This story is a fable and an afterthought, but it is significant of the sort of culture that later people conceived of as having existed among the ancient Gauls. Long before the days of Roman rule the elder Cato had testified to the trend of their genius in the well-known words: ‘Pleraque Gallia duas res industriosissima persequitur, rem militarem et argute loqui’,[66] and it is quite certain that Mercury (and before the Romans his Celtic counterpart) was actually and almost universally worshipped in Gaul. ‘Galli’, says Caesar,[67] ‘Deum maxime Mercurium colunt’, a statement which is abundantly supported by the inscriptions. An inscription at Chalon-sur-Saône shows the figure of Mercury with his three favourite animals, a cock, a tortoise, a goat, and the words ‘Deo Mercurio Augu ... Sacro’,[68] while at Lyons there were three altars with the words ‘Mercurio Augusto et Maiae Augustae’. An inscription of Poitiers, which is as late as the third century, is dedicated to ‘the god Mercurius’.[69] Even in the barbarous North there is a large number of inscriptions referring to Mercury, especially around Trèves.[70] The worship of Minerva, too, is established by many inscriptions, e.g. the twenty on bowls and cups found at Andecavi in Lugdunensis.[71] Thus the Gauls singled out for special worship the subtlest and cleverest of the gods,[72] and the fact may be connected with their undoubted culture in early times. Out of the darkness in which pre-Roman Gaul is shrouded we gather hints here and there concerning the first known teachers of the Gallic Celts, the Druids. One or two points may be noticed.