Sometimes Classics just isn't blood-curdling enough. Greeks and Romans didn't stoop to human sacrifice. Much. Orpheus had taught Greeks it was wrong and encouraged more vegetarian offerings (hey, that's IMMORAL! sacrifice these corn-flakes instead ... anyone seen the wife?). Clearly he didn't get as far as Germanic and Slavonic peoples. Indeed, Greeks and Romans weren't too sure what a German was - it looks as though Poseidonios invented them (in revenge, their academic descendants invented Poseidonios).

It's been enormously interesting roaming around paganism in Europe for my latest book. Classicists always enjoy diversity. That's the core of the subject, as we've recently decided at national level when having to define what Classics was anyway. So here we go, from Galicia to Lithuania with Greeks and Romans for interesting parallels, or, if you prefer, regard the 'barbarian' peoples as casting interesting light on the 'higher' religions of Greece and Rome. There are some marvellous contrasts. The one I particularly like is the vision of the Grove. A barbarian grove drips with the gore of human offerings, skulls infest its branches and even their priests scarcely dare to enter (well, that's what Lucan says, wonder why). A Greek grove by contrast according to Strabo can be - and I really can't get over this - 'expensive'. Been down the Garden Centre, the fruit trees cost a fortune.

Let others be archaeologists and practice the detective work of post-holes and bones. What I enjoy is the speaking voice of real authors, ancient and medieval, especially those Christian fathers, missionaries and worthies who will tell us all about the wicked practices of pagans. They've learnt it all in their BA in Theology, which evidently included modules on 'How to recognise a pagan' and 'Pagans in the marketplace'. Just it didn't bear much relationship to real world conditions (plus ca change). What they really seem to worry about is singing and dancing. Very pagan, Moses had a bad dose of it when he came down the mountain (good pagan place, a mountain). You find the occasional missionary pack too, with a checklist of ghastly paganisms to watch for (bingeing at tombs, taking Thursday off, doing stuff at rocks ...). Weaving women are of course the worst.

Then there's all that ecology. Trees and springs and rocks and mountains and promontories and lakes (don't forget to kill that sword before you throw it in). Nature has its fascination: trees and plants exist in a quite different sense from us animals, so everyday Indo-European folk thought: we may *Hes, but trees *bhu (obvious when you think about it). And then there's time itself: moons and calendars and solar years and eclipses and 9-year festivals in groves with human sacrifice ... but that's where we started.