Ogmios

Ogmios is the name given to a Celtic god of eloquence described in Heracles, a work of the Syrian satirist Lucian.
Lucian's Heracles is a prolalia, that is, a short text which was read aloud before a longer public performance. It describes Lucian's viewing of a strange image of Ogmios in Gaul, wherein the god is depicted as a dark-skinned, aged version of the Greek hero Heracles, with a group of happy devotees tied by bejewelled chains to this god's tongue. Lucian describes a Celt who approaches him and explains these features, informing him that they reflect a native association of Ogmios with eloquence, which, the Celt explains, reaches its highest level in old age. Lucian uses this anecdote to prove to his audience that, in old age, he is still competent to deliver public performances.
The evidence outside of Lucian's text for the god Ogmios is quite limited. No image has been uncovered which comes close to that which Lucian describes. The only further evidence for the god which has been largely accepted are on two curse tablets from Brigantium, which invoke Ogmios's name. Most scholars accept the existence of the god Ogmios, but a minority have expressed scepticism.
In medieval Irish mythology, the god Ogma was fabled as the inventor of the early Irish alphabet Ogham. Ogmios has frequently been connected with Ogma, but the nature of this connection has proven difficult to define. An etymology linking Ogmios, Ogma, and Ogham poses unresolved chronological and phonological problems.
Lucian's text was much read in the Renaissance, and "Gallic Hercules" inspired a number of artistic works, including drawings by Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein the Younger.

Etymology

, Christian-Joseph Guyonvarc'h and have proposed to derive the god's name derives from Greek . Though Lucian tell us that Ogmios is the name of the god "in their native tongue", Guyonvarc'h and Le Roux believe it is possible the name may have been borrowed by Gaulish speakers from Greek in the parts of Gaul where Greek was widely spoken. Jan de Vries is sceptical of this possibility. The Greek word ὄγμος seems to have had a connotation of leadership, which agrees with the iconography Lucian describes. The Nomina im Indogermanischen Lexikon notes the similarity with ἐπόγμιος, an epithet of the Greek god Demeter.
Celtic etymologies of the theonym have also been given. The potential existence of a reflex of the god's name in Irish mythology has been taken to count in favour of such an etymology. Xavier Delamarre suggests that Ogmios is a reflex of proto-Indo-European *, derived from the PIE verbal root *. He associates with theonym with the meaning of "a leader along a path". Pierre-Yves Lambert suggested that Ogmios was a reflex of the proto-Celtic oug-.

Lucian's ''Heracles''

Lucian was a Syrian satirist and rhetorician who wrote in Ancient Greek. His short work Heracles or Hercules is a prolaliai, that is, a short introduction intended to arouse audience interest prior to a longer lecture. It reflects on its author's old age, and his ability to deliver public oratory, concluding with an emphatic affirmation of this ability. On this basis, the text is dated late in Lucian's life, after his return from Egypt in 175 CE.
The passage relevant to Ogmios comes at the beginning, where Lucian delivers an ekphrasis of an image of Heracles:
Puzzling at this picture, a Celt fluent in Greek, whom Lucian describes as versed in Greek and Celtic lore, interjects with an explanation. The copious quotations from Greek that the Celt adduces have been omitted from the following.
Lucian often chose exotic subject matter to arouse his audience's interest. His choice of subject matter in Heracles was no doubt tailored towards this end; his listeners, likely in the Greek East, would have hardly been familiar with Celtic society. The rhetorician's intentions were, in turn, hardly ethnographic. Andreas Hofeneder points out that Lucian neglects to tell us where in Gaul his story takes place; what sort of building the picture was located in; and even the nature of the picture. Lucian's other writings tell us that he worked as rhetorician in Gaul, but they do not tell us where or when. It has been suggested that Lucian's narrative may have taken place in the semi-Hellenized south of Gaul, perhaps Massalia, but this is far from certain.
The speaker who interjects to explain the image is something of a stock figure in ekphrases. Paul Friedländer pointed out that Lucian's introduction of the Celt borrows material from the Tabula Cebetis, a popular philosophical ekphrasis. Lucian describes the Celt as a "philosopher in local matters". It was common in Greek accounts of the Celts to refer to the druids as philosophers, and on this basis it has been suggested that the Celt who addressed Lucian was a druid, however by the time Lucian wrote the druids had been suppressed by Roman decree for over a century. Eugenio Amato suggests that if Lucian had encountered a druid, he would have been unlikely to credit a member of the maligned religious order so highly. Amato has suggested that the Celtic speaker is Lucian's imitation of his contemporary Favorinus, a Roman sophist of Gaulish extraction who had great command of Greek poetry and wrote a discourse on old age, and whom Lucian elsewhere refers to. The abundant quotations from Greek literature may reflect Favorinus's preoccupations, though little of the sophist's work has survived.
The reality of the image Lucian describes has been repeatedly doubted. Lucian's characteristic mixture of satire and journalism, and especially the mockery he directs towards religious feeling, make him a problematic source for the history of religion. The view of scholars in the 19th and early 20th centuries of Lucian as a straightforward purveyor of falsehoods has largely subsided, and scholars now tend to take a more nuanced view. In the 19th and early 20th centuries researchers were unanimous in seeing Lucian's image as an invention. More recent scholarship has been balanced between the two views.
In favour of the existence of this image, it has been pointed out that nothing about Lucian's story is impossible. The satirist certainly visited Gaul, where wall paintings of mythological scenes are known to have existed. Amato suggests he could have learned of this picture from Favorinus. Marion Euskirchen took the "detailed iconographic elements of the image described by Lucian, as well as their unusual combination" to speak to its veracity. and accept it as authentic, but are sceptical of Lucian's explanation. Hafner, for example, argued the image was identifiable as a classical depiction of Heracles' enemy Geras, though Euskirchen is unconvinced the ekphrasis can be read this way.
Against its existence, sceptics have adduced "the absurdity of this explanation, and its all-too-visible link with the necessities of a prolalia". Jaś Elsner, for example, calls the image "effectively a self-portrait of the orator as an old man". No wall paintings with scenes of a non-classical type have survived in Gaul. suggests that Lucian composed plausible elements fictitiously for literary ends. More recently, scholars such as and Hofeneder have counted the paucity of archaeological evidence for Ogmios against the reality of this image.

Ogmios outside of Lucian

Lucian's text is a valuable, but problematic and isolated source. Ogmios is mentioned nowhere else in classical literature, with the exception of two Byzantine lexicons which clearly depend on Lucian. The archaeological evidence for Ogmios is very limited. The only mostly-accepted attestations of the god, outside of Lucian, are two curse tablets from Brigantium. The existence of Ogmios is accepted by a majority of scholars, even by some who doubt the authenticity of Lucian's narrative. A minority—Bauchhenß and Hofeneder—have expressed scepticism about Ogmios's existence.

Hercules in Gaul

By way of his adventures through Western Europe, ancient literature often associated Hercules and the Celts. Parthenius of Nicaea, for example, claimed that Heracles was, through his son Keltos, progenitor of all the Celts. In the Roman era, Hercules was worshipped in Gaul, especially in his role as patron of sacred springs. However, Ogmios does not seem to have been important to this worship. The epigraphic evidence reveals very little linking Hercules to native deities; and nothing at all linking Hercules to Ogmios.
The iconographic evidence for Hercules Ogmios is little more impressive. No images of Hercules found in Gaul come near the arrangement described by Lucian. Salomon Reinach linked Ogmios to two representations of a seemingly aged Heracles, both from Gaul and quite late: a bronze statuette of Hercules, bent with age; and a terra sigillata with a relief of an apparently bald Hercules. However, Stephanie Boucher argued the hunch of the former was a product of low quality bronze-work; and Euskirchen has argued that the latter's baldness could have been caused by wear to the pottery.

Curse tablets

Two curse tablets, both found in Brigantium, have been linked to Ogmios. The first, discovered in 1865 and now lost, dates to the 1st century CE; the second, discovered in 1930, dates to the 1st/2nd century CE. The former curse invokes a god to silence any witnesses who would speak against the curse-writer's interest in court. The latter curse invokes Dis Pater and another god to damage a young woman's body in order that she may be made unmarriageable. In 1943, Robert Egger proposed to read both these tablets as invoking the god Ogmios. Egger's reading has largely met with agreement in the scholarly literature, though Hofeneder and Euskirchen have expressed scepticism.
Egger argued that only gods of the underworld were invoked on curse tablets, and that therefore Ogmios should be interpreted as a chthonic deity. Further to this point, Egger pointed out that Lucian compares Ogmios to Iapetus and Charon, both figures of the Greek underworld. Egger's association of Ogmios with the underworld has met with some agreement in the literature, but more often with scepticism. De Vries points out that a god only had to be considered powerful to be invoked in a curse. For example a curse tablet invoking Nodens is known from Gloucestershire. Euskirchen will also not allow that Lucian's comparison of Ogmios to Iapetus and Charon goes further than their skin colour.