Cicolluis or Cicoluis (also known as Cicollus, Cicolus, Cicollui, and Cichol) is a god in Celtic mythology worshiped by the ancient

Gauls The Gauls (; , ''Galátai'') were a group of Celts, Celtic peoples of mainland Europe in the Iron Age Europe, Iron Age and the Roman Gaul, Roman period (roughly 5th century BC to 5th century AD). Their homeland was known as Gaul (''Gallia''). Th ...

and having a parallel in

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

Name

The

Gaulish Gaulish is an extinct Celtic languages, Celtic language spoken in parts of Continental Europe before and during the period of the Roman Empire. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language of the Celts of Gaul (now France, Luxembourg, Belgium, ...

theonym ''Cicollu(i)s'' derives from the stem ''cico''-, itself from

Proto-Celtic Proto-Celtic, or Common Celtic, is the hypothetical ancestral proto-language of all known Celtic languages, and a descendant of Proto-Indo-European. It is not attested in writing but has been partly Linguistic reconstruction, reconstructed throu ...

*''kīko-'', meaning 'meat, flesh, muscle' (cf. Old Breton ''cic''-, Middle Welsh ''cig'' 'meat') and, by

metonymy Metonymy () is a figure of speech in which a concept is referred to by the name of something associated with that thing or concept. For example, the word " suit" may refer to a person from groups commonly wearing business attire, such as sales ...

, 'breast' (cf. Middle Irish ''cích''). It could be translated as 'Big-Muscle' or 'Great-Breast'.

Cult

Roman Gaul

In the Gallo-Roman religion, Cicolluis is thought to be a common epithet for the Gaulish equivalent of Mars.Evans, Dyfed Lloyd. “Cicolluis: A Gaulish and Irish God, Also Known as Cicollus, Cicolus, Cichol (Great-Breasted).” ''Celtnet: Nemeton''. 22 May 2007 . A

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

dedicatory inscription from Narbonne (which was in the far south of Gaul), France, bears the words MARTI CICOLLUI ET LITAVI (“Mars Cicolluis and Litavis”).Koch, John T. �
Ériu, Alba, and Letha: When Was a Language Ancestral to Gaelic First Spoken in Ireland?
�� ''Emania: Bulletin of the Navan Research Group'' 9 (1991): 17–27.^,Gwinn, Christopher. “Re: Litavi.” '' LISTSERV 15.0: OLD-IRISH-L Archives''. 31 Dec. 2000, 13:48:19 −0500. L-Soft. 22 May 2007 . “Mars Cicolluis” has dedications in Xanten, Germany, and Aignay-le-Duc (where his consort is given as Litavis) and Mâlain (where his consorts are given as Litavis and Bellona, Roman goddess and personification of war) of the Côte-d'Or, France. “Cicolluis” is named alone (not as an epithet of Mars) in an inscription at Chassey, Côte-d'Or, Franche-Comté, France, and a partial inscription from Ruffey-lès-Echirey, Côte-d'Or, France, may be dedicated to Cicolluis. In Windisch, Switzerland, he is known as “Cicollus,” and in Dijon, Côte-d'Or, France, he is known as ''Mars Cicoluis''.

Ireland

Cicolluis may also be compared to Cichol or Cíocal Gricenchos, the earliest-mentioned leader of the Fomorians or Fomóiri (the semi-divine initial inhabitants of Ireland) in Irish mythology. According to the seventeenth-century Irish historian Seathrún Céitinn (also known by the English name Geoffrey Keating), Cichol arrived in Ireland with fifty men and fifty women on six boats a hundred years after the

Flood A flood is an overflow of water (list of non-water floods, or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are of significant con ...

. There, his people lived on fish and fowl for two hundred years until Partholón and his people (who brought the plough and oxen) invaded and defeated the Fomorians in the Battle of Magh Ithe.

References

Bibliography

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External links

A section
of the Lebor Gabála Érenn relating to Ciccul Gricenchoss and its translation into English by Jonathan Slocum, Patrizia de Bernardo Stempel, and Caren Esser
Etymological translations
of “Cicolluis,” “Cicollus,” “Cicos,” etc. by Patrick Cuadrado (in French)
automatic Google translation into English
{{Celtic mythology (ancient) Gaulish gods Tutelary deities War gods