Cicolluis or Cicoluis (also known as Cicollus, Cicolus, Cicollui, and Cichol) is a god in Celtic mythology worshiped by the ancient Gaul and having a parallel in Ireland.
Name
The
Gaulish theonym Cicollu(i)s derives from the stem
cico-, itself from
Proto-Celtic *
kīko-, meaning 'meat, flesh, muscle' (cf. Old Breton
cic-, Middle Welsh
cig 'meat') and, by
metonymy, '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 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.
]
/ref> “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. 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.
Bibliography
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