It is hardly surprising, therefore, that it took so long for the Druids to disappear from the scene, representing as they did so ancient a culture. We should expect the warders of a national religion and tradition to be conservative, and we find that they even played a political part. In the confusion of the year A.D. 70, when the Capitol was burnt down, they circulated a rumour among the Celts that the event portended the passing of the power from the Romans to the Gauls,[93] seeing that the Capitol had once proved to be the only obstacle to Brennus’s victorious march. It was natural, then, that the Roman imperial policy should aim at the removal of an element which fostered the national sentiment.[94] Augustus later followed this tendency when he forbade the Druid’s worship to Roman citizens in Gaul, and Claudius (we are told by Suetonius) abolished once for all their monstrous practices.[95] So Aurelius Victor[96] attributes the complete suppression of the Druids to Claudius. Accordingly, when we find Pliny[97] saying that it was Tiberius who suppressed the Druids, there is a suspicion that he is guilty of a confusion: Claudius’s first name having been Tiberius. It is clear that definite attempts were made to wipe out Druidism and the Celtic element. But they showed a remarkable tenacity in spite of laws and edicts. The elder Pliny refers to them as surviving in his time,[98] and Flavius Vopiscus (third century) tells of certain ‘wise women’ who called themselves Dryades (_mulier dryas_, _drysada_) and were, by a strange irony, consulted (if we may believe the fanciful _Scriptores Historiae Augustae_), even by persons in high imperial authority. Aurelianus was said to have consulted them about the future of his imperial office,[99] and a Druid prophesied the throne to Diocletian ‘cum aprum occideris’.[100] The prophetic influence seems in these later times to have passed from the men to the women, who become recognized semi-officially, and form, on a small scale, a sort of Delphic oracle. Nothing is more difficult than to make a people forget its language, as Fauriel[101] has remarked, especially a people that largely lives on the land. This dictum, which history has so often illustrated, is instanced also by the tenacity of Celtic in Gaul. It penetrates right into the fourth and fifth centuries, and, since language and education hang so closely together, it is worth while to look into the evidence. More than 10,000 inscriptions have been found in Gaul, and of these a large number relate to the lower classes. Yet we find that scarcely twenty are in Celtic, and these probably are not later than the first century A.D.[102] This does not mean that Celtic died out then; it was never much of a written language, for the Druids had a distinct prejudice against writing, and recorded only secular matters.[103]