Esus I Know

Gaulish logging god

Esus,^[ane] Hesus,^[2] or Aisus ^[3] was a Gaulish god known from 2 monumental statues and a line in Lucan'due south Bellum civile.

Imagery [edit]

The two sculptures where Esus appears are the Pillar of the Boatmen from amidst the Parisii, on which Esus is identified by name,^[1] and a pillar from Trier among the Treveri with similar iconography.^{[4] [five]} In both of these, Esus is portrayed cut branches from trees with his axe.^[5] Esus is accompanied, on dissimilar panels of the Pillar of the Boatmen, alongside Tarvos Trigaranus (the 'bull with iii cranes'), Jupiter, Vulcan, and other gods.

Written sources [edit]

A well-known section in Lucan'south Bellum civile (61–65 CE) refers to gory sacrifices offered to a triad of Celtic deities: Teutates, Hesus (an aspirated course of Esus), and Taranis.^[2] Variant spellings, or readings, of the proper name Esus in the manuscripts of Lucan include Hesus, Aesus, and Haesus.^[6] Among a pair of after commentators on Lucan'southward work, ane identifies Teutates with Mercury and Esus with Mars. According to the Berne Commentary on Lucan, human victims were sacrificed to Esus past being tied to a tree and flogged to death.^[7]

The Gallic medical author Marcellus of Bordeaux may offer another textual reference to Esus in his De medicamentis, a compendium of pharmacological preparations written in Latin in the early on fifth century and the sole source for several Celtic words. The piece of work contains a magico-medical charm decipherable as Gaulish which appears to invoke the aid of Esus (spelled Aisus) in curing throat trouble.^[three]

The personal name "Esunertus" ("force of Esus") occurs in a number of Gallo-Roman inscriptions, including i votive inscription defended to Mercury,^{[8] [9]} while other theophoric given names such as Esugenus are also attested.^[six] It is possible that the Esuvii of Gaul, in the surface area of present-day Normandy, took their name from this deity.^[x]

T. F. O'Rahilly derives the proper name Esus, too as Aoibheall, Éibhleann, Aoife, and other names, from the Indo-European root *eis-, which he glosses as "well-being, energy, passion".^[eleven]

Interpretations [edit]

John Arnott MacCulloch summarized the state of scholarly interpretations of Esus in 1911 equally follows:

K. Reinach applies one formula to the subjects of these altars—"The Divine Woodman hews the Tree of the Bull with Three Cranes." The whole represents some myth unknown to united states of america, but M. D'Arbois finds in information technology some allusion to events in the Cúchulainn saga. In the imagery, the bull and tree are perhaps both divine, and if the fauna, like the images of the divine balderdash, is iii-horned, then the three cranes (garanus, "crane") may exist a rebus for three-horned (trikeras), or more probably three-headed (trikarenos). In this case, woodman, tree, and balderdash might all exist representatives of a god of vegetation. In early on ritual, homo, animate being, or arboreal representatives of the god were periodically destroyed to ensure fertility, merely when the god became separated from these representatives, the destruction or slaying was regarded equally a cede to the god, and myths arose telling how he had once slain the animal. In this case, tree and bull, really identical, would exist mythically regarded as destroyed by the god whom they had once represented. If Esus was a god of vegetation, once represented by a tree, this would explain why, as the scholiast on Lucan relates, human being sacrifices to Esus were suspended from a tree. Esus was worshipped at Paris and at Trèves; a coin with the proper noun Æsus was plant in England; and personal names similar Esugenos, "son of Esus," and Esunertus, "he who has the strength of Esus," occur in England, French republic, and Switzerland. Thus the cult of this god may have been comparatively widespread. But at that place is no evidence that he was a Celtic Jehovah or a fellow member, with Teutates and Taranis, of a pan-Celtic triad, or that this triad, introduced by Gauls, was non accepted by the Druids. Had such a great triad existed, some case of the occurrence of the three names on one inscription would certainly have been found. Lucan does not refer to the gods equally a triad, nor equally gods of all the Celts, or even of i tribe. He lays stress only on the fact that they were worshipped with human being sacrifice, and they were apparently more or less well-known local gods.^[eight]

James McKillop cautions that Arbois de Jublainville's identification of Esus with Cú Chulainn "now seems ill-founded".^[12]

Jan de Vries finds grounds of comparison between Esus and Odin, both existence patrons of sailors sometimes associated with Mercury to whom human victims were said to be sacrificed by hanging.^[10]

Miranda Greenish suggests that the willow-tree that Esus hews may symbolize "the Tree of Life [...] with its associations of destruction and death in winter and rebirth in the spring".^[v] She further suggests that the cranes might represent "the flight of the soul (perhaps the soul of the tree)".^[v]

In Neo-Druidism [edit]

The 18th century Druidic revivalist Iolo Morganwg identified Esus with Jesus on the strength of the similarity of their names. He also linked them both with Hu Gadarn, writing:

Both Hu and HUON were no doubtfulness originally identical with the HEUS of Lactantius, and the HESUS of Lucan, described every bit gods of the Gauls. The similarity of the last name to IESU [Welsh: Jesus] is obvious and hit.^[13]

This identification is even so made in certain Neo-Druidic circles. Modern scholars consider the resemblance betwixt the names Esus and Jesus to be coincidental.

Encounter also [edit]

• Lugus

References [edit]

1. ^ ^{a b} CIL Xiii, 03026
2. ^ ^{a b} M. Annaeus Lucanus (61-65 CE). Bellum civile I.445.
3. ^ ^{a b} De medicamentis xv.106, p. 121 in Niedermann's edition; Gustav Must, "A Gaulish Incantation in Marcellus of Bordeaux," Language 36 (1960) 193–197; Pierre-Yves Lambert, "Les formules de Marcellus de Bordeaux," in La langue gauloise (Éditions Errance 2003), p.179, citing Léon Fleuriot, "Sur quelques textes gaulois," Études celtiques xiv (1974) 57–66.
4. ^ Proinsias Mac Cana (1970). Celtic Mythology. London: Hamlyn Publishing. pp. 32–35. Cited here (retrieved 2016-08-17).
5. ^ ^{a b c d} Miranda Dark-green (1992). Symbol & Image in Celtic Religious Art. London: Routledge. pp. 103–104.
6. ^ ^{a b} Jean Gricourt (1958). "50'Esus de Pétrone". Latomus. Société d'Études Latines de Bruxelles. 17 (1): 102–109. JSTOR 41518785.
7. ^ Olmsted, Garrett Due south., The gods of the Celts and the Indo-Europeans, Academy of Innsbruck, 1994, p. 321.
8. ^ ^{a b} J. A. MacCulloch (1911). 'Chapter 3. The Gods of Gaul and the Continental Celts.' The Religion of the Ancient Celts. New York: Dover Publications. ISBN 0-486-42765-Ten.
9. ^ CIL XIII, 11644
10. ^ ^{a b} Jan de Vries (1954). Keltische Religion. W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart. p.98. Cited here.
11. ^ T. F. O'Rahilly (1946). "Ir. Aobh, Aoibheall, etc. W. ufel, uwel. Gaul. Esus". Ériu. Royal Irish Academy. 14: 1–6. JSTOR 30007645.
12. ^ James MacKillop (2000). A Dictionary of Celtic Mythology. Oxford University Press. Cited here (retrieved 2016-08-17).
13. ^ Iolo Morganwg (1862, ed. J. Williams Ab Ithel). The Barddas of Iolo Morganwg, Vol. I.

External links [edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Esus.

• Esus, including photographs and a capitulation of principal and secondary source material.
• A gimmicky Dutch-linguistic communication story of struggle between Esus and Tarvos Trigaranus

edsonloiced.blogspot.com

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esus

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