Professor Ronald Hutton

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248 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2026 last heard 2 Aug

Professor Ronald Hutton’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Empire: World History · 383. Romans vs Druids: The War For Celtic Britain (Ep 1) · 2 Aug 2026 podcast

Otherwise, they don't believe they can survive.

Maybe, maybe not, because we have no idea how similar British and Irish beliefs were.

But it should be pointed out that medieval Irish literature isn't even really solid evidence for what people believed in pre-Christian Ireland, because it's all the work of medieval Christian Irish writers and storytellers.

And we've no idea how good their information was.

It may be

very accurate about pagan Ireland, or it may be all made up by them.

The Druids were the experts in spiritual matters, religion and magic, the spiritual professionals of the peoples of northwestern Europe when they first emerged into history 2,000 years ago in what we call the Iron Age.

outlawed Druids largely because they regarded them as leaders of the resistance to Roman conquest.

They also used them as a justification for that conquest by accusing them of beastly religious practices above all human sacrifice.

Problem here is we've no idea how accurate the Roman propaganda was and how far they distorted or even made up things.

We can't trust a word that any Greek or Roman writes about the Druids.

Oh, you know, there's nothing changed there.

Nora was right.

It must be said that Greeks in particular wrote lots of very admiring things about Druids, which we can't trust either, although everything may be correct.

With the case of the famous image of the Druids on Anglesey, Anglesey is a centre of resistance to Roman conquest, which is why the Romans go there to take it out.

And the famous story of the Druids on Anglesey is found in just one Roman writer, Tacitus the Historian.

It describes how the Romans discovered that the island of Anglesey, Mon in Welsh, which lies off the northwest coast of Wales, was becoming a major centre of resistance to Roman conquest.

So the Roman governor decided to take it out, and when his army reached the shore opposite the island...

they saw an enemy army drawn up to fight it with tall druids shrieking curses and black-robed women like furies with flaming torches.

Good stuff.

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