Litavis

Litavis (also Litauis or Litauī)[1] is a Gallic deity whose cult is primarily attested in east-central Gaul during the Roman period.[1] She was probably an earth-goddess.[2][1][3]

Her name is found in inscriptions found at Aignay-le-Duc and Mâlain of the Côte-d'Or, France, where she is invoked along with the Gallo-Roman god Mars Cicolluis in a context which suggests that she might have been his consort. Also, a Latin dedicatory inscription from Narbonne (which was in the far south of Gaul), France, bears the words “MARTI CICOLLUI ET LITAVI” ("To Mars Cicolluos and Litavis").[4]

Latin inscription reading "DEO MARTI CICOLLUI ET LITAVI" ("To Mars Cicolluos and Litavis").[1]

Name

The Gaulish divine name Litavi- (/litaui/; 'Earth', 'the Vast One') likely stems from Proto-Celtic *flitawī- ('broad'; compare with Old Breton litan, Middle Welsh llydan, 'broad'), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *Plethₐ-wih₁ ("the Broad One"; compare with Greek Plátaia, Old Norse fǫld, Sanskrit Pṛthvī 'earth').[1][2][5][3]

The 'neo-Celtic' names for the Brittany Peninsula (Old Breton Letau, Old Welsh Litau, Old Irish Letha, Latinized as Letavia) all stems from *Litauia ('earth, country').[2] In the Irish Lebor Bretnach (11th c.), Bretain Letha means 'Britons of the Continent or Armorica, i.e. Bretons.'[1] Thurneysen proposed a semantic development from Celtic 'broad land, continent' to the Insular Celtic name for the part of the Continent nearest the British Islands.[1] The Gaulish personal name Litavicos ('sovereign of the land') is cognate with the Welsh Llydewig, meaning 'pertaining to Brittany'.[1]

gollark: Patterns? No.
gollark: Using Lua? Yes.
gollark: I mean, very powerful not-regular expressions like most programming language libraries have *possibly*, actual regexes no.
gollark: No. This is wrong.
gollark: No. Lua patterns are less powerful than regex. Regex cannot parse HTML.

References
  1. Koch 2006, p. 1159.
  2. Delamarre 2003, pp. 204–205.
  3. West 2007, pp. 177–178.
  4. Koch, John T. "Ériu, Alba, and Letha: When Was a Language Ancestral to Gaelic First Spoken in Ireland?" Emania: Bulletin of the Navan Research Group 9 (1991): 17–27.
  5. Matasović 2009, p. 135.

Bibliography
  • Delamarre, Xavier (2003). Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise: Une approche linguistique du vieux-celtique continental (in French). Errance. ISBN 9782877723695.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Further reading
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.