Greek and Roman sources describe druids as important religious and ritual figures in Iron Age Britain, Ireland, and Gaul, although modern historians treat their accounts cautiously. Julius Caesar, in his writings on the conquest of Gaul, portrays druids as officials responsible for sacrifices and worship, as teachers who trained students, and as judges who arbitrated disputes. He suggests that they held annual meetings, avoided warfare, and conducted rituals involving human victims burned alive inside large wicker figures. Diodorus Siculus describes druids as conducting various divination rituals. Pliny the Elder associates them with oak trees and suggests that they met in oak groves wearing robes and performed a ritual involving cutting mistletoe from an oak with a golden sickle.
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