Read Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference) Online
Authors: James MacKillop
Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference) (8 page)
Such worship did not, however, drive out all the warlike manifestations associated with Gaulish Mars. His sometime epithet ‘Caturis’ means ‘king of combat’ or ‘master of fighting’. Mars was linked with Segomo, whose name means ‘victorious’, in both Gaul and Britain. Mars Corotiacus in Britain is depicted as a cavalryman trampling an adversary beneath his hoofs. As Mars Camulos, in Britain he began to absorb the important native war god whose name was recorded in the Roman place-name Camulodunum, ancestor of modern Colchester.
Of these local associations of Gaulish Mars, the one attracting the most interest is Mars Toutatis, found only at Barkway, Hertfordshire. On one hand, this may only mean that Mars was the god of the local tribe,
teutā
, as Vendryes has argued (see above). Or it may mean that Gaulish Mars is ultimately identified with the war god named Teutates, described by Roman poet Lucan in
Pharsalia
(first century
AD
). Our only other evidence for Mars = Teutates comes from the anonymous ninth-century
AD
author of the Berne Commentaries on Lucan (
Scholia Bernensia
) who forthrightly equates the two. Other sources identify Teutates with Gaulish Mercury, whose functions, we have said, often overlap with those of Mars.
Teutates, Taranis and Esus, according to Lucan and others (not Caesar), were the three principal native gods of Gaul. Their names are often cited together, Teutates appearing first, but they do not appear to have formed a triad. Despite many inscriptions to Teutates in Gaul and Britain, he remains a shadowy figure, perhaps because what we think of as his name may be only the designation ‘god of our tribe’ (
teutā
). Lucan records that Teutates was propitiated with human sacrifice; later commentators would specify that drowning was the favoured mode of execution, especially on 1 November, the feast known as Samain on the Old Irish calendar. Modern commentators profess to see Teutates as the figure plunging victims into a vat of water on the Gundestrup Cauldron (fourth-third centuries
BC
).
Taranis, conventionally called ‘the thunderer’, was, in Lucan’s view, an even crueller god, for his worship demanded that victims be burned alive in wooden vessels. Indeed, Taranis’s worship was more brutal and heartless than that of the Scythian Diana (north of the Black Sea), a ghoulish standard of comparison. Modern commentators have speculated that the well-born man executed near Lindow Bog in the fourth century
BC
may have been sacrificed to Taranis or Teutates. Worship of Taranis may indeed have been bloodier than that of Teutates, but it appears less widely spread. His name survives on only seven altars, many of them modest affairs, from Britain to the Balkans. The ninth-century Berne Commentaries call Taranis a ‘master of war’ but link him to Jupiter rather than to Mars; the same source also allows an identification of Taranis with Dis Pater (see below). Supporting the first Berne assertion, Taranis is often paired with the wheel symbol,
evoking the sun, also associated with Jupiter. But Taranis was only an embodiment of thunder as a natural force, and his cult gives no evidence of the anthropomorphized complexity of the Roman sky god. An echo of Taranis’s name persists in the Welsh hero Taran (Welsh
taran
: thunder), who survives the epic battle between kings Bendigeidfran and Matholwch in the
Mabinogi
.
Esus, linked to both Mars and Mercury, was worshipped in many places in Gaul and appears to have been the eponymous god of the Esuvii of the northwest, in what is today Normandy. Hardly less demanding than the other two, he was, to Lucan, ‘uncouth Esus of the barbarous altars’. Human sacrifices were suspended from trees and ritually tortured, so that priests might read omens from the direction blood took in running from the wounds. Temple depictions link Esus with the crane and also with three symbolic egrets, birds later associated with the Irish hero Cúchulainn. As Esus was also sometimes seen as a woodcutter, an occasional role for Cúchulainn, learned speculation once asserted a link between Esus and the Irish hero that a more cold-eyed reading of the evidence has rejected.
Gaulish Jupiter, as mentioned, ranked fourth in Caesar’s roster of the native gods. This would imply that the Celtic god or gods he observed were not distinguished by their primacy over the rest of the divines or patriarchy of the divine families. Roman Jupiter’s other powers, over the sun and sky, as well as thunder, lightning and oak trees, offer analogues to what Caesar might have perceived in indigenous religion. As we have said, Taranis ‘the thunderer’ is frequently equated with Jupiter as well as with Mars. In an inscription found near Paris, the name Jupiter is associated with ‘Cernenus’, which may be a variant for Cernunnos, the antlered god. This would not identify Jupiter absolutely with Cernunnos, only associate the two. Anne Ross argues that the large, bearded, bare-chested figure on the Gundestrup Cauldron, holding a wheel symbol in his right hand, is Gaulish Jupiter, while the horned Cernunnos sits nearby. The wheel and the beard also appear on the bronze figure (first–second centuries
AD
) found at Le Châtelet, previously speculated to be Taranis, in the upper Marne valley; the stylized lightning flash and thunderbolt are similar to what is found in classical iconography but the wheel is distinctly Celtic.
Simultaneous with the cults of the god or gods the Romans called
Gaulish Jupiter, the Romans imported the worship of their own god Jupiter. Gradually the Roman cult absorbed those of indigenous gods worshipped high in mountain elevations. In the Alps around Great Saint Bernard’s Pass lay the sanctuary of Jupiter Poeninus, in Austria Jupiter Uxellinus, and in the Pyrenees Jupiter Beissirissa. Influence from the Mediterranean seems to have prompted the building of the 150-plus Jupiter columns or Jupiter-Giant columns, some standing 45 feet (14 m) high, found primarily near the borders of what are today Germany and France, the Rhine and Moselle Rivers, with a few in Britain. They are four-and eight-sided stone plinths, some copying oak trees but often with Corinthian capitals that honour the Celtic sky god. Roman motifs include inscriptions to Jupiter and Juno as well as trampled serpentine monsters, probable counterparts to the Giants of the Earth defeated by Jupiter. But the deity of the columns is often depicted with the Celtic sun wheel and may be seen as a horseman, as the Roman god never is.
The Roman Minerva, like her Greek counterpart Athena, was primarily a goddess of wisdom, invention and the martial arts; only secondarily was she a patroness of domesticity and crafts. The Gaulish Minerva, however, Caesar tells us, taught the first principles of the arts and crafts. Her worship was widespread in Gaul and also extended to Britain where, as the geographer Solinus (second century
AD
) describes, her sanctuary possessed a perpetual fire, earning her the epithet
Belisama
[most brilliant]. In Britain too the cult of Minerva became thoroughly conflated with the native healing goddess Sulis at the shrine of Bath, known as Aquae Sulis in Roman times. Their merger is often cited as the archetypal example of
interpretatio Romana
. In inscriptions the name of the indigenous goddess always goes first: Sulis-Minerva or Sul-Minerva. The much-photographed large bronze head of Sulis-Minerva, ripped from its torso with helmet severed, indicates that the goddess at Bath was portrayed in classical dress. Elsewhere Minerva’s sometime epithet Sulevia links her with the triad of mother-goddesses, Suleviae, known in many parts of the Roman-occupied Celtic world and in Rome itself. Minerva may also be identified with the tribal goddess Brigantia, worshipped in what is now Yorkshire.
The motif of her perpetual fire in Britain as well as her links to
Brigantia may signal that Gaulish Minerva is identical with the pre-Christian Irish fire goddess Brigit, a patroness of smithing, fertility, cattle, crops and poetry. Although much associated with Co. Kildare, Brigit was probably worshipped at Corleck Hill, near Drumeague, Co. Cavan, where a stone head thought to be hers once stood. She is honoured in one of the four seasonal feasts of early Ireland, Imbolc, 1 February on the Gregorian calendar. Brigit, in turn, contributes much to the persona of St Brigid of Kildare (d. 525), still argued to be an historical personage by Church authorities, whose feast day is also 1 February (see
Chapter 5
).
Dis Pater, Dispater or simply Dis is a name Caesar and other Romans preferred for the god we call Pluto or Hades, deity of the nether world, ruler of the dead. The preference for ‘Dis Pater’ was not simply a euphemism for dreaded Pluto, whose name actually translates as ‘giver of wealth’. Dis, from the Latin
dives
, also implies wealth, as in the riches of the earth or the numbers who attend or accompany;
Dis Pater
, therefore, could be translated as ‘Rich Father’. Caesar reports the druids as preaching that all Gauls were descended from this divine ancestor, a congruent faith for the ‘rich father’, even if he ruled the dead. While the notion of a common ancestor clearly struck Caesar as peculiar, it has many parallels in Indo-European tradition, as far away as India, as well as in medieval Ireland. Scattered groups in early Irish society claimed descent from the hero Lug Lámfhota, as later great dynasties were thought to flow from the loins of Conn Cétchathach [of the Hundred Battles] and Niall Noígiallach [of the Nine Hostages], the latter extending into Gaelic Scotland. Put another way, Caesar may simply have ascribed the name of Dis Pater to one or a series of ancestor cults. Then again the name Dis Pater is found in inscriptions and his persona is given icons. On an upright stone at Varhély in what is today Romania, Dis Pater is accompanied by a three-headed dog, perhaps a local variant of Cerberus of classical tradition. Elsewhere in the Balkans and in southern Germany, Dis Pater is portrayed holding a scroll, perhaps a roster for the day of reckoning; accompanying him is the apparent consort Aericura, a Celto-Germanic goddess.
If Dis Pater may indeed be identified with a native deity, nominations have not been lacking. The ninth-century Berne Commentaries assert that Taranis is the Gaulish god behind Dis Pater as well as behind
Jupiter, a notion not supported by later commentators or archaeological evidence. A better case can be made for Sucellus [L. the good striker, he who strikes to good effect], who is always seen with a long-shafted mallet or hammer, whose significance – weapon or tool – is not known. A very masculine figure with curling hair and beard, Sucellus is always seen with his cult partner Nantosuelta. He is often seen with a dog (another Cerberus?), a cask and a drinking jar. His worship was widespread in Gaul but also known in Britain. Anne Ross in
Pagan Celtic Britain
(1967) argues that the horned Cernunnos provided the ultimate identity for Dis Pater, as he was a god of wealth, underground regions and fecundity; further, his widespread worship implies that Cernunnos was the ancestor deity of the Gauls. Still other commentators see a parallel to Gaulish Dis Pater in the pre-Christian Irish god Donn, who was thought to reside at Tech Duinn [the House of Donn], a rocky islet near Dursey Island at the extreme western end of the Beare Peninsula, Co. Cork, in the southernmost reaches of the province of Munster. Donn, seen as aloof, preferring to live away from other gods, was unquestionably the ruler of the dead; the dead live with him on Tech Duinn. But he is also an ancestor deity. He became confused with Donn mac Míled, son of Míl Espáine in the pseudo-history
Lebor Gabála
[Book of Invasions], who went to live on the same rocky islet after he offended the goddess Ériu. In early Christian commentary, the souls of the damned were thought to linger in Tech Duinn on their way to hell. Pious folklore borrowed aspects of Donn to describe the devil. Later oral tradition ascribed to Donn the power to cause storms and shipwrecks.
Caesar’s half-dozen do not constitute a Gaulish pantheon, as we have said, and neither do they exhaust
interpretatio Romana
. Other classical observers perceived yet two more Gaulish deities in Roman guise, a god of eloquence whom they identified with Hercules, and a craft god, Gaulish Vulcan. A key informant here is Lucian (second century
AD
), a witty Greek born in Syria whose
Dialogues
often treat the gods lightly.
Lucian learned from a Gaulish informant that the Gauls associated polished speech with Hercules because of his great strength rather than with Hermes (Greek counterpart to Mercury), as the Greeks did. Hercules, called Heracles by the Greeks, was initially portrayed as the
heroic but mortal son of Zeus from a dalliance with Alcmene, and came to be worshipped as a god after his self-immolation in honour of his divine father. Lucian’s informant further advised him that the Gaulish name for Hercules is Ogmios. While in Gallia Narbonensis (now southern France), Lucian encountered a startling picture of the indigenous god. He bore some of the attributes of Hercules, such as the club and the bow, but he appeared older: bald and sunburned. His eloquence appeared to enslave. Thin gold chains came from the tip of his tongue to the ears of an otherwise happy-looking band of men who tagged along behind him. This portrayal of Ogmios was later re-imagined by the German Renaissance painter Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528). In the ancient world there was scant physical evidence to support Lucian’s story, only two lead curse tablets found at Bregenz, Austria, on the shore of Lake Constance; both invoke Ogmios’s name, one in a curse on an infertile woman, that she never marry.
The later, insular personage who appears to bear the closest resemblance to Ogmios is Ogma, the Irish orator-warrior of the Tuatha Dé Danann, one of the three principal champions of his people, along with Lug Lámfhota and the Dagda. He was the patron of poetry and eloquence and was also the fabled inventor of the ogham alphabet, a philological cognate of his name. Ogham was the earliest form of written Irish in which the Latin alphabet was adapted to twenty ‘letters’ of straight lines and notches. Like Gaulish Hercules, Ogma was conventionally known as a ‘strong man’. Compelling as the Ogmios-Ogma link may appear, authoritative scholars including Rudolf Thurneysen and Anton van Hamel long ago disputed that the names are cognate. More recent commentators have asserted that the Irish god’s name may still be derived from Ogmios, even through intermediaries, if not actually from the same root or direct contact.