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Wicker man
Reported ancient Celtic method of human sacrifice by fire
Wicker man
The wicker man is the name given to a large figure of wickerwork and wood in which, according to some Graeco-Roman writers, the Gauls burned human and animal sacrifices. The two main accounts are Julius Caesar's de Bello Gallico (50s BC) and Strabo's Geographica (early 1st c. AD), both probably deriving from the lost ethnography of the Greek philosopher Posidonius (ca. 135–51 BC). Caesar describes huge wickerwork images filled with living men and set on fire, while Strabo describes a colossus of straw and wood into which humans and animals were placed before being burned. The English term wicker man is modern, and the classical sources do not give the construction a distinct name. Two further notices, in Diodorus Siculus (1st c. BC) and in the 9th-century AD Commenta Bernensia, describe the burning of victims, but not a wickerwork anthropomorphic figure. The reliability of these accounts remains disputed. Modern scholars debate whether the figure was necessarily human-shaped, what purpose...
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