page_title: Dusios
section_title: Agricultural associations
hierarchical_section_title: Dusios / Agricultural associations
caption_attribution_description: Ficus carica
context_page_description: In the Gaulish language, Dusios was a divine being among the continental Celts who was identified with the god Pan of ancient Greek religion and with the gods Faunus, Inuus, Silvanus, and Incubus of ancient Roman religion. Like these deities, he might be seen as multiple in nature, and referred to in the plural, most commonly in Latin as dusii. Although the Celtic Dusios is not described in late-antique sources independently of Greek and Roman deities, the common functionality of the others lay in their ability to impregnate animals and women, often by surprise or force. Dusii continue to play a role in the magico-religious belief systems of Gaul and Francia as a type of incubus in early-medieval paganism and Christianity.
context_section_description: The lexicographer Papias, writing in the 1040s, says that the Dusii are those whom the Romans call Fauni ficarii. The adjective ficarius comes from ficus, "fig," and is applied to Faunus frequently enough to suggest a divine epithet. "Figgy" may refer to the god's fructifying power, or may be a lewd reference to the fauns' well-known habits of random penetration (see also Inuus), as "fig" was Greek slang for "anus" and Latin slang for both "sore anus" and later "vagina". A fertility ritual involving twigs and sap from the male fig tree was carried out by Roman matrons for Juno Caprotina, later identified with the goatskin-wearing Juno Sospita.
  Pliny notes that the wild fig (called caprificus, "goat-fig, caprifig," because it was food for goats) spawns "flies" or fig wasps called ficarii (ficarios culices caprificus generat). The adjective ficarius characterizes the "figgy fauns" and their counterparts the dusii by their swarming, serial acts of fertilization.
  In the 8th-century Life of St. Richarius, dusii hemaones or dusii manes also occur in a horticultural setting. Richarius, born ca. 560 in Amiens, Picardy, was converted to Christianity by Welsh missionaries. His vita records a belief among his fellow Picards in northern Gaul that the dusi, called maones in some recensions, steal crops and damage orchards. These agriculturally dangerous beings appear in other medieval authors as Mavones, maones, manes and "Magonians," the latter being airborne crop-raiders from a mythical land located in the clouds.
  It is less than evident how dusii could be a surviving form of the Roman Manes, infernal gods who were shades of the dead, or be thought of as aerial pirates. Isidore offers a clue when he says the manes are gods of the dead, but their power is located between the moon and the earth, the same cloud region through which the Magonians traveled. This airborne existence recalls Augustine's characterization of the Dusii as "aerial in substance," and points toward the Arthurian "histories" involving incubi daemones, "creatures who mingle the angelic and the demonic, inhabiting the uncertain space between sun and moon." Medieval romance narratives suggest that women fantasize about these sexual encounters, though a visitation is likely to be represented by male authors as frightening, violent, and diabolic.
caption: Figs, interior exposed
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