Epona

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For other uses of Epona, see Epona (disambiguation)
Epona, 3rd c. AD, from Freyming (Moselle), France (Musée Lorrain, Nancy)
Epona, 3rd c. AD, from Freyming (Moselle), France (Musée Lorrain, Nancy)

In Celtic mythology Epona, the Great Mare[1] was a great goddess, who in Gallo-Roman religion became simply the protector of horses, donkeys, mules. She was particularly a goddess of fertility, as shown by her attributes of a patera, cornucopia, and the presence of foals in some sculptures (Reinach, 1895). Unusually for a Celtic deity, most of whom were associated with specific localities, the worship of Epona was widespread between the first and third centuries CE.

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[edit] Etymology of the name

Although only known from Roman contexts, the name Epona, "Divine Mare" is from the Celtic language Gaulish; it is derived from the inferred proto-Celtic *epōs (horse)[2] — which gives rise to modern Cymric ebol (foal) and old Cymric epa (to steal horses) — together with the -on- frequently, though not exclusively, found in theonyms (for example Sirona, Matronae), and the usual Gaulish feminine singular -a. (Delmarre, 2003:163-164).

[edit] Evidence for Epona

Although the name is in origin Gaulish, dedicatory inscriptions to Epona are in Latin or, rarely, Greek and were made not only by Celts but also Germans, Romans and other inhabitants[citation needed] of the Roman Empire. A long Latin inscription of the first century BCE, engraved in a lead sheet and accompanying the sacrifice of a filly and the votive gift of a cauldron, was found in 1887 at Rom, Deux-Sèvres, the Roman Rauranum. The inscription offers to the goddess an archaic profusion of epithets for a goddess, Eponina ("dear little Epona"): she is Atanta, horse-goddess Potia ("powerful Mistress; compare Greek Potnia), Dibonia (Latin, the "good goddess")",Catona of battle", noble and good Vovesia.

Her feast day at Rome was December 18 as shown by a rustic calendar from Guidizzolo, Italy (Vaillant, 1951). She was incoporated into Imperial cult by being invoked on behalf of the Emperor, as Epona Augusta or Epona Regina. According to the French historian Benoît (1950), she was also a psychopomp, accompanying souls to the land of the dead, although this interpretation is disputed.

Perceptions of native Celtic goddesses had changed under Roman hegemony: only the names remained the same. As Gaul was Romanized under the early Empire, Epona’s sovreign role evolved into a protector of cavalry (Oaks 1986:79-81). The cult of Epona was spread over much of the Roman Empire by the auxiliary cavalry, alae, especially the Imperial Horse Guard or equites singulares augustii recruited from Gaul, Lower Germany, and Pannonia. A series of their dedications to Epona and other Celtic, Roman and German deities was found in Rome, at the Lateran (Spiedel, 1994). As Epane she is attested in Cantabria, northern Spain, on Mount Bernorio, Palencia (Simón).

A bizarre euhemerist account of the birth of Epona that does not reflect Celtic beliefs can be found in Plutarch's life of Solon: Giambattista Della Porta's edition of Magia naturalis (1589), a potpourri of the sensible and questionable, remarks, in the context of unseemly man-beast coupling, Plutarch's Life of Solon, in which he "reports out of Agesilaus, his third book of Italian matters, that Fulvius Stella loathing the company of a woman, coupled himself with a mare, of whom he begot a very beautiful maiden-child, and she was called by a fit name, Epona..."

[edit] Iconography

Sculptures of Epona fall into two types. In the Equestrian type, common in Gaul, she is depicted sitting side-saddle on a horse or (rarely) lying on one; in the Imperial type (more common outside Gaul) she sits on a throne flanked by two or more horses or foals (Nantonos, 2004). In distant Dacia, she is represented on a stela (Szépmüvézeti Museum, Budapest) in the format of Cybele, seated frontally on a throne with her hands on the necks of her paired animals: her horses are substitutions for Cybele's lions.

Epona is mentioned in The Golden Ass by Apuleius, where an aedicular niche with her image on a pillar in a stable has been garlanded with freshly-picked roses. [3] In his Satires, the Roman poet Juvenal also links the worship and iconography of Epona to the area of a stable. [4] Small images of Epona have been found in Roman sites of stables and barns over a wide territory.

The probable date of ca. 1400 BCE ascribed to the giant chalk horse carved into the hillside turf at Uffington, in southern England, is too early to be directly associated with Epona a millennium and more later, but clearly represents a Bronze Age totem if some kind. The English traditional hobby-horse riders parading on May Day at Padstow, Cornwall and Mine Head, Somerset, which survived to the mid-twentieth century, even though Morris dances had been forgotten, may have deep roots in the veneration of Epona, as may the English aversion to eating horsemeat.[5] At Padstow formerly, at the end of the festivities the hobby-horse was ritually submerged in the sea.[6]

The Cymric moon goddess Rhiannon rides a white horse.

[edit] Trivia

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Archaic Demeter was also a Great Mare.
  2. ^ Compare Latin equus, Greek hippos.
  3. ^ "respicio pilae mediae, quae stabuli trabes sustinebat, in ipso fere meditullio Eponae deae simulacrum residens aediculae, quod accurate corollis roseis equidem recentibus fuerat ornatum." (iii.27). In Robert Graves' translation of The Golden Ass, he has interposed an explanatory "the Mare-headed Mother" that does not appear in the Latin text; it would have linked Epona with the primitive mythology of Demeter, who was covered as a mare by Poseidon in stallion-form and gave birth to the goddess Despoina, later conflated with Persephone; Demeter was venerated as a mare in Lycosoura in Arcadia into historical times. There is no justification for linking Epona with Demeter, however.
  4. ^ Satire VIII lines 155-57, where the narrator derides a consul for his inappropriate interest in horses:
    Meanwhile, while he sacrifices sheep and a redish bullock
    in the fashion of ancient king Numa, before the altar of Jupiter
    he swears an oath only by Epona and the images painted at the reeking stables.
    interea, dum lanatas robumque iuuencum
    more Numae caedit, Iouis ante altaria iurat
    solam Eponam et facies olida ad praesepia pictas.
  5. ^ Theo Brown, "Tertullian and Horse-Cults in Britain" Folklore 61.1 (March 1950, pp. 31-34) p. 33.
  6. ^ Herbert Kille, "West Country hobby-horses and cognate customs" Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society 77 (1931)

[edit] References

  • Benoît, F. (1950). Les mythes de l'outre-tombe. Le cavalier à L'anguipède et l'écuyère Épona. Brussels, Latomus Revue d'études latines.
  • Delamarre, X. (2003). Dictionaire de la Langue Gauloise. 2nd edition. Paris, Editions Errance.
  • Green M. J. (1986), The Gods of the Celts, Stroud, Gloucestershire.
  • Nantonos & Ceffyl (2004) Epona.net, a scholarly resource
  • Oaks, L. S. (1986), "The goddess Epona", in M. Henig and A. King, Pagan Gods and Shrines of the Roman Empire, Oxford, pp 77-84.
  • Reinach, Salomon (1895). Épona. Revue archéologique 1895, part 1, 113, 309
  • Francisco Marco Simón, "Religion and Religious Practices of the Ancient Celts of the Iberian Peninsula" in e-Keltoi: The Celts in the Iberian Peninsula, 6 287-345, section 2.2.4.1 (on-line)
  • Speidel, M. P. (1994). Riding for Caesar: the Roman Emperors' Horse Guards. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press.
  • Thevenot, Emile 1949. "Les monuments et le culte d' Epona chez les Eduens," L'antiquite Classique 18 pp385-400. Epona and the Aedui.
  • Vaillant, Roger (1951), Epona-Rigatona, Ogam, Rennes, pp190-205.
  • http://www.celtnet.org.uk/gods_e/epona.html

[edit] External links

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Archaic Demeter was also a Great Mare.
  2. ^ Compare Latin equus, Greek hippos.
  3. ^ "respicio pilae mediae, quae stabuli trabes sustinebat, in ipso fere meditullio Eponae deae simulacrum residens aediculae, quod accurate corollis roseis equidem recentibus fuerat ornatum." (iii.27). In Robert Graves' translation of The Golden Ass, he has interposed an explanatory "the Mare-headed Mother" that does not appear in the Latin text; it would have linked Epona with the primitive mythology of Demeter, who was covered as a mare by Poseidon in stallion-form and gave birth to the goddess Despoina, later conflated with Persephone; Demeter was venerated as a mare in Lycosoura in Arcadia into historical times. There is no justification for linking Epona with Demeter, however.
  4. ^ Satire VIII lines 155-57, where the narrator derides a consul for his inappropriate interest in horses:
    Meanwhile, while he sacrifices sheep and a redish bullock
    in the fashion of ancient king Numa, before the altar of Jupiter
    he swears an oath only by Epona and the images painted at the reeking stables.
    interea, dum lanatas robumque iuuencum
    more Numae caedit, Iouis ante altaria iurat
    solam Eponam et facies olida ad praesepia pictas.
  5. ^ Theo Brown, "Tertullian and Horse-Cults in Britain" Folklore 61.1 (March 1950, pp. 31-34) p. 33.
  6. ^ Herbert Kille, "West Country hobby-horses and cognate customs" Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society 77 (1931)

[edit] See also

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