Epona: Hidden Goddess of the Celts by P D MacKenzie Cook

Author:P D MacKenzie Cook [MacKenzie Cook, P D]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Avalonia
Published: 2016-08-07T23:00:00+00:00

Mysteries of “The Maiden”

Since Despoina had long been identified with Persephone, it is natural to think that Epona too may have been equated with the Queen of the Greek underworld - not at Eleusis, where the main centre of her Mysteries was located, but elsewhere in the Greek world. Like Despoina however, Persephone's true identity was hidden outside her Mysteries and she was typically called Kore - the Maiden. This was why Empedocles could only refer cryptically to the fact that, in Sicily, she was identified with the local goddess Nestis.[828] If Epona too had been identified with Persephone, it would have been a similarly well-hidden and closely-guarded secret.

There are several hints that this was indeed the case. Among them was the timing of Epona's feast day in the Roman calendar. There has been some caution about accepting this date as official, since the calendar that recorded it was found in a rural area near Mantua in Lombardy, northern Italy - formerly in Cisalpine Gaul.[829] However, since this was where veterans of the legions under Augustus settled,[830] it is very likely that the rural calendar reflected the official day on which Epona's feast was held in Rome, and this is certainly supported by her overt association with Ceres and her more allusive link with Libera - the Roman Demeter and Persephone.[831]

Most importantly, Epona's feast day would not have been chosen arbitrarily. Her native Celtic association with fertility was hardly sufficient to warrant such a prominent place in the year, and there were Roman goddesses who could easily have played that role. Venus, Fecunditas and Feronia all come to mind as examples, and Libera herself would have been an obvious choice as a goddess of fertility and the earth. She was a plebeian goddess however, and thus the antithesis of the values fundamental to patrician morality. More importantly perhaps, Libera had been officially identified with Persephone and the Greek rites of Ceres in Rome since the late 3rd century BC. This was a “foreign” association that would have compromised the fundamentally Roman nature of the festival dedicated to Rome's oldest god. Epona however, provided a perfect alternative. Her role in the elite Roman cavalry suggested an obvious link with the acquisition and protection of Roman wealth (Saturn), while her association with Ceres and Libera tacitly acknowledged the necessary connection between fertility (Libera) and the earth-based wealth of cereal grain (Ceres).

This leaves us with a question: how did Epona come to be associated with Ceres and Libera in the first place? Their connection was not something the equites would have picked up from other cultures and brought back with them to Rome. Ceres and Libera were Roman goddesses, and their relationship only had meaning within Rome itself. Epona's association with them must therefore have come about in Rome. But while her native fertility, abundance and underworld symbolism no doubt played an important part in this connection, there was an earlier precedent in southern Italy.

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