- Chapter Twenty-Five -
bulls or stags. The perception of spirits in the landscape is amply demonstrated by the
names of gods on epigraphic dedications of the Romano-Celtic period, which betray
their topographical character, as personifications of places: the identity of gods such
as Glanis of Glanum and Nemausus of Nemausus (Nimes), both in Provence, were
merged inextricably with their locality.
PROBLEMS OF EVIDENCELeaving aside the difficulties of the written sources for the present, we have a very
real problem in the archaeological (that is the epigraphic and iconographic) evidence.
This results from the fact that the great majority of inscriptions and images date
to the Romano-Celtic rather than the free Celtic (i.e. pre-Roman) period. There is
considerable overt Roman influence on indigenous religious expression. Gods in
classical guise and bearing Roman names were adopted by the Celts but with subtle
changes, such as the addition of a native surname to a dedication, or of Celtic
symbols - like the wheel or torque - to the imagery of Jupiter or Mercury. Other
divinities, like Cernunnos, the Mothers, Epona, Sequana and Sucellus, appear almost
wholly indigenous in concept, but their imagery still owes something to Roman
iconography and, of course, their names use Latin forms, even though their
meaning may be Celtic. But even these apparently native gods are sometimes argued
to be the products of romanization in that, with a few exceptions, they do not appear
in the archaeological record until the Roman period. What is perhaps more likely
is that the perceptions underlying the identity of these spirits were always
present but only took the form of physical images once the stimulus of the great
Mediterranean traditions of iconography took hold of the Celtic world. The lack
of free Celtic epigraphy and the comparative paucity of pre-Roman religious imagery
means that, inevitably, we have to observe Celtic gods through a window created
by Rome.
PRE-ROMAN ICONOGRAPHY AND CULT EXPRESSION
Iconography
When an invading group of Celts overran and plundered the sacred Greek site of
Delphi in the early third century BC their leader, Brennus, laughed at the anthro-
pomorphic images of the Greek divinities which adorned the great sanctuary
(Diodorus XXI1.9.4). He was apparently scoffing at the naivety of Mediterranean
perceptions of the divine. But whilst it is undoubtedly true that religious
iconography is comparatively scarce in Celtic lands before the intrusion of Graeco-
Roman artistic traditions, images of Celtic divinities were nonetheless present in
small numbers in the last few centuries before Christ.
Stone sculpture falls into two main distributional clusters: one in central Europe;
the other in the area of southern Gaul known later by the Romans as The Province
(Provence), because of their early conquest of the region (late second century BC).
The central European group includes large stone male statues, dating between the