Epona
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This article is about the Celtic goddess; for the video game character, see The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time characters.
In Roman mythology, Epona was the goddess 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). 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. The worship of Epona was widespread between the first and third centuries CE.
Although only known from Roman contexts, the name Epona is from the Celtic language Gaulish; it is derived from epos, horse or epa, mare (Delmarre, 2003). However, dedicatory inscriptions to Epona are in Latin or, rarely, Greek and were made not only by Celts but also Germans, Romans and other inhabitants of the Roman Empire. Her feast day was December 18 as shown by a rustic calendar from Guidizzolo, Italy (Vaillant, 1951).
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).
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) laying 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).
Epona is mentioned in The Golden Ass by Apuleius and the Satires by Juvenal.
The giant chalk horse carved into the hill at Uffington, southern England, is believed by some to be associated with her although the date of 1400 BCE makes this unlikely.
References
- Benoît, F. (1950). Les mythes de l'outre-tombe. Le cavalier à L'anguipède et l'écuyère Épona. Bruxelles, Latomus Revue d'études latines.
- Delamarre, X. (2003). Dictionaire de la Langue Gauloise. Paris, Editions Errance.
- Nantonos & Ceffyl (2004) [Epona.net, a scholarly resource (http://www.epona.net)]
- Reinach, Salomon (1895). Épona. Revue archéologique 1895, part 1, 113, 309
- Speidel, M. P. (1994). Riding for Caesar: the Roman Emperors' Horse Guards. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press.
- Vaillant, Roger (1951), Epona-Rigatona, Ogam, Rennes, pp190-205.de:Charaktere, Völker und Orte aus The Legend of Zelda