50 free Druids trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Almost everything anyone knows about the druids comes from people who were not druids. The Iron Age priests of Gaul and Britain wrote nothing down, so the record is Caesar, Pliny, Tacitus and a few Greek geographers, followed centuries later by Irish monks writing sagas and Welsh antiquaries forging manuscripts. That gap between evidence and imagination is what makes the subject such good trivia. These 50 questions move through the whole story. The classical tier covers Caesar's twenty-year training, the yearly assembly among the Carnutes, Pliny's mistletoe rite, the Roman assault on Anglesey and the emperors who banned the religion. The medieval tier visits Cathbad, Mug Ruith and the druidesses of the Fenian Cycle. The modern tier tracks how John Aubrey and William Stukeley tied druids to Stonehenge, how Iolo Morganwg invented the Gorsedd on Primrose Hill, and how orders from the Ancient Order of Druids to OBOD and the Reformed Druids of North America built today's movement. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, and each explanation adds one more detail. Play it solo, or print it for a pub quiz round.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does the Proto-Celtic root behind the word "druid" most likely mean?
Oak-knower
The second element comes from a root meaning 'see, know'; Pliny had already guessed at the Greek word for oak in the 1st century.
Q 02Which Roman writer left the fullest surviving account of the druids?
Julius Caesar
Caesar's portrait appears only in his survey of Gaulish society; the druids are absent from his campaign narrative.
Q 03Whose single passage gave us the image of white robes, mistletoe and a golden sickle?
Pliny the Elder
One scholar notes the sickle was more probably gilded bronze, the point being to avoid iron.
Q 04Caesar said the druids met once a year in the territory of which Gaulish people?
Carnutes
The Carnutes' land, around modern Chartres and Orléans, was reckoned the centre of all Gaul.
Q 05According to Caesar, druidic teaching was said to have originated where?
Britain
Caesar added that eager pupils still travelled there to study the doctrine.
Q 06Caesar wrote that druid pupils might stay in training for up to how many years?
20
They memorised a great body of verse because writing the doctrine down was held unlawful.
Q 07For non-sacred purposes, Caesar said the druids used which alphabet?
Greek
The Coligny calendar, a later Gallo-Roman bronze, is written in Latin letters instead.
Q 08Which Gaulish druid did Cicero say he had personally known?
Diviciacus
Diviciacus of the Aedui is the only druid known as an individual from other contexts; Caesar never calls him one.
Q 09Diodorus likened the druids' belief in souls reborn in new bodies to which philosopher?
Pythagoras
The comparison is shaky: Pythagoreans were vegetarian for fear of animal rebirth, while the Celts sacrificed animals in quantity.
Q 10Suetonius says which emperor abolished the "cruel and inhuman" religion of the druids?
Claudius
Augustus had earlier forbidden the religion to Roman citizens, and a Senate decree under Tiberius targeted druids alongside diviners.
Q 11Tacitus's sole mention of British druids describes a Roman assault on which island?
Anglesey
Tacitus also reports a druidic prophecy after the Capitol burned in 69 CE.
Q 12Which Roman general's 60 AD attack on the druids' island used a Batavian vanguard?
Suetonius Paulinus
He destroyed the shrine and sacred groves, then had to withdraw before consolidating his conquest.
Q 13News of whose revolt reached the Romans just after their victory over the druids' island?
Boudica
Agricola only finished bringing the island into the Empire in 78 AD.
Q 21Caesar named two honoured classes in Gaul: the druids and which other?
Equites
Equites means 'horsemen'; everyone else, Caesar claimed, counted for little.
Q 22Who is chief druid at the court of Conchobar mac Nessa in the Ulster Cycle?
Cathbad
He foretold the fate of Deirdre before she was born.
Q 23Which blind Munster druid was rewritten as a pupil of Simon Magus?
Mug Ruith
Together they build a flying 'rowing wheel'; his daughter Tlachtga learned her secret knowledge from him.
Q 24Which druidess raised Fionn mac Cumhaill in the Fenian Cycle?
Q 14Lucan named three Gaulish gods propitiated by blood: Teutates, Esus and which other?
Taranis
A medieval commentary on Lucan links each god to a distinct method of killing.
Q 15Caesar reported that victims were burned inside a huge image made of what?
Wicker
The practice later became known as the wicker man; Caesar says criminals were preferred as victims.
Q 16In Pliny's account, mistletoe was cut on which day of the moon?
The sixth
The plant was caught in a white cloth so it never touched the ground.
Q 17Which animals were sacrificed after the mistletoe was cut in Pliny's rite?
Two white bulls
Mistletoe growing on an oak was, Pliny wrote, the most sacred thing the druids knew.
Q 18What did the Gauls call mistletoe, according to Pliny?
All-healer
It was believed to confer fertility and to work as a remedy against poisons.
Q 19The Coligny calendar, linked to druidic astronomy, was discovered in which year?
1897
The bronze was probably made no earlier than the late 2nd century CE but reflects older Gaulish models.
Q 20Caesar said the Gauls reckoned time by what, rather than by days?
Nights
He also says they claimed descent from Dis Pater, a god of the underworld.
Bodhmall
She was also his aunt; Birog, by contrast, helped Cian reach Balor's tower.
Q 25In the 7th-century Latin Lives of St Patrick, Irish druí is rendered by which word?
Magus
The druids were cast as the sorcerers opposing the saint, modelled on Pharaoh's magicians.
Q 26In early Irish law, the druid's social role was largely taken over by which figure?
The poet (fili)
One law tract allowed a druid sick-maintenance only at the rate of a commoner, whatever his rank.
Q 27The Welsh word dryw can mean 'seer' and also which bird?
Wren
Irish druí could carry the same double meaning; the wren was regarded as prophetic.
Q 28Which 17th-century antiquary first credited the druids with building Stonehenge and Avebury?
John Aubrey
The monuments are actually Neolithic and Bronze Age, millennia older than the Iron Age Celts.
Q 29Which deist portrayed the druids as a domineering priesthood ruling through credulity?
John Toland
Stukeley's near-Christian druids were partly an answer to Toland's hostile reading.
Q 30What was Iolo Morganwg's real name?
Edward Williams
His bardic name means 'Iolo of Glamorgan'; his forgeries were exposed long after his death.