Esus
The Roman poet Lucan's epic Pharsalia mentions Esus, Taranis, and Teutates as gods to whom the Gauls sacrificed humans.
Almost as often commented on are the scholia to Lucan's poem (early medieval, but relying on earlier sources) which tell us the nature of these sacrifices: in particular, that Esus's victims were suspended from a tree and bloodily dismembered.
This ritual has been compared with a wide range of sources, including Welsh and Germanic mythology, as well as with the violent end of the Lindow Man.
Esus has been connected (through an inscription which identifies him and an allied character, Tarvos Trigaranos, by name) with a pictorial myth on the Pillar of the Boatmen, a Gallo-Roman column from Paris.
[2]: 119 The most widely adopted etymology derives Esus's name from the proto-Indo-European verbal root *h₁eis- ("to be reverent, to worship"), cognate with Italic aisos ("god").
[6]: 98 Félix Guirand suggested the name was cognate with Latin erus ("lord", "master"),[6]: 98 which Meid notes is a common epiclesis given to deities (Freyr, Ba'al).
The passage relevant to Esus occurs in "Gallic excursus", an epic catalogue detailing the rejoicing of the various Gaulish peoples after Julius Caesar removed his legions from Gaul (where they were intended to control the natives) to Italy.
[5]: 296 Tu quoque laetatus converti proelia, Trevir, Et nunc tonse Ligur, quondam per colla decore Crinibus effusis toti praelate Comatae; Et quibus inmitis placatur sanguine diro Teutates horrensque feris altaribus Esus Et Taranis Scythicae non mitior ara Dianae.
[11] Transferral of the warfare pleased you too, Treviri, and you, Ligures, now shorn of hair but once in all of Long-Haired Gaul unrivalled for your tresses flowing gracefully over your necks; and the people who with grim blood-offering placate Teutates the merciless and Esus dread with savage altars and the slab of Taranis, no kinder than Diana of the Scythians.
[12] The substance of the last few lines is this: unspecified Gauls,[h] who made human sacrifices to their gods Teutates, Esus, and Taranis, were overjoyed by the exit of Caesar's troops from their territory.
This departure from classical practice likely had poetic intent: emphasising the barbarity and exoticness the Gauls, whom Caesar had left to their own devices.
[5]: 298 Some scholars, such as de Vries, have argued that the three gods mentioned together here (Esus, Teutates, and Taranis) formed a divine triad in ancient Gaulish religion.
[5]: 321 [j] To give a few difficulties: digesserit here could refer to a process of decomposition or a violent severing of the limbs; cruor means "blood" and "raw meat", but also metaphorically "murder";[5]: 322 and in arbore suspenditur, often read as suggesting that Esus's victims were hanged by the neck from a tree, is perhaps nearer in meaning to saying that his victims were "fixed to" or "suspended from a tree".
[15]: 10–11 This ritual has been compared with various legendary demises: the human sacrifices to Odin,[22]: 16 [k] the death of the mythological Welsh hero Lleu Llaw Gyffes,[25]: 395 and the martyrdom of St Marcel de Chalon.
[28] However, a Mercury statue from Lezoux is sometimes believed to have an dedicatory inscription to Esus on its rear (discussed below), which may count in favour of the existence of such an interpretatio.
On one block of this pillar is an image identified as Esus (alongside Tarvos Trigaranus, and the Roman gods Jupiter and Vulcan).
[33]: 20 Henri d'Arbois de Jubainville connected these scenes with events in the mythology of the Irish warrior hero Cú Chulainn,[34] however James MacKillop cautions that this suggestion "now seems ill-founded".
If this is a reference to the god Esus, it is probably (as Jean Gricourt suggests) Petronius using Lucan's text to make a clever joke about the nature of this character.
[1]: 231–232 The Gaulish medical writer Marcellus of Bordeaux may offer a textual reference to Esus not dependent on Lucan in his De medicamentis, a compendium of pharmacological preparations written in Latin in the early 5th century which is the sole source for several Celtic words.
The work contains a magico-medical charm, which Gustav Must [et] and Léon Fleuriot proposed was a Gaulish language invocation of the aid of Esus (spelled Aisus) in curing throat trouble.
[36] The text, however, is quite corrupt and the number of possible interpretations of it have led Alderik H. Blom and Andreas Hofeneder to scepticism that the god Esus is referenced here.
[5]: 322 Philippe Leveau and Bernard Remy have suggested that this paucity of evidence may be explained by a Roman suppression of the cult of Esus, on the basis of its purported sacrificial practices.
[5]: 323 Leveau and Remy dedicate a study to this inscription, where they date it to the first half of the 1st century CE, and consider the possibility that Peregrinus was a Gaulish soldier in North Africa.
[25]: 394 [39] Another Gaulish inscription, on a terrine found near Lezoux,[r] has an unclear initial word which Oswald Szemerényi proposed to read Esus.
