This, too, was the district of the god Esus (the eponymous god of the Essuvii), and in some degree of Teutates, the cruelty of whose rites is mentioned by Lucan.

It had occurred to the present writer, before finding the same view expressed by M.Salomon Reinach, that the worship of Esus in Gaul was almost entirely local in character.

With regard to the rites of the Druids, Caesar tells us that it was customary to make huge images of wickerwork, into which human beings, usually criminals, were placed and burnt.

The use of wickerwork, and the suggestion that the rite was for purifying the land, indicates a combination of the ideas of tree-worship with those of early agricultural life.

When the Emperor Claudius is said by Suetonius to have suppressed Druidism, what is meant is, in all probability, that the more inhuman rites were suppressed, leading, as the Scholiasts on Lucan seem to suggest, to a substitution of animal victims for men.