The comparison between the Gaulish and Roman coins may be followed in a series of analogies which are very remarkable from an astronomical point of view. To cite only a few examples, we may observe on a large number of pennies of different families, the impression of Auriga "the Coachman" conducting a quadriga; or the sun under another form (with his head radiated and drawn in profile); or Diana with her lunar attributes; or the five planets well characterised; for example, Venus by a double star, as that of the morning or of the evening; or the constellations of the Dog, Hercules, the Kid, the Lyre, and almost all those of the zodiac and of the circumpolar region and the seven-kine (septemtriones). In later times, under the Cæsars, in the villa of Borghèse, is found a calendar whose arrangements very much recall the ancient Gaulish coin. The head of the twelve great gods and the twelve signs of the zodiac are represented, and the drawing of the constellations establishes a correspondence between their rising and the position of the sun in the zodiac. It may therefore be affirmed that in the coinage and works of art in Italy and Greece, the characteristic influence of astronomical worship is found as strongly as among the Druids. Nor have the Western nations alone had the curious habit of impressing their astronomical ideas upon their coinage, for in China and Japan coins of a similar description have been met with, containing on their reverse all the signs of the zodiac admitted by them.
In conclusion, we may say, that it was cosmography, that constructed the dogmas of the Druidical religion, which was, in its essential elements, the same as that of the old Oriental theocracies. The outward ceremonies were addressed to the sun, the moon, the stars, and other visible phenomena; but, above nature, there was the great generating and moving principle, which the Celts placed, at a later period perhaps, among the attributes of their supreme deities.
The Northern Constellations.
The Lyre—Cassiopeia—The Little Bear—The Dragon—Andromeda—The Great Bear—Capella—Algol, or Medusa's Head.