Sucellus

The Celtic god Sucellus with his characteristic hammer and olla. Musee National d'Archeology.

Sucellus (Gaulish, generally 'the good striker') was a god worshipped in Roman Gaul and the neighbouring provinces, known from a small number of votive inscriptions and from a large body of images. He is shown as a mature bearded man in Gaulish dress, holding a long-handled hammer or mallet in one hand and a round-bellied pot (olla) in the other, and is commonly identified with the otherwise unnamed 'hammer god' of Gaulish iconography. His cult is concentrated in the valleys of the Rhône and Saône, with scattered attestations reaching the Rhineland, Roman Britain and the Danube. On several monuments he is paired with the goddess Nantosuelta. His attributes align him with the Roman Silvanus, and modern scholars have read him variously as a god of natural abundance and fertility or as a god of the underworld, though his character remains disputed.

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