Epona

• 1. Introduction

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  In a stable described by the Roman writer Apuleius in his novel The Golden Ass, a small niche on a pillar holds an image of Epona. Someone has garlanded it with freshly picked roses. Epona was the goddess of horses and ponies in Gallo-Roman religion, and she was also a fertility and mother goddess. Her name is Gaulish, yet the people who honored her included Celts, Germans and other inhabitants of the Roman Empire. Who were these worshippers, and what did they ask of her? Why did a horse goddess from Gaul travel so far from home? And how did her name end up in Welsh legend, English folk customs, a video game and a spacecraft?

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• 2. Great Mare

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  The name Epona means 'Great Mare' and comes from Gaulish, an extinct Celtic language. It traces back to the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European word éḱwos, meaning horse. In Proto-Celtic that became *ekʷos, and later the Celtic epos. The name adds an augmentative suffix, -on, often found in divine names such as Sirona and Matrona. It then takes the usual Gaulish feminine ending, -a. Some scholars instead suggest that an -ona or -ana ending points to sacred water, such as springs.

  The Satires of Juvenal, written between 100 and 127 CE, are among the earliest mentions of Epona as a goddess. Juvenal links her worship and imagery to stables. Small images of her have been found in stables and barns at Roman sites across a wide territory.

  A very different account appears in the Parallela Minora, attributed to Pseudo-Plutarch. It says that Fulvius Stellus hated women and consorted with a mare. In due time the mare gave birth to a beautiful girl, who was named Epona. The text credits a writer called Agesilaüs, in the third book of his Italian History. Giambattista Della Porta repeated the tale in his 1589 edition of Magia naturalis, though he wrongly cited Plutarch's Life of Solon.

  The story may hold a faint memory of ancient Indo-European horse sacrifice, which was tied to kingship. One example is the Vedic ashvamedha. Another is an Irish ritual described by Giraldus Cambrensis, in which the king mates with a white mare believed to embody the goddess of sovereignty. Pausanias tells a Greek parallel about Demeter Erinys, 'Vengeful Demeter'. In the form of a mare, she was raped by Poseidon in the form of a stallion. Demeter was venerated as a mare at Lycosoura in Arcadia.

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• 3. Votive Evidence

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  Votive objects, inscriptions and small statues of stone or clay make up nearly all the evidence for Epona's cult. Most were found in what was eastern and northeastern Roman Gaul, and around the Roman limes in the German Rhineland. Cavalry garrisoned both regions. Historian Fernand Benoît claimed that her worship began in the Roman Danubian provinces. He argued that horsemen from the east brought her to the Gallic limes. That suggestion is not widely accepted.

  At Mainz, in Germany, one inscription identifies the person who dedicated it as Syrian. The goddess's name is Gaulish, but the dedications are written in Latin or, rarely, in Greek. Most were made by a single person keeping a pledge or vow. Typically the dedicator was a cavalry soldier of modest rank, with a Romanized name or a Roman surname.

  In 1887, a long Latin inscription from the first century BCE was found at Rom, Deux-Sèvres, the Roman settlement of Rauranum. It was engraved on a lead sheet and accompanied the sacrifice of a filly and the gift of a cauldron. Olmsted reads it as calling on the goddess with an archaic flood of epithets. These include Eponina, 'dear little Epona', and Atanta, 'horse-goddess'. They also include Potia, 'powerful mistress', and Dibonia, the 'good goddess'. Catona, 'of battle', and Vovesia complete the list. Other scholars have not accepted that reading. Meid sees an appeal to the goddess Dibona, in vulgar Greek, for help in a romantic dispute.

  Two inscriptions mention a temple to Epona in modern Nièvre, France. It was apparently built where Caesar defeated the Gallic chieftain Vercingetorix during the Gallic Wars. Possible cult or temple sites have also turned up at Asse and Elewijt in modern Belgium. Many offerings lay near wells, springs and the Moselle, which suggests that worshippers also saw Epona as a healer.

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• 4. Mother of Horses

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  When Vercingetorix sent his horses away rather than let them be captured or killed, he showed how dearly Gallic soldiers held them. Horses were a key part of Gallic life before Rome arrived. In regional cults in Roman-occupied Gaul, Epona was worshipped as a mother goddess. She oversaw the welfare of horses, donkeys, mules and their riders.

  She likely embodied the domesticated side of the horse, meaning fertility, abundance, reproduction and protection. Altars to her were commonly placed in stables, so she was probably seen as a goddess of horse-breeding too. Her imagery suggests a peaceful divinity before Roman contact, tied to fertility and protection rather than war.

  Some dedicated objects hint at a funerary role. In some ancient cultures, horses were believed to guide the soul into the afterlife. Benoît proposed that images of Epona carried a theme of victory over death. He grouped them with images of a serpent-tailed daemon, which he called anguiforme. He saw both as Mediterranean symbolism that reached Gaul through contacts with Etruria and Magna Graecia. That peaceful, protective image would shift once Gaul came under Roman rule.

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• 5. Goddess of Cavalry

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  Between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD, Epona was widely worshipped across the Roman Empire as the patroness of cavalry. Romans who met Celtic deities often read them through existing Roman models, a process called interpretatio romana. As Gaul was Romanized under the early Empire, Epona's sovereign role grew into that of a protector of cavalry.

  Military units carried her cult across the empire. These were the auxilia, alae, numeri and equites singulares, recruited mainly from Gaul, Lower Germany and Pannonia. Adopted Celtic gods were usually tied to particular localities. Epona broke that pattern. She was, in one description, "the sole Celtic divinity ultimately worshipped in Rome itself."

  A rustic calendar from Guidizzolo, Italy, gives her feast day as the 18th of December, though that may have been only a local celebration. She was also folded into the Roman imperial cult. Worshippers invoked her on behalf of the emperor as Epona Augusta or Epona Regina, meaning 'queen'. Her surviving offerings and inscriptions are modest, so scholars suggest she kept her rustic character, with its focus on healing and fertility, even after Roman adoption. Her cult reached as far west as the Iberian Peninsula.

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• 6. Beyond Gaul

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  In Cantabria and Palencia, in modern Spain, Epona was known as Epane. The core of the cult in Hispania was likely Celtiberia, a region of Hispano-Celtic speakers that the Empire later absorbed. Art from this region shows her riding a horse, standing among a herd of horses, or feeding foals.

  A small stone altar found at Andújar, Andalusia, likely dates to the late 1st or early 2nd century CE. The goddess herself is not shown. Instead, a mule is carved into its surface. The cult probably spread into cities along the Sierra Morena because of a vast network of copper mines there. Her worshippers likely worked at or owned those mines.

  Reliefs and sculptures have also been found in Pannonia, Moesia Inferior, Dacia and the central Balkans. She is often seated and flanked by two horses. She wears a belted, long-sleeved tunic called a chiton, with a himation layered over it. On the handle of a silver patera she holds a foal and wears a corona muralis. Her worshippers here may have been blacksmiths and miners from Gaul who worked the silver and lead mines. She may also be the unidentified goddess seen blessing the Thracian Horseman, an obscure deity worshipped in the region.

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• 7. Images of Epona

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  Benoît sorted sculptures of Epona into five types. In the first she rides. In the second she stands or sits before a horse, and in the third between two horses. The fourth shows her as a tamer of horses, in the manner of potnia theron. The fifth is a symbolic mare and foal. Most statues are stone, bronze or terracotta, and most show her riding sidesaddle.

  In the Equestrian type, common in Gaul, she sits sidesaddle on a horse or, rarely, lies on one. In the Imperial type, more common outside Gaul, she sits on a throne flanked by two or more horses or foals.

  Besides horses, she most often holds a cornucopia. Bowls or dishes of fruit, bread or corn are also common. The cornucopia may have been a Roman addition. The same objects are paired with other goddesses of fertility and abundance, such as Fortuna and the Matres. She is sometimes linked with birds or dogs. The dog is a symbol of Sucellus, the Gallic god of agriculture and wine.

  A small Roman bronze, 7.5 cm high, found in England shows a seated Epona. An "extremely small" mare and stallion flank her. Oversized ears of grain lie on her lap and on the patera raised in her right hand. More grain protrudes from the mouths of the ponies, whose heads turn toward her. On her left arm she holds a yoke that curves above her shoulder, an attribute unique to this bronze.

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• 8. Echoes and Revivals

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  In the medieval Welsh Mabinogion, the regal Rhiannon rides a white horse. Its slow, effortless gait supernaturally outpaces all pursuit. Wrongly accused of killing her offspring, she must live as a horse for seven years. She offers to carry travellers to the court and tells them her story. She also wears the work-collar of an ass. She and her son, whose father is a sea-god, are sometimes described as mare and foal. Epona and her horses may have escorted souls in the afterlife, and Rhiannon is seen as a later literary parallel. Ronald Hutton is skeptical of the connection. He notes that Rhiannon is a much later literary creation, though one that draws on oral traditions now lost.

  In Padstow and Minehead, in the West Country of England, May Day hobby-horse parades survived into the 20th century. At the end of the festivities in Padstow, the hobby-horse was formerly submerged in the sea. Folklorists have claimed the festival has roots in the worship of Epona. Yet there is no firm evidence that it existed before the 18th century. The same claim is made for Mari Lwyd, or Grey Mare, a southern Welsh folk ritual still performed in December. No firm evidence supports it either.

  In The Legend of Zelda franchise, the hero Link's horse is named Epona. She is always a palomino or flaxen chestnut mare with a white mane. A track titled Epona appears on Enya's 1987 album, as part of the soundtrack to the BBC documentary The Celts.

  Each June, Mackinac Island, Michigan, celebrates Epona with stable tours, a blessing of the animals and the Epona and Barkus Parade. The island does not permit personal automobiles, so the horse remains its main transport. In the Feast of Epona, a local churchman blesses horses and other animals. Neo-druids, pagans and polytheists also worship her today. Her name even lives on in EPONA, the Energetic Particle Onset Admonitor, an instrument aboard the Giotto spacecraft.

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