Catubodua
Encyclopedia
Catubodua is the name of a Gaulish goddess
Goddess
A goddess is a female deity. In some cultures goddesses are associated with Earth, motherhood, love, and the household. In other cultures, goddesses also rule over war, death, and destruction as well as healing....

 inferred from a single inscription in Haute Savoie, eastern France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 that actually reads ATHVBODVAE AVG SERVILIA TERENTIA S L M plus the debatable assumptions that an initial C has been lost and that ATEBODVAE, ATEBODVVS and ATEBODVI in 3 other inscriptions in modern Austria and Slovenia are unrelated.

She appears to be identical to the Irish
Irish mythology
The mythology of pre-Christian Ireland did not entirely survive the conversion to Christianity, but much of it was preserved, shorn of its religious meanings, in medieval Irish literature, which represents the most extensive and best preserved of all the branch and the Historical Cycle. There are...

 goddess Badb Catha
Badb
In Irish mythology, the Badb or Badhbh —meaning "crow" or "vulture"—was a war goddess who took the form of a crow, and was thus sometimes known as Badb Catha . She often caused fear and confusion among soldiers in order to move the tide of battle to her favoured side...

. Nicole Jufer and Thierry Luginbühl provisionally link Catubodua with other apparently martial goddesses attested elsewhere, such as Boudina, Bodua, and Boudiga, whose names share roots meaning either 'fighting' or 'victory'. She would therefore be comparable to the Roman Victoria
Victoria (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion, Victoria was the personified goddess of victory. She is the Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Nike, and was associated with Bellona. She was adapted from the Sabine agricultural goddess Vacuna and had a temple on the Palatine Hill...

 and the Greek goddess Nike
Nike (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Nike was a goddess who personified victory, also known as the Winged Goddess of Victory. The Roman equivalent was Victoria. Depending upon the time of various myths, she was described as the daughter of Pallas and Styx and the sister of Kratos , Bia , and Zelus...

 and possibly the Nordic goddess Sigyn
Sigyn
Sigyn is a goddess and wife of Loki in Norse mythology. Sigyn is attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson...

.

A related Roman legend?

A story of the Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

 wars against the Gauls of the 4th century BC, recorded by Livy
Livy
Titus Livius — known as Livy in English — was a Roman historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people. Ab Urbe Condita Libri, "Chapters from the Foundation of the City," covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome well before the traditional foundation in 753 BC...

, Aulus Gellius
Aulus Gellius
Aulus Gellius , was a Latin author and grammarian, who was probably born and certainly brought up in Rome. He was educated in Athens, after which he returned to Rome, where he held a judicial office...

 and Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Dionysius of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Caesar Augustus. His literary style was Attistic — imitating Classical Attic Greek in its prime.-Life:...

, may preserve a reference to her. A Roman soldier, Marcus Valerius, accepted a challenge to single combat with a Gaulish champion. When the fight began, a crow landed on Valerius's helmet and began to attack the Gaul, who, terrified by this divine intervention, was easily beaten. Valerius adopted the cognomen
Cognomen
The cognomen nōmen "name") was the third name of a citizen of Ancient Rome, under Roman naming conventions. The cognomen started as a nickname, but lost that purpose when it became hereditary. Hereditary cognomina were used to augment the second name in order to identify a particular branch within...

 "Corvus" (crow), and as Marcus Valerius Corvus
Marcus Valerius Corvus
Marcus Valerius Corvus was a Roman general of the 4th century BC, characterized as a farmer who lived to be one hundred.-Biography:...

 went on to be a famous general and politician of the Roman Republic
Roman Republic
The Roman Republic was the period of the ancient Roman civilization where the government operated as a republic. It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, traditionally dated around 508 BC, and its replacement by a government headed by two consuls, elected annually by the citizens and...

.

Name and etymology

In the Gaulish language, the name Catubodua is believed to mean battle-crow.

Etymological lexical forms reconstructed in the University of Wales
University of Wales
The University of Wales was a confederal university founded in 1893. It had accredited institutions throughout Wales, and formerly accredited courses in Britain and abroad, with over 100,000 students, but in October 2011, after a number of scandals, it withdrew all accreditation, and it was...

' Proto-Celtic lexicon, suggest that the name is likely to be ultimately derived from the Proto-Celtic *Katu-bodwā, a word that could be interpreted as ‘battle-fighting’. Nonetheless it is this second element *bodwā which appears to be the Proto-Celtic root of the later form of the name Badhbh. The masculine form *bodwos ('fighting') developed in Gaelic
Goidelic languages
The Goidelic languages or Gaelic languages are one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic languages, the other consisting of the Brythonic languages. Goidelic languages historically formed a dialect continuum stretching from the south of Ireland through the Isle of Man to the north of Scotland...

 into Bodb
Bodb Derg
In Irish mythology, Bodb Derg or Bodhbh Dearg was a son of Eochaid Garb or the Dagda, and the Dagda's successor as King of the Tuatha Dé Danann....

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