated Carthage and their religion in the Punic Wars. It's so sad that Rome was so destructive during its rise to power...
The Romans practiced human sacrifice and came up with some of the most inventively cruel ways to slaughter their enemies in history. I suspect that a lot of the accusations of savagery they leveled against their enemies come down to projection.
@@Chance_Rice Absolut Nonsense! You, it is you that obviously have no Clue about that Issue! The proverbial Guy sitting in a Glasshouse throwing Stones. Pathetic! 🤦
I watched with a faint hope that Asterix the Gaul and indominitable village with Getafix the druid would be mentioned, but that hope was extinguished.
Sad, really
Another casualty in the war of the Romans against the druids
I was just thinking, if Getafix had been able to share his magical potion of strength with more clans, maybe things would have gone differently
You beat me to it!
@@alyssinwilliams4570 He gave the british tea 😄
'How often do you think of the Roman Empire?'
Simon : Delivers his best vocal narration in years.
Fantastic script and intense narration. Great episode.
The issue isn’t “how often” but more “when…” and frankly “usually.”
Simon needs to like your comment!✌️
I bet every day people think of it with out knowing
@@darcybissonpullen7125 If you participate in literally anything in Western society then you're already subconsciously thinking about it's foundations. Roma... Aeterna. Well at least until we collapse ourselves and the East transplants it.
@@gregoire203333Simon doesn’t like or love comments. He’s too busy making more videos.
Kind of a shame that all the big blockbuster movies that deal with Roman conquest pretty much paint it as expanding their land, generic putting down of rebellions. Everyone knows they intentionally wiped out the druids, but somehow Hollywood hasn't capitalized on that.
Cause it'd make the Romans look bad
@@InucroftIf you believe wiping out those who are a threat to you is bad then sure.
@@InucroftExactly and the Western world likes to equate themselves with the Empire
@@sea_triscuit7980 as op mentioned Hollywood, 110% can confirm that the US doesn't idolize the Romans at all. It comes down due to a lack of knowledge. European history isn't taught in as much detail as the US/North American history. Hollywood gets upset when a non white gets arrested for armed robbery
@@alejandromaldonado6159the druids became a threat when rome subjugated gaul and germany.
It's like the US attacking mexico and wiping out every native because "the mexicans threatened violence"😂
When an empire destroys a religion so thoroughly you only know them from D&D.
It must be said oral traditions are easily removed from history.
It's even funnier since the druids didn't want to write anything down. 😅
Another amazing video from Simon and the Basement crew!!! 👏👏
The idea that the romans, one of the most bloodthirsty societies in history, which killed people in games for fun, demonized druids because of human sacrifice... Hypocrisy much?! 🤦
Oh, good point.
No, the gladiator games were not to the death, with the only exception being murderers sentenced to death. In the Roman world, there was a clear difference between war and cooking your fellow countrymen for spiritual blessing.
Oh the hypocrisy was much more blatant than that. You known, because of that whole thing where the Romans ritually murder of enemy combatants for the glory for their gods during the Triumphs.
Um, all cultures were bloodthirsty, and to a large degree...that's still around in some form. You can't say one culture had a monopoly on that, especially when your example isn't even right since most gladiators did it as a profession, meaning...they didn't die, it was a fight to when you were incapacitated.
Really goes to show how you extremists on both sides of the political spectrum fail to really learn about history with the broader context. You just regurgitate things you heard offhand in some random video
Plus they likely overexaggerated the Celts sacrifical practices to make them seem barbaric but the likelihood is they wouldn't have sacrificed more people than Romans. Especially when it comes to prisoners of war.
“Funny she doesn’t look Druish.”
HAIL SKROOB!!!
RIP John Candy. You were your own best friend.
Druish princesses are often attracted to money and power! And I have both! And you know it
❤
1,2,3,4,5
good video yet again, I would only add for people to read 'Magnetic Aura' from Talesio helped me a tonnn
Yeah, you might look into the Albigensian Crusade, when the Catholic Church committed genocide against the Cathars, for the crime of not being Catholic...aka heresy.
And they would’ve done the same thing to the Protestants too if it hadn’t been for that meddling Henry VIII.
All Abrahamic religions are genocidal and disgusting in nature. Prove me wrong
@@CAP198462 Why did you phrase that like a Scooby doo villain😂
@@diegoveloso3rd ... and they would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for those meddling kids! ... :D
Another group of Europeans believing in reincarnation, decimated to keep all focused on death to achieve eternal life via the gateway that is “The Church.” What would happen if a large group of people endeavoured to consciously reincarnate? Well, we would have Eternal Life in every sense of the term as soon as someone succeeds where Casanova and La Marquise d’Urfe failed.
Thank you for not confusing the Irish druids with the British ones. Different culture, different language, different ideals. And Ireland never fell to Rome.
In pre-Roman times, Irish and British druids shared a similar core set of beliefs, rooted in the wider Celtic religious and cultural framework that spanned much of Iron Age Europe. The Irish and British druids likely spoke closely related languages within the Celtic language family, though there would have been distinct dialectal differences. Not as different as you seem to think.
@@vids595being able to communicate and sharing some basic beliefs does not make them part of the same culture. The United States and England share a language, dominant religion, and a lot of history and beliefs. It'd still be ridiculous to treat the two countries like they're the same.
But Ireland still lives under the British heel so
Ireland was counted as a Celtic Isle by itself and Celts in general since the Celtic culture and its language dialects existed. Ireland is visible from England and Wales, and v.v. Most of Great Britain did NOT fall to Rome BTW.
In spite of Irish being a Celtic language, linguistically (an archaic one tracing back to the steppes more than 4,000 years ago), the Irish were not Celts and the Celts did not invade or occupy Ireland. Material culture demonstrated this for decades before modern genetic research finally confirmed it. There may have been the occasional individual immigrant but the Irish did not adopt Celtic culture. There's no evidence of their culture or genome changing at all during the period when Celts arrived and spread throughout Britain. The Irish had arrived over a thousand years prior, with their more archaic form of a related language, and they show amazing cultural continuity and genetic insularity basically until the Viking incursions and ultimate Norman conquest.
After first studying Celtic History, I noticed a stunning similarity between what happened to the Native Americans in North America, and the Celts. I was fortunate to continue my studies in a very Celtic/Romanic city in Germany (Bad Kreuznach) from 1998-2001. The eradication of Native American culture for Christianity's sake in the U.S. was very similar to what the Romans did in conquering Britain in my view. Thanks for this video, cheers.
They both has ritualistic human sacrifice, so another big similarity. Only Indians had eitual cannabalism, though. Want to talk about that one?
I thought about this as well ... In particular with the Mexican and Central American peoples in the 1500s and the plains Indians in the 1800s
I agree. Christianity is a bloodthirsty religion and found its place in Rome for a reason.
@@toomanymarys7355 Christians also have ritualistic sacrifice under the pretense of heresy laws. You'll burn and behead anyone to appease God and drive out the demons as Jesus did, but I guess we can pretend that's not the same as any other fanatic cult.
@@toomanymarys7355 While the Christians dogmatically believe they also ritualistically sacrifice and cannibalize Jesus.
The Romans also completely wiped out the Phoenecian Religion and unlike Druidism not even their gods were safe from Roman annihilation. The Romans incorporated the gods of the Druids and their faithful such as Epona. The Romans wiped out the entire Phoenecian religion including their gods alongside wiping out all the Phoenecians by enslaving them, killing them, and destroying all their written history.
Then what would you consider the modern Lebanese people to be if not Phoenecian?
@ The Lebanese of Lebanon are Lebanese not Phoenecian for they do not speak Phoenecian, they do not write Phoenecian, they possess nothing of Phoenecian culture nor religion, their civilizations are entirely different, the only thing they share is relativistic geographic symmetry.
@@InquisitorXarius Interesting, thank you
@inquisitorxarius by that logic Egyptians aren't Egyptian but Arab
All such experts on the Phoenicians , but none of you can even spell their name correctly .
A shame in real life, no Gaulish druid was able to concoct a magic potion that granted superhuman prowess.
Getafix failed us.
@@reyonXIII Well....Maybe if he hadn't made it as a suppository......
good video yet again, thank you love ❤️
I am glad you do at least label the AI content. As much as I wish you could do it without AI, there's not always a good existing image.
I would love to hear your script writers deep dive into Henry Morton Stanley & his infamous expedition into Africa. Your brand blend of intense, sincere, and powerful writing, narrative, and story telling would make it an excellent listening/learning experience.
I see what you did with that opening line..... bravo fact boi
Well... rest in peace to the Druids man. Ancient Romans destroying cities, culture, civilizations... now, entire religions. The grind doesn't stop, I guess...
Yeah I'm with you , bring back human sacrifice 😈😈
ps , YOU FIRST 😈😈
What did the Roman's ever do for us ? stopped the druid's human's sacrifices....
They didn't necessarily destroy the religion, itself. The whole point was that the druids had a high level of political sway & were inspiring violent rebellion amongst the Celtic provinces. But, the religion it continued going for a fair time afterwards.
@@MrChristianDT It melted with the Greek and Roman pantheon but their ancient rites and mythologies disappeared, the Romans were not tolerant people but syncretic ones, they believed that all the people on earth believe in the same gods but with different names ( of course, since the Romans were jingoist, they think they got them in the right way). That is why the Jews and the Christians were discriminated against in the Roman Empire because their monotheism and the belief that there was only one god worthy of veneration destroyed the image the Romans had of themselves. That explained why the druids were all but killed.
What a fascinating exploration of such a significant moment in history! I really appreciate how you presented the complexities involved. That said, I can't help but wonder if the portrayal of Rome's actions might come off as a bit one-sided. Many might argue that every major empire has its own narrative when it comes to such conflicts. Just something to think about!
How have I been watching Simon spew facts for the last 4 years and never knew this channel existed?
It's also the 'Empaa'e' that destroyed their own predecessor-empire, Carthage.
Also the whatnow?
Honestly I was expecting this video to be about how Romans caused the death of The Ancient Egyptian religion.
The Romans did not annihilate the ancient Egyptians nor their religion. It was the Arab Muslims that did that. The Ptolemaic Kingdom ended in 30 BC when Cleopatra VII died.
Are you suggesting there's a pattern ?
@@Reina.Nijinsky except the Romans did end their religion seeing as how around 30BC they were conquered by the Roman Empire and begin introducing Christianity in Egypt.
And around the 530s nobody really practiced that religion anymore
@@sailinbob11 yes
@@JamailvanWestering looks like you’ve been hitting up google 😂 this subject was part of my graduating thesis at the university 🙌🏼
Reparations for the Druids!!!!
And for the shamans, and for the witches burned in medeval times..
@@DenSchimmige
Lots of people 😅
Well... California is willing to pay reparations to anyone so give it a go. 🤡
@@keepingitreal6793 whats up bud? why do you feel the need to speak this way?
@gavhenrad
I rather give reparations to druids then blacks to be honest. Lol.
Don’t hate that’s my opinion who ever reads this and disagrees
Thank you Brother Simon. ❤
Don't trust anyone, ancient or modern, who tells you "what the Druids believed." Yes, the destruction of Druidic worship and belief really was completely "comprehensive," and what little was written down at the time by those who might know, was done so for explicitly propagandistic purposes by their pagan or Christian adversaries to justify their elemination.
This dearth of knowledge also covers the "Celtic revival" of the 19th and 20th centuries. Like "Neopaganism" generally, but even more completely so in the case of Druidism, modern romanticizers had essentially zero reliable information to work with. What they created and pushed into the modern popular consciousness bears basically no relation to the ancient reality whatsoever.
And the Druids of the Celts and their Germanic neighbors who together populated all of Western Europe left no writings regarding their beliefs and practices. So, unless someone can directly cite specific archeological discoveries, and can also be trusted to be interpreting them accurately given our dearth of historical contextual information, no discussion of what these people actually believed and their rites is remotely trustworthy.
Simon's talk here is mostly in line with this, but he does mention their supposed belief in something we can vaguely and anachronistically liken to reincarnation, as well as that their human sacrificial behavior "probably" existed while not being as extreme as the Roman depictions of it, and that they were essentially animists "close to nature." But even such minimal assertions are guesses based on conjecture and not to be taken as factual.
Much later, the Christian Romans also wiped out the Manichaeans. These were a gnostic religion related to Buddhism and for a long time they were the greatest competitors to Christianity. The Christians persuaded Theodosius I to outlaw the religion and decree death for all Manichaean monks in 382, and the religion died out from Europe sometime in the 500s AD.
Here I was trying to not think about the Romans, and Simon pulls me back in...AM I RIGHT PETER?
EXCELLENT CONTENT, Simmon and team........!!!!!!!!!!!! Baruch Hashem! 🤟❤️🔥🐺
The Romans did not first encounter the druids in the Gallic Wars. The Celts invaded and sacked Rome early in the Republic.
Thank you.
Their are parallels: the Spanish destruction of the Aztecs, and the Brittish colonists' subjugation of native American people. When visiting New Zealand in the 1980's, it was refreshing to see that the Maoris are respected and allowed to maintain their culture. The Australians also allow the Aboriginal people to carry on their culture, but not all Australians seemed to be on board.
Wow! Nice to see someone talking about the actual Druids and not a video game or movie character. Druidism is actually part of my core beliefs and practice.
No it isn’t
If it is really a core part of your beliefs, then you have likely practiced human sacrifice. So you are either larping or should be in jail.
The last Druid lived on Hirta / St Kilda island in the early 1800s, were he and the other islanders practiced a syncretic Druid /Catholic belief system complete with Pagan altars , animal sacrifices and a stone circle . It was then that protestant missionaries ended what Rome began all those years ago , destroying the stone circle for good measure .
The underrated show ‘Britannia’ covers this subject with an element of surrealism.
I'm so GLAD that C3PO & R2D2 weren't around during that period! No wonder the Roman Empire couldn't conquer the universe!
Very interesting video. Too bad "Gallic" and "Gaelic" are mixed up a few times, though...
It reveals something significant of the importance of Druidism that the Romans felt they had to wipe it out entirely. Other religions were left to their own devices within the empire, with client kings utilised for mediation. As troublesome as Judaism was for them, they still didn’t try and wipe it out entirely. Druidism was certainly a religion where central to its practices was a respect for the very fabric of nature. One might imagine there were religious caveats within Druidism around the extraction of resources from the Earth, and the resource hungry Roman Empire felt they had to remove this obstacle in order to exploit it. We might only imagine what the Earth would look like today if these ancient nature venerating religions had continued to hold sway over the spiritual imaginations of human beings.
Meh. If you want to paint a narrative that Druidism was significantly important or unique, you can spin it any which way you want.
But the Romans certainly destroyed other cultures and religions in their time, pre and post Caesar. Look at your own example - the Jews. Do you really think it’s reasonable to say that Hadrian didn’t try to wipe out?
@ well, the Romans were reasonably pragmatic when it came to other people’s beliefs and were even known to venerate local gods and meld equivalent gods etc. Unless a culture and their beliefs were seen to threaten their rule the Romans were characteristically tolerant.
@@TreforTreforgan It is inevitable that these nature loving religions fall to man's industrial nature.
The did try to destroy Judaism a few times. The main problem, I think, with the Druids was their oral tradition, it's way easier to censure and erase a culture with no written records.
@ good point about the oral tradition. Especially considering Hebrew has been brought back from extinction solely because it existed in written form. The British all but kept their language despite Roman control. Modern Welsh is still ostensibly a Brythonic language with some Latin nomenclature here and there
I really enjoyed this. And Simon used his voice well.
It's impossible to watch this without thinking of the Romans trying to kidnap Panoramix.
That's the French for Getafix, captured by the Goths and rescued by Asterix and Obelix.
@duncancurtis5108 his English name is Getafix? Brilliant! 🤣
A segment of the Golden Book is set in 1 BC... And Petibonum is the local trading center, the village's palisade is in disrepair, and there's no druid around.
The implication is that at some point the Romans won... And while how they did it isn't shown, they could have turned the village against Panoramix.
@@lordMartiyaCondatum is the nearest to the Gaulish village, today's Rennes.
@@thcusandsunnyYep. Getafix is captured by the Romans in Asterix The Gaul and The Big Fight. Fulliatomatix bashes Cacofonix and hates fish. Chief Vitalstatistix is hen pecked by wife Impedimenta.
The Druids were more than mere priests, or judges, or advisors, they were doctors, philosophers, poets musicians, keepers of tribal history, memory, dispensers of Culture and enforcers of tradition. They were seers, diviners and interpretors of natural phenomena, and dreams.
No wonder the Roman's feared and hated them! Their power was soft but impactive, while Roman might was hard and destructive.
I guess we do have the Roman to thank for this illustrative example of Genocide and Culturecide.
Sooo… I guess the Italians owe the welsh a bunch of repetitions then?😏 somebody needs to bring this up… I’d totally watch that debate😂
The knowledge is still there, but if you can’t see the forest for the leaves, you’ll never hear the whispers on the breeze.
I'm sure climate change, caused by goverments who built their nations as effigies to Rome, will finish that job long after Rome's passing.
The groves are reborn, and those who can hear, learn. The old Gods walk the land again.
I know the "fairy doctor" thing would seem to be some sort of continuation of the druids medical knowledge, & the celtic countries kept alive several non-christian religious rituals, but I wouldn't know about much else with that regard.
@@Tirani2 you have a computer stop fronting lol
"...it is doubtful human sacrifice was as common or grotesque as the Romans described." Um. So they did sacrifice people? Even if it isn't 'as bad as the Romans described', that's still no bueno.
Gallic = Gauls, living mostly in France
Gaelic = Celts, living mostly in Ireland and Scotland
These are not interchangeable!
Latin and Latino aren't interchangeable either but people use it as such.
Latin = Portugal, Spain, Italy, France and Romania (i.e. the successor states of Western Rome)
Latino (Short for Latinoamericano -Latin + American ) = Someone from America that Speaks a Latin Language.
Under the strict definition of Latinoamerican, the one Napoleon III wanted when he made the term up, Quebec is in fact a part of Latinamerica. (Is in the American continent and Speaks a Latin language)
Gauls were a Celtic tribe
8:19 but when Tacitus mentions Jesus everyone becomes a cyni...skeptic, right?
Simon knows a lot more about Druidism than is actually known.
I guess the Druids were wrong about the gods favoring them to go into battle because they don't exist at all anymore.
correct, they worshipped baals, false demon gods
@@aaronwylie6928there are no gods.
Some people really , truly loves and appreciate history...
All I can hear is in my head is Mel Brooks... Drewish.
Druids seem to be distant cousins of Indian Sadhus and Sanyasis with their yogic and spiritual knowledge -- even the sense fashion with long beards and flowly robes seems remarkably similar. 😅
You choices with Rome:
Live as Romans
Live in subservient obedience to Rome
Don't Live
The Romans also did human sacrifice early on...
Early on? Make it the entire time..
What do you think happend in those fighting arena's?
@@DenSchimmige gladiators rarely died, because they were expensive to train and maintain for their owners. Their owners didnt want their expensive (in both money and time) gladiators to just die like that.
@togiielectricboogaloo6875 those gladiatoren had to fight something.
And it aint always lions and elephants..
@@DenSchimmige yes, each other, and it was rarely to the death
@@togiielectricboogaloo6875 so you claim prisoners/prisoners of war and the religious that were persecuted in Rome at any given moment never got fed to lions or "executed" by gladiators as a sacrifice to sate the entertainment demands of the cities populations? I'm not saying it's millions or even hundreds of thousands of times, But It Did Happen and you can't rewrite history dude. But by all means it's the internet, Insult the dead.
Who else can't stop seeing This is Spinal Tap scenes in their mind every time Simon says "druids".
I'm lucky enough to not know what is, I guess.
Nah, I was thinking of Spaceballs.
"...no one knows who they were or what they were doing..."😅
I see Undertaker at WrestleMania
Why is it that fantasy druids (like in Dungeons & Dragons or World of Warcraft) are able to shape-shift into animals (especially bears and big cats)?
Given the number of roles a druid holds (according to the video), what does it take for a young celt to become a druid?
years of study
Caste , same with all Indo European cultures , the triumvirate.
Priest ( Druids )
Warrior
Plebs
Study 20 years
@@B-I-G-N-A-S-T-Y. Not so, as druids believed in their souls being subsumed back into the earth that made them. Essentially making all living things interconnected. By most historians accounts any young man could become a druid as long as he has the patience to memorize the inherited knowledge given by a druid. It's probably the reason why early humans understood about changing seasons and what flora and fauna was safe to consume
This vid was well worth my time to watch.
Don't forget Rome also tortured and destroyed Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Persian polytheism on a mass scale.
This was one of the first genocides in history
The Romans, who often adopted aspects of other cultures they conquered, made an exception with the Druids. They systematically destroyed Druidic sites, rituals, and sacred groves to erase their influence. Unlike other conquered peoples, the Druids left no written records of their own, as their knowledge was passed down orally. The Romans’ destruction of Druidic practices led to the loss of an entire body of spiritual and cultural knowledge.
Look what the Romand did to Judeah
too. 😮
Ironic how the my are doing the same to the Arabs
Go look at what group is leading the research on how Romans subjugated religious minorities. It's Israelis. Coincidence? No.
ua-cam.com/video/KHDFYQKlT3A/v-deo.htmlsi=oBcJdtTiz3sDN4Qo
Rome still didn't conquer Scotland. Shout out to my Celtic cousins in Eire.
They took a look at Scotland and decided to build a wall and call it a day 😂
Eire is Ireland
i read it as The Time Dome Destroyed an Entire Religion. The people of wales and cornwall is my ancestors, they werent wiped out due to violence, it was due to trade and commerce over several generations
If you can destroy their hope and faith, you can crush anyone
Simon should do a video on how the Roman Empire transitioned from a form of paganism to Christianity
Ireland remained. It took Christians to finish Druidism.
Based
Considering Rome in that period typically preferred to integrate local religions and customs rather than wipe them out.....those Druids must have been seriously powerful and dangerous. Rome saw them as a huge threat. Similar to Carthage, they were afraid of them and that's why they had to get got.
I think the Druids were basically prototype hippies, and it always amuses me how modern Druids congregate at Stonehenge even though it was built at least 2000 years before Druidism was even a thing!!
Cultures and religions always change and incorporate new elements. There's nothing especially weird or silly about their affinity for Stonehenge. We also don't actually know when druidic practice started, or HOW it started. By its very nature, it is extremely hard to study and track through historical sources.
Throughout history, whole deities have merged with others, or disappeared, developed brand new associations that wipe out their old ones, and have been added to different pantheons. That's how it always works. Catholicism now looks absolutely nothing like early Christianity, doesn't even share many of the core beliefs they would have held, and most of the practices that we're familiar with are extremely recent. Living practices are never static, and even before the original druids were wiped out, I can guarantee that their practices also changed significantly and incorporated different elements over time.
@@jasminecollins897 Good answer and fair point(s) 👍💗
Some of us still practice druidism it's just harder since we have to relearn what the ancients knew
1600 years later, British did the exact same in India. Broke the strong spiritual culture in order to subjugate the people.
Something about this video really makes me feel skeptical. It makes so many specific claims about the druids when I had always heard there was very little reliable information about them. Add to that this seems to romanticize them as avatars of a green lifestyle in the same way that native Americans are romanticized... And yeah, something about this feels untrustworthy.
yeah, its just romanticizing unimaginably cruel barbarians & their way of life, which revolved around murder and torture
It's possible that the druids' influence no longer agreed with the popular will though. When you consider how fast Gaullic elites adhered to the Roman way in the wake of the Julian conquest, there's hardly any reason to think it would have been different elsewhere in the Celtic world. Perhaps their time simply had come.
I learned of this decades ago. This has occurred many times in human history.
Ironic that christian Rome did wipe out her own ancient polytheistic religion just about four centuries later.
RIP Peanut The Squirrel
It's really something how worldwide, those that were more in tune with nature and more spiritual we're wiped out and made to follow and worship a more rigid authoritarian life style.
Rome was established by the lineage of Rama if you know then you know✌️✌️✌️✌️
The Jews were in effect ended too, they then reinvented it by starting the talmud.
Christianity is "true" Judaism (Jesus is the fulfilment and the Messiah) - Talmudic Judaism is a cult
It makes sense romans were bloodthirsty against those people. Rome was pillaged by gauls so much in their early days that they had to pay tribute so that the left. No wonder why they decided to make the best army possible and exact revenge, even if it took time. It is similar as to why Genghis Khan left a pile of skull on Khwarazm: he went from a slave to a king and attempted to make friends with an empire that answered peace and commerce offers with hostility. Amir Timur Taragay Barlas once lost 3.000 of his best 10.000 men after a treacherous attack from a surrendered city, and he went to leave piles of skull after piles of skull wherever he could conquer.
It is not justifiable, but understandable. Every dark, nihilistic view has some source. Even evil has roots.
The Time ISlam destroyed entire Nations, entire religions , entire cultures and civilisations ..that would be like 20 episodes
💯 Thuth North Africa , Egypt, Afghanistan, Zoroastrianism,Buddhism, Arabic Jewism & paganism just to name a few.....
Christianity destroyed entire people , civilization, culture as well
Thank god for the magic potion, that at least that one Gaulish village in France was able to preserve druidism.
The Romans also completely destroyed their main competitor, the Phoenicians , who were a worthy rival, having defeated the Romans in battles as much as the other way around. But when Rome finally got the edge and invaded their capital city, they killed everybody and burnt it to the ground, so that literally nothing was left of this civilization. Their brutal, revengeful destruction was complete and total. This was the Romans.
Dan Carlin’s podcast over this same topic is maybe the best, covering this topic. This is the spark notes, but I mean that in the best ways.
The more I learn about European culture and history the most I realize that the treatment of the indigenous peoples of Africa, and the Americas was just adding more to an already immense list of atrocities. Genocide seems to be a large part of their culture going back thousands of years
"Their", all empires and wannabe empires bud, look what the zulus did to other African tribes, the Arabs with Islam, the Mongols and turks. Your view of history is warped
I keep seeing this guy everywhere..
I hope this video remains here if it gets viral in India
No one knows who they were, or what they were doing.
Interesting but sad story. 😮
Always reminds me of Spinal Tab. "The druids"
Gaius Suetinius --
a man named Sue 😂
Don't you just love it when you see a statue covered in bird poo? It adds a lot to the local charm, doesn't it?
I thought it was perfectly appropriate given the subject.
@@Tirani2 No idea. I have no respect for people that need drugs just to do a little killing.
As a native to Briton, I think about the Romans often!
Interesting. I've always been told (berated for, as though it was personally my fault), that the eradication of Druidism was the doing of the Christians
4:48 eating the dogs 🐶
do you mean 'the second time' Rome destroyed an Entire Religion, don't forget they also eliminated Carthage and their religion in the Punic Wars.
It's so sad that Rome was so destructive during its rise to power...
The Romans practiced human sacrifice and came up with some of the most inventively cruel ways to slaughter their enemies in history. I suspect that a lot of the accusations of savagery they leveled against their enemies come down to projection.
Ugh even 2 seconds of you showing Stephen miller is 2 seconds too many
Brits & Americans learned well from the Roman empire.......teaching Asians & Africans about modern society.......teaching about democracy etc
stop talking out of your ass
Of course civilized Roman practices such as crucifixion and later Christian witch burnings were completely humane.
Isn't "Christian witch" an oxymoron ?
@@SRW_ Pretty sure it's intended as Christians burning witches, so not really.
Christian which burning was mostly a American thing, if you don't know history don't act like you do
@@Chance_Rice Absolut Nonsense!
You, it is you that obviously have no Clue about that Issue!
The proverbial Guy sitting in a Glasshouse throwing Stones.
Pathetic! 🤦
@@Tar-Earendil lets learn some basic English, mostly means alot but not all, well witch burning were very rare In Europe
So what the Druids were supposedly doing was barbaric and savage, but what the Romans did in the arenas was sacred and civilized.
To be fair rome did the same thing to Carthage, the Iberian peninsula and Gual in the previous centuries before. It's kind of a tradition they had
Druids could not have been that smart building a culture in the way of Rome...should have thought that out.