Esus

Esus^[a] is a Celtic god known from iconographic, epigraphic, and literary sources.

The Roman poet Lucan's epic Pharsalia mentions Esus, Taranis, and Teutates as gods to whom the Gauls sacrificed humans. This rare mention of Celtic gods under their native names in a Latin text has been the subject of much comment. 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. This myth associates Esus, felling or pruning a tree, with a bull and three cranes. A similar monument to Esus and Tarvos Trigaranos from Trier confirms this association. The nature of this myth is little understood; it at least confirms the scholia's association of Esus with trees.

Esus appears very rarely in inscriptions, with only two certain attestations of his name in the epigraphic record. His name appears more commonly as an element of personal names. A large number of etymologies have been proposed for the name Esus.

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