People fond of mythology thought them the columns of Hercules; people
fond of natural history thought them a representation of the python,
because, according to Pausanias, a similar heap of stones, on the road
from Thebes to Elissonte, was called "the serpent's head," and
especially because the rows of stones at Carnac present the sinuosities
of a serpent. People fond of cosmography discovered a zodiac, like M. de
Cambry, who recognised in those eleven rows of stones the twelve signs
of the zodiac, "for it must be stated," he adds, "that the ancient Gauls
had only eleven signs to the zodiac."

Subsequently, a member of the Institute conjectured that it might
perhaps be the cemetery of the Venetians, who inhabited Vannes, situated
six miles from Carnac, and who founded Venice, as everybody knows.
Another man wrote that these Venetians, conquered by Cæsar, erected all
those rocks solely in a spirit of humility and in order to honour their
victor. But people were getting tired of the cemetery theory, the
serpent and the zodiac; they set out again and this time found a Druidic
temple.

The few documents that we possess, scattered through Pliny and Dionysius
Cassius, agree in stating that the Druids chose dark places for their
ceremonies, like the depths of the woods with "their vast silence." And
as Carnac is situated on the coast, and surrounded by a barren country,
where nothing but these gentlemen's fancies has ever grown, the first
grenadier of France, but not, in my estimation, the cleverest man,
followed by Pelloutier and by M. Mahé, (canon of the cathedral of
Vannes), concluded that it was "a Druidic temple in which political
meetings must also have been held."