Matériaux mythiques gaulois et annalistique romaine : éléments antique d'un cycle héroïque celtique

Abstract

Gaulish mythological materials and Roman annals : pieces of an old Celtic heroic cycle. The Roman annalists consciously borrowed, introduced in their pseudo-history, and transformed for their own benefit, Gaulish mythical materials. These materials primarily concern a warrior-hero corresponding to the Irish hero Cú Chulainn, and to whom are attached the same mythical motifs : magical contortions, and the intervention of a war-deity in the shape of a crow. Secondly, they concern a hunter and warrior-hero with wolfish aspects, who, like the Irish hero Finn, decides the outcome of a “gigantic” battle in siding with one of the two parties. These materials, also illustrated in ancient iconography, are the oldest narrative attestations of a Celtic traditional heroic cycle, in its Gaulish state, and allow to discern, in this cycle, some distinctive oppositions between two types of mythical heroes, belonging probably to two different gesta.