Esus

Esus,^[1] Esos,^[2] Hesus,^[3] or Aisus^[4][5] was a Celtic god who was worshipped primarily in ancient Gaul and Britain. He is known from two monumental statues and a line in Lucan's Bellum civile.

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'.^[6]

The personal name Esunertus ('strength of Esus') occurs in a number of Gallo-Roman inscriptions,^[7] including one votive inscription dedicated to Mercury,^[8][9] while other theophoric given names such as Esugenus ('born from Esus') are also attested.^[10] It is possible that the Esuvii of Gaul, in the area of present-day Normandy, took their name from this deity.^[11][a] The name also occurs on a Celtic gold coin dated c. 50 BC.^[13]

The two sculptures where Esus appears are the Pillar of the Boatmen from among the Parisii, on which Esus is identified by name,^[1] and a pillar from Trier among the Treveri with similar iconography.^[14][15] In both of these, Esus is portrayed cutting branches from trees with his axe.^[15] 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.

A well-known section in Lucan'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.^[3] Variant spellings, or readings, of the name Esus in the manuscripts of Lucan include Hesus, Aesus, and Haesus.^[10] Among a pair of later commentators on Lucan's work, one identifies Teutates with Mercury and Esus with Mars. According to the Berne Commentary on Lucan, human victims were sacrificed to Esus by being tied to a tree and flogged to death.^[16]

The Gallic medical writer 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 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.^[4]

Esus is known from two monumental statues:

• Paris, France^[b] – "Pillar of the Boatmen".^[c]
• Trier, Germany^[d] – Stone pillar with similar iconography to Pillar of the Boatmen.^[e]

Both sources show consistent symbolic images of riverside scenery that have been interpreted to include willow trees and wetland birds that might be egret's or cranes.^{[f] [g]}

The iconography suggests an association with wetlands, water margin, and rivers.^[h]

River names that may be derived from Esus:

• The river Aesis, now known as the Esino river in the Marche region of Italy.^{[i] [j] [k]}
• The unidentified river Aesius in the Roman province of Bithynia and Pontus (modern-day Turkey).^{[l] [m] [n]}

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

M. 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 us, but M. D'Arbois finds in it some allusion to events in the Cúchulainn saga. In the imagery, the bull and tree are perhaps both divine, and if the animal, like the images of the divine bull, is three-horned, then the three cranes (garanus, "crane") may be a rebus for three-horned (trikeras), or more probably three-headed (trikarenos). In this case, woodman, tree, and bull might all be representatives of a god of vegetation. In early ritual, human, animal, or arboreal representatives of the god were periodically destroyed to ensure fertility, but when the god became separated from these representatives, the destruction or slaying was regarded as a sacrifice to the god, and myths arose telling how he had once slain the animal. In this case, tree and bull, really identical, would be 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 sacrifices to Esus were suspended from a tree. Esus was worshipped at Paris and at Trèves; a coin with the name Æsus was found in England; and personal names like Esugenos, "son of Esus," and Esunertus, "he who has the strength of Esus," occur in England, France, and Switzerland. Thus the cult of this god may have been comparatively widespread. But there is no evidence that he was a Celtic Jehovah or a member, with Teutates and Taranis, of a pan-Celtic triad, or that this triad, introduced by Gauls, was not accepted by the Druids. Had such a great triad existed, some instance of the occurrence of the three names on one inscription would certainly have been found. Lucan does not refer to the gods as a triad, nor as gods of all the Celts, or even of one tribe. He lays stress merely on the fact that they were worshipped with human sacrifice, and they were apparently more or less well-known local gods.^[8]

James McKillop cautions that Arbois de Jublainville's identification of Esus with Cú Chulainn "now seems ill-founded".^[19]

Jan de Vries finds grounds of comparison between Esus and Odin, both being patrons of sailors sometimes associated with Mercury to whom human victims were said to be sacrificed by hanging.^[11]

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".^[15] She further suggests that the cranes might represent "the flight of the soul (perhaps the soul of the tree)".^[15]

• Lugus

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Esus.

• Esus, including photographs and a capitulation of primary and secondary source material.
• A contemporary Dutch-language story of struggle between Esus and Tarvos Trigaranus