Cicolluis
Cicolluis or Cicoluis is a god in Celtic mythology worshiped by the ancient Gaulish peoples and having a parallel in Ireland. The name is Gaulish and means “All-Breast” or “Great-Breasted” and is probably used to signify strength. In the Gallo-Roman religion, Cicolluis is thought to be a common epithet for Gaulish Mars. A Latin dedicatory inscription from Narbonne, France, bears the words MARTI CICOLLUI ET LITAVI., “Mars Cicolluis” has dedications in Xanten, Germany, and Aignay-le-Duc and Mâlain of the Côte-d'Or, France. “Cicolluis” is named alone 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.”
Cicolluis may also be compared to Cichol or Cíocal Gricenchos, the earliest-mentioned leader of the Fomorians or Fomóiri in Irish mythology. According to the seventeenth-century Irish historian Seathrún Céitinn, 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 invaded and defeated the Fomorians in the Battle of Magh Ithe.
Cicolluis’s name is most likely derived from the reconstructed proto-Celtic roots *k-kƒ, Welsh cig and *olyo- ; this leads to the translation “All-Breast” or “Great-Breasted.” This likely epithet for strength might relate with Cichol as leader of the Fomorians. Therefore, Cicolluis may have been identified with the warrior aspect of Roman Mars and may have been a protective deity.
