Esus, Hesus, or Aisus was a Brittonic and Gaulish god known from two monumental statues and a line in

Lucan Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (3 November 39 AD – 30 April 65 AD), better known in English as Lucan (), was a Roman poet, born in Corduba (modern-day Córdoba), in Hispania Baetica. He is regarded as one of the outstanding figures of the Imperial ...

's '' Bellum civile''.

Name

T. F. O'Rahilly derives the theonym ''Esus'', as well as ''Aoibheall'', ''Éibhleann'', '' Aoife'', and other names, from the Proto-Indo-European root *''eis-'', which he glosses as 'well-being, energy, passion'. The personal name ''Esunertus'' ('strength of Esus') occurs in a number of Gallo-Roman inscriptions, including one votive inscription dedicated to Mercury,J. A. MacCulloch (1911). ‘Chapter III. The Gods of Gaul and the Continental Celts.�
''The Religion of the Ancient Celts''.
New York: Dover Publications. . while other theophoric given names such as ''Esugenus'' ('born from Esus') are also attested. It is possible that the '' Esuvii'' of Gaul, in the area of present-day Normandy, took their name from this deity.Jan de Vries (1954). ''Keltische Religion.''

W. Kohlhammer W. Kohlhammer Verlag GmbH, or Kohlhammer Verlag, is a German publishing house headquartered in Stuttgart. History Kohlhammer Verlag was founded in Stuttgart on 30 April 1866 by . Kohlhammer had taken over the businesses of his late father-in-law ...

, Stuttgart. p.98
Cited here.
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Imagery

The two sculptures where Esus appears are the Pillar of the Boatmen from among the

Parisii Parisii may refer to two ancient Iron Age tribes: * Parisii (Gaul) *Parisii (Yorkshire) The Parisi were a British Celtic tribe located somewhere within the present-day East Riding of Yorkshire, in England, known from a single brief reference b ...

, on which Esus is identified by name, and a pillar from Trier among the Treveri with similar iconography. In both of these, Esus is portrayed cutting branches from trees with his axe. Esus is accompanied, on different panels of the Pillar of the Boatmen, alongside Tarvos Trigaranus (the ‘bull with three cranes’), Jupiter, Vulcan, and other gods.

Written sources

A well-known section in

's '' Bellum civile'' (61–65 CE) refers to gory sacrifices offered to a triad of Celtic deities: Teutates, Hesus (an aspirated form of Esus), and

Taranis In Celtic mythology, Taranis (Proto-Celtic: *''Toranos'', earlier ''*Tonaros''; Latin: Taranus, earlier Tanarus) is the god of thunder, who was worshipped primarily in Gaul, Hispania, Britain, and Ireland, but also in the Rhineland and Danube reg ...

. M. Annaeus Lucanus (61-65 CE). '' Bellum civile'' I.445. Variant spellings, or readings, of the name Esus in the manuscripts of Lucan include Hesus, Aesus, and Haesus. Among a pair of later commentators on Lucan's work, one identifies Teutates with

Mercury Mercury commonly refers to: * Mercury (planet), the nearest planet to the Sun * Mercury (element), a metallic chemical element with the symbol Hg * Mercury (mythology), a Roman god Mercury or The Mercury may also refer to: Companies * Merc ...

and Esus with Mars. According to the Berne Commentary on Lucan, human victims were

sacrifice Sacrifice is the offering of material possessions or the lives of animals or humans to a deity as an act of propitiation or worship. Evidence of ritual animal sacrifice has been seen at least since ancient Hebrews and Greeks, and possibly exi ...

d to Esus by being tied to a tree and flogged to death. The Gallic medical writer

Marcellus of Bordeaux Marcellus Empiricus, also known as Marcellus Burdigalensis (“Marcellus of Bordeaux”), was a Latin medical writer from Gaul at the turn of the 4th and 5th centuries. His only extant work is the ''De medicamentis'', a compendium of pharmacological ...

may offer another textual reference to Esus in his ''De medicamentis'', a compendium of pharmacological preparations written in Latin in the early 5th century and the sole source for several Celtic words. The work contains a magico-medical charm decipherable as Gaulish which appears to invoke the aid of Esus (spelled Aisus) in curing throat trouble.''De medicamentis'' 15.106, p. 121 in Niedermann's edition; Gustav Must, “A Gaulish Incantation in

,” ''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'' 14 (1974) 57–66.

Interpretations

John Arnott MacCulloch summarized the state of scholarly interpretations of Esus in 1911 as follows: James McKillop cautions that Arbois de Jublainville's identification of Esus with Cú Chulainn "now seems ill-founded".Cited here
(retrieved 2016-08-17). Jan de Vries finds grounds of comparison between Esus and

Odin Odin (; from non, Óðinn, ) is a widely revered Æsir, god in Germanic paganism. Norse mythology, the source of most surviving information about him, associates him with wisdom, healing, death, royalty, the gallows, knowledge, war, battle, v ...

, both being patrons of sailors sometimes associated with

to whom human victims were said to be sacrificed by hanging. Miranda Green 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". She further suggests that the cranes might represent "the flight of the soul (perhaps the soul of the tree)".

In Neo-Druidism

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: This identification is still made in certain

Neo-Druidic Druidry, sometimes termed Druidism, is a modern spiritual or religious movement that promotes the cultivation of honorable relationships with the physical landscapes, flora, fauna, and diverse peoples of the world, as well as with nature deit ...

circles. Modern scholars consider the resemblance between the names Esus and Jesus to be coincidental.

References

External links

Esus
including photographs and a capitulation of primary and secondary source material.
A contemporary Dutch-language story of struggle between Esus and Tarvos Trigaranus
{{Authority control Agricultural gods Celtic gods Gaulish gods War gods Sacrifice