Paganism in Roman Britain 

I love it to find another timelord reference here. 😄

David Tennant was the best in my opinion.

Who?

There is a strong Jon Pertwee vibe going on!

The camp is high with this one for sure! Love his humour and knowledge

Most universities (AND MUSEUMS!!) in the UK - and, in the U.S., as well as most other countries - have great lecture series' and some universities (Yale, Stanford and some other, English, universities, although, its not AS common for them to upload an entire, semester - or quarter - long class, as it is for them to upload lecture series with various guest professors - which is done, frequently, by the PENN museum in Philadelphia, the Oriental Institute, The Met, the British museum, Gresham College, IAS, in the States and the IAR - i hooe I got that right - in the UK - the British Schools at Athens, Cairo and Rome and Ankara, as well as the American Schools of the same, and many more, and they ALL have RU-vid channels with Tons of lectures!! Yale and Stanford, however, are two universities the RU-vid channels of which I KNOW upload SOME classes, and UCL, as well as some other British universities, do, as well, AND, THERE'S THE ADDED BENEFIT OF THE FACT THAT, IF THERE IS AN ENTIRE CLASS UPLOADED, YOU KNOW THAT THAT PROFESSOR IS GUARANTEED TO BE AN AMAZING, OUTSTANDING LECTURER!!! There is, also, if you like ART, and/or ART HISTORY, our - the U.S.' - National Gallery, in D.C., has many lecture series' and, each year, a different visiting, world class, lecturer doing a 4 - 6 part lecture series on their specialty, and they are, almost always, OUTSTANDING!! MARY BEARD DID A 5, OR 6 -?, PART SERIES ON ART/HISTORY OF, WHAT ELSE, THE ROMAN EMPIRE (IT WAS FABULOUS !!), BTW, SHE ALSO DID A GREAT SINGLE ONE, ON THE SAME SUBJECT, AT STANFORD, WHICH IS ON THEIR CHANNEL! OH! U.C.BERKLEY HAS MANY AMAZING ONES - AND SERIES,' AS WELL; AND UCSD HAS A CHANNEL CALLED UCTV, WHICH HAS MANY, MANY, FABULOUS LECTURE SERIES, GUEST SYMPOSIUMS AND, OCCASIONALLY, A CLASS. GRESHAM COLLEGE IN THE UK HAS AN AMAZING CHANNEL, FULL OF LECTURE SERIES, AND OXFORD - AND, ESPECIALLY, CAMBRIDGE - HAVE SO, SO MANY GREAT SERIES' ON THEIR CHANNELS! IF YOU LOVE LECTURES - ESPECIALLY HISTORY, ARCHAEOLOGY...AND, WELL, ANY NUMBER OF OTHER SUBJECTS, ACTUALLY - MATHS, PHYSICS, PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCES, TOO, YOU WILL, LIKE MYSELF, BE MADE SO INCREDIBLY HAPPY BY THE WEALTH OF GREAT INSTITUTIONS OFFERING HUGE NUMBERS OF LECTURE SERIES' ON RU-vid!! OH!! I ALMOST FORGOT HARVARD AND HARVARD'S PEABODY MUSEUM, AS WELL AS THEIR NEART EAST AND SEMITIC MUSEUM LECTURES, BROWN UNIVERSITY, MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY, IN THE UK, U OF M, IN THE U.S., AS WELL AS THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT DENVER, AND JUST THE UNIVERSITY OF DENVER. THERE'S ALSO, FOR ARCHAEOLOGY AND ANCIENT HISTORY, ESPECIALLY, THE UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI, OXFORD'S ASHMOLEAN, etc., etc., etc.,!! I was SO UNBELIEVABLY HAPPY WHEN, YEARS AGO, I DISCOVERED THIS!!! - PLEASE, HAVE FUN! I GENUINELY HOPE THAT YOU ENJOY THESE RESOURCES AS MUCH AS I DO/HAVE!!! HAPPY NEW YEAR, AND TAKE CARE!! MUCH LOVE, FROM LOS ANGELES 😊🥳

Me too!

@@michelerenea6477 Thank you for your generosity in sharing these resources!

@@michelerenea6477 I also love it when the gods suddenly makes you think about a lecture you watched months ago, and you then click on it and realize someone gave you a treasure trove of a comment full of recommendations. Thank you!

100% agree. Love him!!!

I was just thinking that I could listen to this man share his knowledge all day every day. I’m going to have to look for more of his lectures.

I love his kind of Englishman.

I am lucky to have met and spoken to him a few times in London.

Me too.

Yes, when he described the “gods club” in the temples, I thought “like a church with all different saints.”

A nice point. I have often thought about this too.

Hutton addressed this in one talk. He said theres no evidence for it, apart from in Ireland.

​@whiggles9203 They're saying that the saints fill that same household deity role, not necessarily that specific pagan gods became saints. Which is kind of true, sainthood is not really a Christian concept

King Louis XIV built temples to Greek gods, really interesting.

Just because some were Victorian inventions (like a lot of modern witchcraft stuff), others are older or based on older stuff.

@Helsby But modern 'Druidism' mostly is.

If it’s in your blood and you live close to the natural cycle and you have practiced purifying spirit (zen for instance). You just get it. You can reinvent

Wonderful! You can find more of Professor Hutton's lectures and upcoming events at www.gresham.ac.uk/speakers/professor-ronald-hutton

😈

Our local farm/farm shop firmly believes that meat from animals who have lived well and died as stresslessly as possible will be sweeter and my experience bears this out. He is my main supplier!

It’s a well known fact that the meat of a stressed animal taste different! Today they even build slaughter houses in ways that reduce stress on the animal and it has absolutely no idea of what’s about to happen to it when they trigger the bolt pistol!

I don't think anyone knows, but it may indicate that Britain was less thoroughly Romanized than Gaul. Possibly significant: -in Western Europe, Britain was last in and first out of the Roman Empire. It has even been suggested that this was a distant cause of our contemporary ambivalence about our relationship with Europe. In any event, Gaul was part of the Roman Empire for around 500 years, while Britain was only part of the Empire for about 350 years. Hence there was more time for Gaul to be Romanized and Latinized. -Also, the parts of Roman Britain that had probably become the most Romanized and where Latin was most likely to have begun to replace Celtic speech, the most urbanised and closest to the Continent were in the lowland South and East. These were exactly the parts that were subsequently conquered first and most thoroughly by the Germanic Anglo-Saxons, and Latin speech and Roman civilisation there replaced by Germanic. The upland areas of the North and West which the Anglo-Saxons conquered later and less thoroughly, if at all, were less urbanised and less Romanized, so Celtic rather than Latin speech still predominated there.

@@whitepanties2751 What I find even more interesting is that the Franks who later invaded Gaul and gave it their name, and the Normans, who gave their name to another part of it, lost their native languages and spoke what was a descendent of the Latin tongue.

@@whitepanties2751 Not sure 'conqured' is still considered the right word when discussing the Saxons.

@@bearhustler if you look at the latest archeo genetic studies you will understand that there was a substantial population inflow and replacement of locals.

We don't know, but Oaks are not the only trees. there are trees that live by the river and surely have a place in any pantheon.

@@inregionecaecorum the Welsh for oak, derw, comes from the PIE daru, meaning tree. We still see this morpheme in modern languages, mostly Slavic: Russian; derevo= tree. I would suggest that the ancient Britons exalted the oak to an extent that it’s name simply meant The Tree. Such was its importance in their belief system. So the common interpretation of Druid/Derwydd to mean Knows the Oak may not be accurate. I would suggest it meant They Who Know Trees.

Druids probably were animists, yes. He does point out that we don't know anything for sure about prehistoric British religion. The idea of venerating trees comes from linguistic archaeology and is subject to debate. Druí isn't a mispronunciation, it's Irish, so you might want to look at the relationship with "Duir" and the rest of the medieval Book of Ballymote, particularly the Auraicept na-Éces, which is where most of the information about trees comes from. As Hutton is a practising Druid, I'm sure he's familiar with the Oghamic sources. "Gwyddon" in Welsh means both Wizard and Scientist.

@@inregionecaecorum Ovid's Metamorphoses, particularly #10 goes into detail about Greek tree lore.

@@TreforTreforgan in both Welsh and Irish words for "wood" and "letters" are linguistically related. Wood was an important resource, so an expert in the properties of wood and the use of language was considered to be a wise person.

It sure is as tradagey.

There was some hostility in Rome to new ideas from Greece and opposition to Romans learning and speaking their language. Some also experienced culture shock from watching Greek comedies in which masters and slaves spoke over-familiarly. The senator Cato (the Elder) ended every speech, on whatever topic, with "Carthage must be destroyed!"

My understanding opinion is divided on human sacrifice, as the archaeological evidence is maybe suggestive of it or maybe it was just executed criminals and war prisoners.

A more accurate statement...." when the Roman Emperor adopted Christianity as a national religion"... as to human sacrifice, do we really have facts to back up it stopped?....After all, there were Roman Christians before this....and public executions...have continued into the modern era.

The Romans saw the Druids as a continuing threat to Roman rule and disliked their sacrificial practices. They were generally tolerant of other religious practices.

@@Wotsitorlabart The Romans "disapproved" of foreign blood-rites, but enthusiastically endorsed gladiatorial events to the death (which, by all accounts, they had inherited from the Etruscans) for the bloodthirsty amusement of the masses. 🙄

There are several places in Devon with Nymet and Nympton in their name. This means Sacred Grove. North Tawton was the site of a large Sacred Grove.

Whatever the nutters who these days dress up as pretend Druids might say the real ones were deeply unpleasant.

We know virtually nothing about the Druids, their existence is only attested by a few, mostly second hand, Roman writers.

Well, probably ate pig too - so Halal slaughtered haram meat?

Or, much more likely, vice versa……

Gealic gods.

@@theshamanarchist5441 thank U kev 🐆 I am Shaman ,+ bless U ➕

@@kevleppard9119 Big up and all power to you bredren. 🌱

@@theshamanarchist5441 thank you man , lots o luck ☘, we lost Nik Turner in 2022, check him he was one of the few shaman I knew of, only person to ever record an album in the great pyramid,! 🎶 🗻