re: #51 William Barnett-Lewis

Mostly had to do with that they still did occasional human sacrifice. Rome had only recently (relatively) gone from real human sacrifice to the Games and so had the horror of the ex-smoker smelling tobacco. Plus the druids controlled the flow of gold out of Britain … O_o

Should I give a nice Marxist analysis too? :D

Glad you enjoyed the documentary on the Hittite Empire.

As to the Druids, my father told me when I was a kid that he had learned in parochial school (this would’ve been in the 1930s) when they were studying ancient history that - aside from the gold - the Romans accused the Druids of not only human sacrifice, but of ritual cannibalism as well. Of course, the Romans aren’t the most reliable of historians, and their version of history was very much self-serving, but there were apparently multiple Roman sources attesting to the Druids not only sacrificing prisoners of war but eating them as well.

How true that is, or if it’s merely an early example of atrocity propaganda, I cannot say.

That being said, ritual cannibalism is certainly not entirely unknown or unheard of; there are documented examples of it from other cultures in other times and places.