A Complete Good Works Translation Dossier from Natural History 16, 24, 29, and 30
Pliny the Elder preserves a strange and influential cluster of Latin notices on continental Celtic religion: Druids and oak-mistletoe ritual, selago and samolus gathered under ritual conditions, the Gaulish snake-egg, and the Roman claim that Tiberius suppressed the Druids and related seers and healers. The dossier keeps Pliny's hostile Roman natural-history frame visible while translating the whole bounded cluster.
Translation
Natural History 16.249-251
Section 249
The wonder of the Gaulish provinces in this matter must not be passed over. The Druids, for that is what they call their magicians, hold nothing more sacred than mistletoe and the tree on which it grows, provided that the tree is an oak. They choose oak groves for their own sake, and they perform no sacred rites without oak leaves. From this, by a Greek interpretation, they may seem even to have received the name Druids. Indeed, whatever grows on those trees they think has been sent from heaven and is a sign that the tree has been chosen by the god himself.
Section 250
The mistletoe is very rarely found. When it is found, they seek it with great religious awe, above all on the sixth day of the moon. That day makes for them the beginnings of months and years and of a thirty-year cycle, because the moon already has strength enough and is not yet half full. In their own language they call the mistletoe the all-healing. After sacrifice and a feast have been prepared in due form beneath the tree, they bring forward two white bulls whose horns are then bound for the first time.
Section 251
A priest dressed in white climbs the tree and cuts the mistletoe with a golden sickle, and it is caught in a white cloak. Then they sacrifice the victims, praying that the god will make his own gift prosperous for those to whom he has given it. They believe that, when drunk, it gives fertility to any barren animal and is a remedy against all poisons. So great, Pliny says, is the religion of peoples in things that are often empty.
Natural History 24.103-104
Section 103
Similar to this plant, Sabina, is one called selago. It is gathered without iron. The right hand is covered through the tunic, and the left hand plucks it as if stealing it. The gatherer is dressed in white, cleanly washed, and barefoot; before it is gathered, a sacrifice is made with bread and wine. It is carried in a new cloth. The Druids of the Gauls have handed down that it should be kept against every destruction, and that its smoke helps against all diseases of the eyes.
Section 104
The same Druids have named a plant samolus, which grows in wet places. This too, they say, must be gathered with the left hand by fasting persons against diseases of swine and cattle. The gatherer must not look back, must set it down nowhere except in a water-channel, and there must crush it for those who are going to drink it.
Natural History 29.52-54
Section 52
There is also a kind of egg in great fame among the Gaulish provinces, omitted by the Greeks. Many snakes, twisted together, make it into a ball by the saliva from their throats and the foam of their bodies, in an artful knot. It is called the snake-egg. The Druids say that by the snakes' hissing it is thrown up into the air and must be caught in a cloak before it touches the earth. The person who snatches it must flee on horseback, for the snakes pursue until they are cut off by the crossing of some river. The test of it, they say, is that it floats against the current, even if bound in gold.
Section 53
And, as the craft of the Magi is clever at hiding frauds, they judge that it must be taken at a fixed phase of the moon, as though the working of the snakes could be made to agree with a human choice. Pliny says that he himself saw such an egg, the size of a moderately round apple, with a cartilaginous crust marked by many cups like the suckers on an octopus' arms.
Section 54
Among the Druids it is greatly praised for victories in lawsuits and for access to kings. Pliny calls this such vanity that he says he knows a Roman knight of the Vocontii, who carried one in his breast during a lawsuit, was put to death by the deified emperor Claudius for no other reason. Yet this knot of snakes and their fruitful harmony seems to be the reason why foreign peoples made the caduceus, a sign of peace, with the image of snakes wound around it; for it is not customary for the snakes on the caduceus to have crests.
Natural History 30.13
Section 13
Magic certainly possessed the Gauls, even down to our own memory. For in the principate of Tiberius Caesar, their Druids and this whole kind of seers and healers were abolished. But why, Pliny asks, should he dwell on these things in an art that has crossed even the Ocean and been carried into the empty spaces of nature? Britain still celebrates it with such astonished ceremonies that it could seem to have given the art to the Persians. So completely have such things agreed throughout the world, though the world was divided and unknown to itself. Nor can it be sufficiently estimated how much is owed to the Romans, who removed horrors in which killing a human being was considered most religious, and eating one was considered even most healthful.
Colophon
This page translates Pliny the Elder, Natural History 16.249-251, 24.103-104, 29.52-54, and 30.13 from Latin for the Celtic continental expansion of the Good Work Library. Pliny's account is skeptical, Roman, and often hostile; the translation preserves his source value without adopting his contempt for the rites he reports.
Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
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Source Text: Pliny the Elder, Natural History 16.249-251; 24.103-104; 29.52-54; 30.13
Latin source text from LacusCurtius' Latin text route for Pliny's Natural History. This page gives a bounded dossier of Pliny's notices on Druids, oak, mistletoe, selago, samolus, the Gaulish snake-egg, and Roman suppression of Druidic seers and healers.
Natural History 16.249-251
Section 249
Non est omittenda in hac re et Galliarum admiratio. nihil habent Druidae — ita suos appellant magos — visco et arbore, in qua gignatur, si modo sit robur, sacratius. iam per se roborum eligunt lucos nec ulla sacra sine earum fronde conficiunt, ut inde appellati quoque interpretatione Graeca possint Druidae videri. enimvero quidquid adgnascatur illis e caelo missum putant signumque esse electae ab ipso deo arboris.
Section 250
est autem id rarum admodum inventu et repertum magna religione petitur et ante omnia sexta luna, quae principia mensum annorumque his facit et saeculi post tricesimum annum, quia iam virium abunde habeat nec sit sui dimidia. omnia sanantem appellant suo vocabulo. sacrificio epulisque rite sub arbore conparatis duos admovent candidi coloris tauros, quorum cornua tum primum vinciantur.
Section 251
sacerdos candida veste cultus arborem scandit, falce aurea demetit, candido id excipitur sago. tum deinde victimas immolant praecantes, suum donum deus prosperum faciat iis quibus dederit. fecunditatem eo poto dari cuicumque animalium sterili arbitrantur, contra venena esse omnia remedio. tanta gentium in rebus frivolis plerumque religio est.
Natural History 24.103-104
Section 103
Similis herbae huic Sabinae est selago appellata. legitur sine ferro, dextra manu per tunicam operta, sinistra eruitur velut a furante, candida veste vestito pureque lautis nudis pedibus, sacro facto, priusquam legatur, pane vinoque; fertur in mappa nova. hanc contra perniciem omnem habendam prodidere Druidae Gallorum et contra omnia oculorum vitia fumum eius prodesse.
Section 104
Iidem samolum herbam nominavere nascentem in umidis, et hanc sinistra manu legi a ieiunis contra morbos suum boumque, nec respicere legentem neque alibi quam in canali deponere, ibi conterere poturis.
Natural History 29.52-54
Section 52
Praeterea est ovorum genus in magna fama Galliarum, omissum Graecis. angues enim numerose convoluti salicis faucium corporumque spumis artifici conplexu glomerant; urinum appellatur. Druidae sibilis id dicunt in sublime iactari sagoque oportere intercipi, ne tellurem attingat; profugere raptorem equo, serpentes enim insequi, donec arceantur amnis alicuius interventu; experimentum eius esse, si contra aquas fluitet vel auro vinctum;
Section 53
atque, ut est Magorum sollertia occultandis fraudibus sagax, certa luna capiendum censent, tamquam congruere operationem eam serpentium humani sit arbitrii. vidi equidem id ovum mali orbiculati modici magnitudine, crusta cartilagineis velut acetabulis bracchiorum polypi crebris insigne.
Section 54
Druidis ad victorias litium ac regum aditus mire laudatur, tantae vanitatis, ut habentem id in lite in sinu equitem R. e Vocontiis a divo Claudio principe interemptum non ob aliud sciam. hic tamen conplexus anguium et frugifera eorum concordia in causa videtur esse, quare exterae gentes caduceum in pacis argumentis circumdata effigie anguium fecerint; neque enim cristatos esse in caduceo mos est.
Natural History 30.13
Section 13
Gallias utique possedit, et quidem ad nostram memoriam. namque Tiberii Caesaris principatus sustulit Druidas eorum et hoc genus vatum medicorumque. sed quid ego haec commemorem in arte oceanum quoque transgressa et ad naturae inane pervecta? Britannia hodieque eam adtonita celebrat tantis caerimoniis, ut dedisse Persis videri possit. adeo ista toto mundo consensere, quamquam discordi et sibi ignoto. nec satis aestimari potest, quantum Romanis debeatur, qui sustulere monstra, in quibus hominem occidere religiosissimum erat, mandi vero etiam saluberrimum.
Source Colophon
The Latin source pages were captured from LacusCurtius on 2026-05-13 and inspected on disk at Tulku/Tools/celtic/sources/continental_batch_2026-05-13/pliny_druidic_natural_history/. In Natural History 29.52 the captured source route prints salicis and carries an edition note suggesting salivis; the translation follows the saliva reading because the immediate phrase concerns the foam of snakes' throats and bodies. The English translation is a New Tianmu Anglican Church Good Works Translation made from the Latin source.
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