Esperandieu’s report on the 1910 dig season appeared in the 1912 edition of the Bulletin archéologique du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques. (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k203340h/f99.item
This report describes two new Moritasgus inscriptions and also talks of an existing, although lost, inscription. There is much other information on the dig in general, but the Moritasgus information is all contained in the Inscriptions section. My translation of this section is below:
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We discovered in 1910 two inscriptions of capital importance. One is deeply engraved, in characters of o m. 023 to o m. 028 in height, appearing from the 1st century, on a thigh, of common stone, decorated with a dolphin on the left side and a foliage from behind.
| AVG SAC
DEO APOLLINi MORITASGO CATIANUS OXTAI |
The interpretation is easy. The dédicant, who bears a Roman nickname, Catianus, was the son of a Gaul named Oxtaius. There is nothing to say about the first of these two appellations, of which we have hundreds of examples. But we are more interested in the second, because it has remained to this day very infrequent. This appellation, whose theme would perhaps reappear, according to Mr. Holder, in the names of the towns Octodurus and Octogesa, is found only on two monuments, one from Mandeure, the other from LuxeuilI.[1]
The second inscription reads in Characters of O M. 025, of a good age, on a half-cylindrical basis supporting the image of a human trunk.
| AVG SAC deo APOLLINi
MORITAsgo *** AVIVS ▪ALI DiOFANES **** ER LIB P |
The stone that bears this inscription is broken in many fragments. Some letters are missing; But the above reading can be seen as certain, especially the end of the second line, where the group of letters ‘ ALI ‘ is embarrassing.
As far as we can judge, the dedication was made by two people, one of whom would have been called Avius and the other Diofanes. The third line: [fec]er[unt], lib[entes] p[osuerent][2] should then be restored.
As for the group of Letters ALI, preceded by a point, I cannot say what it means. The easiest explanation would be to find an abbreviation for the word Alisanus; But I do not conceal that it is difficult to accept. The servile name Diofanes is quite rare. I know, in Gaul, only one example, provided by a Potter’s mark found in Vienna.[3]
Engraved, one on one thigh, the other below a trunk, the two inscriptions are from the sick who had come to ask the God for the restoration of their health. Thus, we learn, as said, that this god was called Moritasgus and that the Romans had identified him with Apollo.
It was already known that an inscription, found in the seventeenth century on Mount Auxois and destroyed in 1813, related to him. But nothing was known about his nature and the assimilation of which he was the object. This lost entry was the following[4]
| TI▪CL▪PROFESSUS NIGER OMNIBUS
HONORIBUS APVD AEDVOS ET LINGONAS FVNCTVS DEO MORITASGO PORTICVM TESTAMENTO PONI IVSSIT SVO NOMINE ET IULIAE VIRGVLINAE VXORIS ET FILIARUM CL▪PROFESSAE ET IVL▪VIRGVLAE IVL VIRGVLA FIL▪ POSVIT |
It is, as we see, a portico built by a personage who had attained all the municipal honors in the two cities of Eduens and Lingons. The inscription seems to have been engraved by the care of one of the girls. As for the portico, I would not be far from believing that we have the ruins. As I have said, the portico of the great temple of the Saint Charles Cross must date from the third quarter of the 1st century. The character of the inscription was, apparently, a contemporary of Claude, whose name he bore. I would gladly see one of those rich Gauls who wished to enter the Senate of Rome[5]. In this case, nothing would prevent him from having survived the destruction of the year 69 or a neighboring period, and contributed, by a donation, to the embellishment of a sanctuary whose ruins.
The very form of his name proves to us that Moritasgus was a Celtic god. A sentence of the Comments could relate to it.
Senones, [it is said] Cavarinum, quem Caesar apud cos regem constituerat eujus frater Moritasgus adventu in Gallium Caesaris cujusque majores regnum obtinuerant, interficere publico consilio conati[6]
Caesar’s continuator, Hirtius, appears to have confused in his work the religious function of gutuater with the name of a carnute chief[7]; it is not impossible that Caesar himself took the name of a divinity for that of the brother of a king. It may be admitted, however, with no less likelihood, that the prince and the god bore the same name, or that it was a deified prince. In support of this last hypothesis, we would have the example of Boïen Mariccus[8]
The reconciliation of Moritasgus with Apollo is consistent with what we know of the transformation of the Celtic gods. Of all the cults that the Romans found in Gaul, it was certainly that of the waters which they understood best. they were used to it by their own beliefs. The assimilation, consequently, was easy for them, and that is why we have, on this cult, Gallo-Roman documents in so great a number.[9]
When Caesar teaches us that Apolion was the healer god of the Gauls, it is probably the spirits of the waters that he wants to speak of.[10] The Gauls had no god who bore the name of Apollo; the Greco-Roman pantheon was unknown to them. But this does not exclude the possibility of mythological conceptions comparable to each other. In any case, in the aftermath of the conquest, the native gods of fountains and springs received, for the most part, the name of Apollo. They retained however, as nickname, their Celtic name, and this allows us to recognize them.[11]
I said in my first report that in 1909 we had discovered the remains of the wooden pool of a sanctuary, between the leaders of the walls which limited it. The bottom wall of this pool was formed of a very elongated altar, white stone, with base and crown, hollowed on one of its faces, a wide notch for the passage of water. By removing it from the place it occupied, we could see that this altar bore a dedication. Unfortunately, most letters are so erased that it seems impossible to read them. At first glance one can distinguish only the three letters AVG, engraved on the upper part of one of the faces. A closer look at the stone, in good lighting conditions, gave me this copy:
AVG SAC
DEO APOL
L*******
I cannot guarantee its accuracy; But the hypothesis of a dedication to Apollo, in view of our other discoveries, remains nevertheless very plausible.
The clearing of the great temple has made us find about thirty fragments of marble, which seem to come from four inscriptions, if one relies, at least, on their thickness to decide. Almost all contain only the remains of a single letter. I will mention only the two following ones, on which are engraved characters of o m. 095 in height.
| I
IAI CVI |
IC |
Both fragments were part of a monumental inscription, which was debited in tablets, of o m. 22 wide, and re-used as a border.
[1] Holder, Altcelt. Sprachschatz, I, col. 896.
[2] “They gladly laid”
[3] Corpus inscr. Lat. t. XII, no 5686-117
[4] Corpus inscr. Lat. t. XIII No. 2873
[5] Tacite, Annales 23 et 24
[6] De Bello gall., V, 54. This chapter, in full, reads
But Caesar, having summoned to him the principal persons of each state, in one case by alarming them, since he declared that he knew what was going on, and in another case by encouraging them, retained a great part of Gaul in its allegiance. The Senones, however, which is a state eminently powerful and one of great influence among the Gauls, attempting by general design to slay Cavarinus, whom Caesar had created king among them (whose brother, Moritasgus, had held the sovereignty at the period of the arrival of Caesar in Gaul, and whose ancestors had also previously held it), when he discovered their plot and fled, pursued him even to the frontiers [of the state], and drove him from his kingdom and his home; and, after having sent embassadors to Caesar for the purpose of concluding a peace, when he ordered all their senate to come to him, did not obey that command. So far did it operate among those barbarian people, that there were found some to be the first to wage war; and so great a change of inclinations did it produce in all, that, except the Aedui and the Remi, whom Caesar had always held in especial honor, the one people for theirlong standing and uniform fidelity toward the Roman people, the other for their late service in the Gallic war, there was scarcely a state which was not suspected by us. And I do not know whether that ought much to be wondered at, as well for several other reasons, as particularly because they who ranked above all nations for prowess in war, most keenly regretted that they had lost so much of that reputation as to submit to commands from the Roman people.
[7] De Bello gall., VIII, 38
[8] Tacite, Hist., II, 61
[9] Renel, Les religions de la Gaule, p. 169.
[10] De Bello gall., VI, 17
[11] See Apollo Vindonnus at Essarois (Corpus ins lat t.XIII, nos 5644, 5645) Apollo Borvo at Bourbonne-les-Bains (ibid., No. 5911); Apollo Cobledulitavus at Perigueux (Ibid No. 939), etc. In his panegyric of Constantine, the rhetor Eumenes invokes the immortal gods to shine the day when this emperor can visit the sacred groves and temples of Autun. “It seems to me,” he writes, “that all these temples claim your presence, and especially our Apollo, whose burning waters punish perjury.” (Panegyr of Constantine Augustus, 25.)
Moritasgus 