Abstract

This study develops new analyses in support of the theory, first formulated by the nineteenth-century Celticist Marie-Henry d'Arbois de Jubainville, that some forms of Mercury veneration in Roman Gaul reflected an assimilation between this imported deity and the Gaulish god Lugus. To identify why and under what forms Lugus, a god of sovereignty, transformed and was transformed by the Greco-Roman god of communication, exchange, and profit, the dissertation constructs a historically grounded comparative mythology that models processes of theological integration at the nexuses of myth and history.

This method reveals that Lugus and Mercury exhibit broad resemblances as newcomers to an established hierarchy who overcome tyranny by means of a distinctive type of subversive magic analogous to the ancient Greek concept of mētis. But, whereas Lugus is a revolutionary who uses magic to displace a tyrant, Mercury forfeits the exercise of his dangerous trickery in return for elevation to a subordinate position among the gods. The core conclusion of this study is that diverse spatial, iconographic, and ritual loci materialized contested integrations of Lugus and Mercury as the articulation of an important colonial debate: did identification of Lugus with Mercury express the value of competition for sovereignty among elites and the opportunity for a liberator to challenge a tyrant, or did it express the value of asymmetrical exchange of benefits and services between ruler and ruled as the means to limited upward social mobility for leaders among the ruled?

The primary data examined include: sources indicative of a Continental cult and mythology of Lugus; socio-spatial and iconographic evidence for a marked relationship between Mercury and the city of Lugudunum (Lyon); literary and iconographic evidence for continuity among (1) the Augustan cult of the Lares Compitales, (2) the cult of the altar to Roma and Augustus in the context of the Concilium Galliarum, and (3) a pre-Roman Gaulish tradition of chiefly assembly cognate with Irish Lugnasad; literary and epigraphic evidence for a relationship between Mercury and the Lares Compitales and thus, by extension, between Mercury and the Concilium Galliarum; and the iconographic pairing of Gallo-Roman Mercury with the Gaulish goddess Rosmerta.