In ancient Celtic and Gallo-Roman religion, Cernunnos or Carnonos is a god depicted with antlers, seated cross-legged, and is associated with stags, horned serpents, dogs and bulls. He is usually shown holding or wearing a torc and sometimes holding a bag of coins and a cornucopia. He is believed to have originally been a Proto-Celtic God. There are more than fifty depictions and inscriptions referring to him, mainly in the north-eastern region of Gaul.
Mercury is a major god in Roman religion and mythology, being one of the 12 Dii Consentes within the ancient Roman pantheon. He is the god of financial gain, commerce, eloquence, messages, communication, travelers, boundaries, luck, trickery, and thieves; he also serves as the guide of souls to the underworld and the "messenger of the gods".
In Gallo-Roman religion, Epona was a protector of horses, ponies, donkeys, and mules. She was particularly a goddess of fertility, as shown by her attributes of a patera, cornucopia, ears of grain, and the presence of foals in some sculptures. She and her horses might also have been leaders of the soul in the after-life ride, with later literary parallels in Rhiannon of the Mabinogion. The worship of Epona, "the sole Celtic divinity ultimately worshipped in Rome itself", as the patroness of cavalry, was widespread in the Roman Empire between the first and third centuries AD; this is unusual for a Celtic deity, most of whom were associated with specific localities.
Belenus is an ancient Celtic healing god. The cult of Belenus stretched from the Italian Peninsula to the British Isles, with a main sanctuary located at Aquileia, on the Adriatic coast. Through interpretatio romana, Belenus was often identified with Apollo, although his cult seems to have preserved a certain degree of autonomy during the Roman period.
Condatis was an ancient Celtic deity worshipped primarily in northern Britain but also in Gaul. He was associated with the confluences of rivers, in particular within County Durham in the North of England. Condatis is known from several inscriptions in Britain and a single inscription found at Alonnes, Sarthe, France. In each case he is equated with the Roman god Mars.
Esus, Esos, Hesus, or Aisus was a Brittonic and Gaulish god known from two monumental statues and a line in Lucan's Bellum civile.
In Gallo-Roman religion, Loucetios was a Gallic god known from the Rhine-Moselle region, where he was identified with the Roman Mars. Scholars have interpreted his name to mean ‘lightning’. Mars Loucetius was worshipped alongside the goddess Nemetona.
Lugus is a god of the Celtic pantheon. His name is rarely directly attested in inscriptions, but his importance can be inferred from place names and ethnonyms and status as king of the gods. His nature and attributes are deduced from the distinctive iconography of Gallo-Roman inscriptions to Mercury, who is widely believed to have been identified with Lugus, and from the quasi-mythological narratives involving his later cognates, Welsh Lleu Llaw Gyffes and Irish Lugh Lámhfhada.
In ancient Celtic religion, Maponos or Maponus is a god of youth known mainly in northern Britain but also in Gaul. In Roman Britain, he was equated with Apollo.
Nemetona, or 'she of the sacred grove', is a Celtic goddess with roots in northeastern Gaul. She is thought to have been the eponymous deity of the Germano-Celtic people known as the Nemetes; evidence of her veneration is found in their former territory along the Middle Rhine as well in the Altbachtal sanctuary in present-day Trier, Germany. She is also attested in Bath, England, where an altar to her was dedicated by a man of the Gallic Treveri people.
*Nodens or *Nodons is a Celtic healing god worshipped in Ancient Britain. Although no physical depiction of him has survived, votive plaques found in a shrine at Lydney Park (Gloucestershire) indicate his connection with dogs, a beast associated with healing symbolism in antiquity. The deity is known in only one other location, in Cockersand Moss (Lancashire). He was equated on most inscriptions with the Roman god Mars and associated in a curse with Silvanus. His name is cognate with that of later Celtic mythological figures, such as the Irish Nuada and the Welsh Nudd.
The Pillar of the Boatmen is a monumental Roman column erected in Lutetia in honour of Jupiter by the guild of boatmen in the 1st century AD. It is the oldest monument in Paris and is one of the earliest pieces of representational Gallo-Roman art to carry a written inscription.
Gallo-Roman religion is a fusion of the traditional religious practices of the Gauls, who were originally Celtic speakers, and the Roman and Hellenistic religions introduced to the region under Roman Imperial rule. It was the result of selective acculturation.
Lenus was a Celtic healing god worshipped mainly in eastern Gaul, where he was almost always identified with the Roman god Mars.
Cicolluis or Cicoluis is a god in Celtic mythology worshiped by the ancient Gauls and having a parallel in Ireland.
Intarabus was a Gaulish god in the pantheon of the Treveri and some neighbouring peoples. His name is known from nine inscriptions from a relatively compact area in what are now Belgium, Luxembourg, western Germany and eastern France. He may have been the tutelary deity of one of the three pagi (subdivisions) of the Treveri. In most cases, Intarabus is invoked alone – without any synthesis to a Roman deity, and without accompanying female deities. However, one inscription invokes him as Mars Intarabus, noting that a fanum and simulacrum of this god had been restored at Trier. Meanwhile, another inscription from Mackwiller in Alsace gives Intarabus the epithet Narius. An inscription at Ernzen in Germany has his name as [In]tarabus, while another from Foy-Noville, invokes Entarabus in conjunction with the Genius Ollodagus.
Toutatis or Teutates is a Celtic god who was worshipped primarily in ancient Gaul and Britain. His name means "god of the tribe", and he has been widely interpreted as a tribal protector. According to Roman writer Lucan, the Gauls offered human sacrifices to him.
In ancient Roman religion and mythology, Mars was the god of war and also an agricultural guardian, a combination characteristic of early Rome. He was the son of Jupiter and Juno, and was pre-eminent among the Roman army's military gods. Most of his festivals were held in March, the month named for him, and in October, the months which traditionally began and ended the season for both military campaigning and farming.
The gods and goddesses of the pre-Christian Celtic peoples are known from a variety of sources, including ancient places of worship, statues, engravings, cult objects, and place or personal names. The ancient Celts appear to have had a pantheon of deities comparable to others in Indo-European religion, each linked to aspects of life and the natural world. Epona was an exception and retained without association with any Roman deity. By a process of syncretism, after the Roman conquest of Celtic areas, most of these became associated with their Roman equivalents, and their worship continued until Christianization. Pre-Roman Celtic art produced few images of deities, and these are hard to identify, lacking inscriptions, but in the post-conquest period many more images were made, some with inscriptions naming the deity. Most of the specific information we have therefore comes from Latin writers and the archaeology of the post-conquest period. More tentatively, links can be made between ancient Celtic deities and figures in early medieval Irish and Welsh literature, although all these works were produced well after Christianization.
Celtic mythology is the body of myths belonging to the Celtic peoples. Like other Iron Age Europeans, Celtic peoples followed a polytheistic religion, having many gods and goddesses. The mythologies of continental Celtic peoples, such as the Gauls and Celtiberians, did not survive their conquest by the Roman Empire, the loss of their Celtic languages and their subsequent conversion to Christianity. Only remnants are found in Greco-Roman sources and archaeology. Most surviving Celtic mythology belongs to the Insular Celtic peoples. They preserved some of their myths in oral lore, which were eventually written down by Christian scribes in the Middle Ages. Irish mythology has the largest written body of myths, followed by Welsh mythology.
