Gallo-Roman goddess of horses and fertility
Epona, second or third century AD, from
Contern
, Luxembourg (Musee national d'art et d'histoire, Luxembourg City)
In
Gallo-Roman religion
,
Epona
was a protector of
horses
,
ponies
,
donkeys
, and
mules
. She was particularly a goddess of
fertility
, as shown by her attributes of a
patera
,
cornucopia
, ears of grain, and the presence of
foals
in some sculptures.
[1]
She and her horses might also have been
leaders of the soul
in the after-life ride, with later literary parallels in
Rhiannon
of the
Mabinogion
.
[2]
The worship of Epona, "the sole Celtic divinity ultimately worshipped in Rome itself",
[3]
as the patroness of cavalry,
[4]
was widespread in the
Roman Empire
between the first and third centuries AD; this is unusual for a Celtic deity, most of whom were associated with specific localities.
Etymology
[
edit
]
Although known only from Roman contexts, the name Epona ('Great Mare') is from the
Gaulish language
; it is derived from the inferred
Proto-Celtic
*
ek?os
'horse',
[5]
which gives rise to modern
Welsh
ebol
'foal', together with the
augmentative
suffix
-on
frequently, although not exclusively, found in
theonyms
(for example
Sirona
,
Matrona
) and the usual Gaulish feminine singular
-a
.
[6]
In an episode preserved in a remark of
Pausanias
,
[7]
an archaic
Demeter Erinys (Vengeful Demeter)
too had also been a Great Mare, who was mounted by
Poseidon
in the form of a stallion and foaled
Arion
and
the Daughter
who was unnamed outside the Arcadian mysteries.
[8]
Demeter was venerated as a mare in
Lycosoura
in
Arcadia
into historical times.
Evidence
[
edit
]
Epona and her horses, from Kongen, Germany, about 200 AD
Fernand Benoit found the earliest attestations of a cult of Epona in the
Danubian provinces
and asserted that she had been introduced in the
limes
of Gaul by horsemen from the east.
[9]
That suggestion has not been generally taken up.
Although the name is Gaulish, dedicatory inscriptions to Epona are in
Latin
or, rarely,
Greek
. They were made not only by
Celts
, but also by
Germans
, Romans, and other inhabitants of the
Roman Empire
. An inscription to Epona from Mainz, Germany, identifies the dedicator as Syrian.
[10]
A long Latin inscription of the first century BC, 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-Sevres
, the Roman Rauranum. Olmsted reads the inscription as invoking the goddess with an archaic profusion of epithets:
Eponina
'dear little Epona',
Atanta
'horse-goddess',
Potia
'powerful Mistress' (compare Greek
Potnia
),
Dibonia
(Latin, the 'good goddess')",
Catona
'of battle', noble and good
Vovesia
.
[
citation needed
]
However, Olmsted's interpretation has not been generally accepted by other scholars; Meid interprets the same inscription as an invocation of
Dibona
in vulgar Greek for aid in a romantic dispute.
[11]
Epona's feast day in the Roman calendar was given as December 18 on a rustic calendar from
Guidizzolo
, Italy,
[12]
although this may have been only a local celebration. She was incorporated into the
imperial cult
by being invoked on behalf of the Emperor, as
Epona Augusta
or
Epona Regina
.
The supposed autonomy of Celtic civilization in Gaul
[
clarification needed
]
suffered a further setback with Fernand Benoit's study
[13]
of the funereal symbolism of the horseman with the serpent-tailed (
"anguiforme"
) daemon, which he established as a theme of victory over death, and Epona; both he found to be late manifestations of Mediterranean-influenced symbolism, which had reached Gaul through contacts with
Etruria
and
Magna Graecia
. Benoit compared the rider with most of the riders imaged around the Mediterranean shores.
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 sovereign role evolved into a protector of cavalry.
[14]
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.
[15]
Her cult is said to have been "widespread also in
Carinthia
and
Styria
".
[16]
As
Epane
she is attested in
Cantabria
, northern Spain, on Mount Bernorio, Palencia;
[17]
as
Iccona Loiminna
[
dubious
–
discuss
]
in Portugal on the
Lusitanian
inscription of
Cabeco das Fraguas
.
A
euhemeristic
account of Epona's origin occurs in the
Parallela Minora
, which were traditionally attributed to
Plutarch
(but are now classed as "Pseudo-Plutarch"):
Fulvius Stellus hated women and used to consort with a mare and in due time the mare gave birth to a beautiful girl and they named her Epona. She is the goddess that is concerned with the protection of horses. So
Agesilaus
in the third book of his
Italian History.
[18]
The tale was passed along in the context of unseemly man-beast coupling in
Giambattista Della Porta
's edition of
Magia naturalis
(1589), a potpourri of the sensible and questionable, erroneously citing Plutarch's
Life of Solon
.
[19]
It may represent some recollection of
Indo-European
horse sacrifice
, such as the
Vedic
ashvamedha
and the
Irish ritual described by Giraldus Cambrensis
, both of which have to do with kingship. In the Celtic ritual, the king mates with a white mare thought to embody the goddess of sovereignty.
[20]
[21]
Iconography
[
edit
]
A relief of Epona, flanked by two pairs of horses, from Roman Macedonia
Sculptures of Epona fall into five types, as distinguished by Benoit: riding, standing or seated before a horse, standing or seated between two horses, a tamer of horses in the manner of
potnia theron
, and the symbolic mare and foal. 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.
[22]
In distant
Dacia
, she is represented on a
stela
(now at the Szepmuvezeti 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.
In literature and art
[
edit
]
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.
[23]
In his
Satires
, the Roman poet
Juvenal
also links the worship and iconography of Epona to the area of a stable.
[24]
Small images of Epona have been found in Roman sites of stables and barns over a wide territory.
Epona is indirectly referenced in Victor Hugo's
Les Miserables
through the name of the character Eponine.
[
citation needed
]
In
The Legend of Zelda
franchise, the main character Link's horse is named
Epona
. The horse is always shown as a brown or chestnut mare with a white mane.
Artist
Enya
's
namesake album
of 1987 contains a track titled
Epona
, as part of the soundtrack of the BBC documentary
The Celts
.
[25]
In 2017, Swiss Folk Metal band Eluveitie released a Gaulish-language song called “Epona” as part of their Evocation II: Pantheon album, praising the goddess
In Britain
[
edit
]
The probable date of c. 1380?550 BC ascribed to the
giant chalk horse
carved into the hillside turf at
Uffington
, in southern England, may be too early to be directly associated with Epona and may not actually represent a horse at all. The
West Country
traditional
hobby-horse
riders parading on
May Day
at
Padstow
, Cornwall and
Minehead
, Somerset, which survived to the mid-20th century, despite
Morris dances
having been forgotten, was thought by folklorists through the 20th Century to have deep roots in the veneration of Epona, as may the British aversion to eating horsemeat.
[26]
At Padstow, at the end of the festivities, the hobby-horse was formerly ritually submerged in the sea.
[27]
However, there is no firm evidence of the festival before the 18th century.
A provincial, small (7.5 cm high) Roman bronze of a seated Epona, flanked by an "extremely small" mare and stallion, was found in England.
[28]
Lying on her lap and on the
patera
raised in her right hand are disproportionately large ears of grain; ears of grain also protrude from the mouths of the ponies, whose heads are turned toward the goddess. On her left arm she holds a yoke, which curves up above her shoulder, an attribute unique to this bronze statuette.
[29]
In the medieval
Welsh
collection of stories known as the
Mabinogion
, the regal figure of
Rhiannon
rides a white horse, whose slow, effortless gait supernaturally outpaces all pursuit. Wrongly accused of killing her offspring, Rhiannon has to play the role of horse for seven years as punishment, offering to carry travellers to the court and telling them her story; she also wears the work-collar of an ass. She and her son, who is fathered by the sea-god (cf Romano-Greek
Poseidon
, god of horses and the sea), are sometimes described as mare and foal
[30]
Ronald Hutton is skeptical of connections claimed between Epona and Rhiannon; the latter is a much later, literary creation, though it also draws on oral traditions now lost.
[31]
A south Welsh folk ritual called
Mari Lwyd
(Grey Mare) is still undertaken in December, which some folklorists likewise have held up as an apparent survival of the veneration of Epona, but again there is no firm evidence to support the age, origins or purpose of the practice.
Today
[
edit
]
On
Mackinac Island
, Michigan, Epona is celebrated each June with stable tours, a blessing of the animals and the Epona and Barkus Parade. Mackinac Island does not permit personal automobiles; the primary source of transportation remains the horse, so celebrating Epona has special significance on this island in the upper midwest.
[32]
The "Feast of Epona" involves the blessing of horses and other animals by a local churchman.
[33]
Epona is also worshipped today by
neo-druids
[34]
and other
pagans
and polytheists.
[35]
See also
[
edit
]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to
Epona
.
Notes
[
edit
]
- ^
Salomon Reinach, "Epona",
Revue archeologique
(1895:163?95)
- ^
Henri Hubert,
Melanges linguistiques offerts a M. J.Vendryes
(1925:187?198).
- ^
Phyllis Fray Bober, reviewing Rene Magnen,
Epona, Deesse Gauloise des Chevaux, Protectrice des Cavaliers
in
American Journal of Archaeology
62
.3 (July 1958, pp. 349?350) p. 349. Emile Thevenot contributed a
corpus
of 268 dedicatory inscriptions and representations.
- ^
Berresford Ellis, Peter (1998).
The Ancient World of the Celts
. Great Britain:
Constable & Robinson
. p. 175.
ISBN
0-7607-1716-8
.
- ^
Compare
Latin
equus
, Greek
hippos
.
- ^
Delamarre, 2003:163?164.
- ^
Pausanias, viii.25.5, 37.1 and 42.1
The myth was noted in
Bibliotheke
3.77 and reflected also in a lost poem of
Callimachus
and in Ptolemy Hephaestion's
New History
.
- ^
Karl Kerenyi
,
The Gods of the Greeks
(1951) pp 184ff "Demeter and Poseidon's stallion-marriages".
- ^
Benoit, F. (1950).
Les mythes de l'outre-tombe. Le cavalier a l'anguipede et l'ecuyere Epona
. Brussels, Latomus Revue d'etudes latines.
- ^
CIL
13, 11801
- ^
Wolfgang Meid (2007). "Pseudogallische inschriften". In Lambert, Pierre-Yves; Pinault, Georges-Jean (eds.).
Gaulois et celtique continental
. Librairie Droz. pp. 277?290.
ISBN
9782600013376
.
- ^
Vaillant, 1951.
- ^
Benoit 1950.
- ^
Oaks 1986:79?81.
- ^
Spiedel, 1994.
- ^
Kropej, Monika. “The Horse As a Cosmological Creature in the Slovene Mythopoetic Heritage".
Studia Mythologica Slavica
1 (May/1998). Ljubljana, Slovenija. 156.
https://doi.org/10.3986/sms.v1i0.1871
.
- ^
Simon.
- ^
Pseudo-Plutarch,
Parallela Minora
29
, also found cited as 312e (= Agesilaus
FGrHist
F 1).
- ^
Giambattista Della Porta (1569).
"Magia naturalis, sive De miraculis rerum naturalium"
. Lyon.
[
page needed
]
- ^
M.L. West
,
Indo-European Poetry and Myth
(Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 418.
- ^
Miriam Robbins Dexter, "Horse Goddess," in
Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture
(Taylor & Francis, 1997), p. 280.
- ^
Nantonos, 2004.
- ^
"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 (see above); there is no justification for identifying Epona with Demeter, however.
- ^
Satire VIII
lines 155?57, where the narrator derides a consul for his inappropriate interest in horses:
- Meanwhile, while he sacrifices sheep and a reddish 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.
|
- ^
Enya
at
Discogs
.
- ^
Theo Brown, "Tertullian and Horse-Cults in Britain"
Folklore
61
.1 (March 1950, pp. 31?34) p. 33.
- ^
Herbert Kille, "West Country hobby-horses and cognate customs"
Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society
77
(1931)
[1]
- ^
Wiltshire is the presumed source of the find, and was added to the provenance "
trouvee en Angleterre
", after the piece had been described in the sale catalogue of the Ferencz Pulszky collection, Paris, 1868. It is conserved in the
British Museum
, and is described as "provincial, but not barbaric" in Catherine Johns, "A Roman Bronze Statuette of Epona",
The British Museum Quarterly
36
.1/2 (Autumn 1971:37?41).
- ^
Identified as a yoke by Catherine Johns 1971; its misidentification as a
serpent
has led to misleading identification of a "
chthonic
" Epona.
- ^
Ford, Patrick K.,
The Mabinogi and Other Medieval Welsh Tales
, 2008, University of California Press, pp. 12, 26, 36, 75, isbn 9780520253964. See also Sioned Davies (translator),
The Mabinogion
, Oxford 2007, p. 231.
- ^
Hutton, Ronald (2014).
Pagan Britain
. Yale University Press. p. 366.
ISBN
978-0300197716
.
- ^
"Mackinac Island Lilac Festival"
.
mackinacislandlilacfestival.org
. Archived from
the original
on February 2, 2015.
- ^
Caitlyn Kienitz (2008-06-21).
"Animals Are Blessed During Feast of Epona"
.
Town Crier (www.mackinacislandnews.com)
. Archived from
the original
on 2016-03-04
. Retrieved
2015-06-29
.
- ^
Cf.
Potia (n.d.).
"Epona"
. Order of Bards Ovates & Druids
. Retrieved
2015-06-29
.
- ^
Cf.
Jane Raeburn (2001).
Celtic Wicca: Ancient Wisdom for the 21st Century
. Citadel Press. p. 54.
References
[
edit
]
- Benoit, F. (1950).
Les mythes de l'outre-tombe. Le cavalier a l'anguipede et l'ecuyere Epona
. Brussels, Latomus Revue d'etudes latines.
- Delamarre, X. (2003).
Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise
. 2nd edition. Paris, Editions Errance.
- Euskirchen, Marion (1993). "Epona."
Bericht der Romisch-Germanischen Kommission
74
pp. 607?838.?
- Evans, Dyfed Llwyd (2005?2007), Epona: a Gaulish and Brythonic goddess (Divine Horse)
- Green M. J. (1986),
The Gods of the Celts
, Stroud, Gloucestershire.
- Magnen, R.
Epona
(Delmas, 1953).
- Nantonos and 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). "Epona".
Revue archeologique
1895, 163?95,
- Simon, Francisco Marco, "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 (
online
)
- 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
pp 385?400. Epona and the
Aedui
.
- Vaillant, Roger (1951), Epona-Rigatona,
Ogam
, Rennes, pp 190?205.
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Hernandez Guerra, Liborio (2011).
"La diosa Epona en la Peninsula Iberica. Una revision critica"
.
Hispania Antiqua
(35): 247?260.
- Lajoye, Patrice
(2016). "Note sur une source antique meconnue concernant le culte d'Epona en Cisalpine" [A note about a less known ancient source concerning Epona's cult in Cisalpine Gaul].
Etudes Celtiques
.
42
: 59?64.
doi
:
10.3406/ecelt.2016.2469
.
- Linduff, Katheryn M. (1979). "Epona : A Celt among the Romans".
Latomus
.
38
(4): 817?837.
JSTOR
41531375
.
- Waddell, John. "The Ancestors of Epona." In:
Myth and Materiality
, 124-46. Oxford; Philadelphia: Oxbow Books, 2018.
The Ancestors of Epona
.
- Warmind, Morten (2016). "Once More the Celtic Horse-Goddess".
Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium
.
36
(36): 231?40.
JSTOR
26383351
.
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