Nodens
British god of healing, commemorated in the shrine (3rd cent. BC) at Lydney Park on the Severn River, Gloucester. No physical depiction of Nodons survives, but votive plaques at the shrine indicate his associations with dogs. Another figure appears to show a man hooking a fish. Nodons has been likened to Mars the healer rather than Mars the warrior, as well as to Silvanus, a Roman god of the hunt. More importantly, Nodons is a cognate of and perhaps an anticipation of the Irish Nuadu Airgetlám; additionally, his persona contributed to the Welsh figure Nudd. See Françoise Le Roux, ‘Le Dieu-roi Nodons/ Nuada’, Celticum, 6 (1963), 425–46; John Carey, ‘Nodons in Britain and Ireland’, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, 40 (1984), 1–22.
