Camulus or Camulos (Gaulish: Camulos) was a god of Gaulish and Brittonic religion, generally identified with the Roman god Mars through the interpretatio romana. He is known chiefly from Latin votive inscriptions of the 1st to 3rd centuries AD, found in northern Gaul and the German provinces and as far afield as Britain and Dacia, and his cult was particularly associated with the Remi of the Reims region.

The same name is very widely attested as a personal name across the Celtic-speaking world, from Iberia to the Danube, which has prompted debate over its meaning and over whether some attestations name the god or serve as a secular personal name. The element also appears in place-names such as Camulodunum, the pre-Roman name of Colchester, and through it the name has been linked to the later Camelot.

Name

The god's name appears in Latin as Camulus and, in the dative of the dedications, Camulo.

The etymology of the name is disputed. Xavier Delamarre glosses the element camulo- as 'champion' or 'servant', while stressing that the proposed etymologies are multiple, uncertain and contradictory. The comparison most often drawn is with the rare Old Irish word cumall ('champion'), whose sense suits the Gaulish name best. The related feminine cumal ('female slave, servant') comes from a root *kem(H)- ('to tire, take pains'), and Delamarre proposes for camulo- a general sense 'one who exerts himself', which would fit a champion as well as a servant. Bernhard Maier, for his part, treats the name as etymologically obscure.

The name is far more common as a personal name than as the name of a god. It occurs across the Celtic-speaking provinces, from Iberia to Pannonia and in Italy, as Camulus and Camula, and in a large family of derived and compound names such as Camulatus, Camulinus, Camulissius, Camulogenus and Camulognata. The compounds Camulorix and Camuloriga are themselves recorded as divine names. Julius Caesar names a Gaulish commander called Camulogenus, an Aulercan who led the Gauls against Caesar's legate Labienus in a battle on the Seine in 52 BC. The name Camulogenus ('descendant of the god Camulus') is generally read as evidence for the god. Bernhard Maier is sceptical: because Camulus is so widely used as an ordinary personal name, he judges it more likely that the name carried an appellative or honorific sense than that it points to a widely worshipped deity.

Interpretation

In the inscriptions Camulus is regularly identified with Mars, and modern scholars group him among the Gaulish gods equated with the Roman war god. Andreas Hofeneder lists him, as the god of the Remi, among the principal such figures, alongside Segomo of the Sequani, Caturix of the Helvetii, Lenus of the Treveri, Mullo of the Cenomani and Redones, and Cicollus of the Lingones. His close association with the Remi, whose citizens built the temple at Rindern and set up the dedication at Rome, points to the role of a tribal protector.

Bernhard Maier places Camulus at the centre of a wider argument about Gaulish god-names. Many such names are also attested as personal names, which for Maier suggests that they were often understood as honorific epithets rather than as the names of individual deities. He treats Camulus, given how common it is as a personal name, as a leading example of such cases.

The Old Irish comparison with cumall has encouraged attempts to connect Camulus with Cumall, the father of the hero Finn. Luis García Moreno linked an Iberian group named by Diodorus Siculus, the Cemeleti, to the Hispanic name-element Camal-, taken by María Lourdes Albertos Firmat as a variant of Gaulish Camul-, and suggested that the Cemeleti were a people consecrated to Camulus, comparable to the Irish fíanna who followed Finn. Andreas Hofeneder rejects the proposal. He objects that Diodorus names a people called Kemeletoi rather than any form in Camul-, that the difference in vowel is left unexplained, and that the transmitted name is in any case doubtful.

Epigraphy

Camulus is known almost entirely from Latin votive inscriptions. Most are altars set up in northern Gaul and the German provinces, in the region between the Seine and the Rhine, and the cult centres on Reims (Durocortorum), the capital of the Remi. On these dedications the god is regularly equated with Mars through the interpretatio romana. The one exception is a dedication from Rome, whose original text names Camulus on his own, in a list of gods, rather than as Mars Camulus.

Bernhard Maier and Andreas Hofeneder count six dedications to Mars Camulus, while the fuller survey by Simon Corcoran, Benet Salway and Peter Salway lists about ten, from Rome and Sarmizegetusa in Dacia to the Antonine Wall in Britain. Their list adds further dedications, including one from Worms (Borbetomagus), to the long-known group. Several of the dedicants are citizens of the Remi, among them the builders of the temple at Rindern and the soldier who set up the Roman altar.

Place-names and coinage

The name Camulus underlies several ancient place-names. The best known is Camulodunum, 'the fort of Camulus', the pre-Roman name of the great oppidum at modern Colchester, the chief seat of the Trinovantes and, from about AD 5, the capital of Cunobelinus of the Catuvellauni. A second Camulodunum lay in the territory of the Brigantes in northern Britain, where Ptolemy places it, and it has been identified with the Roman fort at Slack in Yorkshire. The same element appears in the British name Camulosessa and in several place-names on the Continent.

Camulodunum was the chief mint of Cunobelinus, and the abbreviated place-name appears on his coinage as CAM, CAMV, CAMVL and CAMVLODVN.

The name Camulodunum has been proposed as the ultimate source of Camelot, the seat of King Arthur in medieval romance, which is first attested in the late 12th century in the Lancelot of Chrétien de Troyes.

References

Bibliography

Further reading