Epona

The lamp in the stable had burned down to a low flame, and in its light the little carved figure set into the wall wore a fresh garland of roses. Around her the animals shifted in the straw, a few mules and a tired mare, the warm stink of dung and hay hanging thick in the closed air. A man who had been turned by bad magic into a donkey lifted his long head toward the image and knew at once who she was. This was Epona, the goddess who watched over everything kept in that room. The roses heaped at her feet were an offering left by the grooms. They were also, to him, the one thing in the world that might give him back his human shape.

That scene comes from a Roman novel, and it is close to the whole of what survives of her in writing. Epona has no birth story, no marriage we can follow, no quarrel with another god, no death. She is one of the most widely worshipped deities of the western Roman world and one of the least narrated. Her name is plain enough: it grows from the Gaulish word for horse, and a horse is what she is always near.

What she has instead of stories is her own face, carved and cast and chiseled across half a continent. The images fall into two patterns. In the older Gaulish style she rides, sitting side-saddle on a mare that walks at an unhurried pace, calm and queenly, sometimes with a foal trotting beneath the mother’s belly. In the style that traveled with the army she sits enthroned instead, a horse or two flanking her on either side, turned inward toward her like courtiers. In her arms and on her lap she carries the signs of plenty: a cornucopia spilling fruit, a flat dish for pouring offerings, a basket of bread or grain. Often a small dog rests near her, or a bird. On a silver bowl handle she holds a foal against her body and wears a crown shaped like the towers of a city. She is fed and she is generous. The horses do not fear her.

She began among the Gauls, a goddess of the people who bred and rode and buried their horses with unusual care, and she might have stayed a local power if the legions had not found her. Cavalry units carried her wherever they were posted, and her shrines turned up in the stable blocks of forts from Britain to the Danube. The horse-guards of the emperor in Rome itself, men recruited largely from the Batavians of the lower Rhine, kept her among them. Through them she did something almost no other Celtic deity managed. Rome gave her a place in its own religious calendar, a feast day in the cold middle of December, set down on a rustic stone calendar in northern Italy. A goddess born in a Gaulish horse-pasture ended up with an official Roman holiday.

The earliest writer to name her does so to sneer. A Roman satirist pictures a foolish nobleman swearing solemn oaths by Epona while standing at the altar of Jupiter himself, the joke being that a serious man has reduced himself to praying to the goddess of the muck and the stalls. The mockery is useful. It tells us that by his day every reader knew her, knew she lived in stables, and knew that the people who loved her best were the ones who shoveled out the straw. She was not a goddess of the temple precinct. She was a goddess of the working yard, painted on the wall above the feed bins, given roses by men with dirt under their nails.

There is a deeper layer under the stablework. In a handful of inscriptions she is called Queen, in the local tongue and in Latin both, and that title links her by language to a great Welsh figure, Rhiannon, the woman who first appears riding a white horse that no one can catch and who is later condemned to carry guests on her back like a beast of burden. Behind both names linguists reconstruct an older divine queen on horseback, and the Irish remembered a horse-goddess of their own who ran a race against the king’s chariot while heavily pregnant and died cursing the men who made her run. None of that survives attached to Epona’s name directly. What survives is the shape of the thing, a sovereign rider who is also a mother and a giver of abundance, the same figure the Gauls compared to their triple mother-goddesses and the Romans set beside Fortuna.

Her powers were the powers of the threshold and the road. She kept horses sound and fertile, mares in foal and the foals alive; she guarded the rider in the saddle and the column on the march; she filled the cornucopia. Some of her images were placed in graves, which has led to the idea that she also led the dead onward, the last rider escorting the last traveler, though the evidence is thin and the matter is disputed.

Her limits are written into all of this. She was never a goddess of thunder or the sea or the making of the world, and she had no throne on any mountain. Her domain was the stall, the paddock, the milestone, the cavalry barracks, and when Rome’s mounted columns thinned and faded so did she. She left almost nothing a storyteller could carry away. What she left instead was her likeness, the calm woman on the calm mare, repeated thousands of times by people who simply wanted their horses to come home.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Epona in Celtic and Roman mythology?

Epona is the Gaulish horse goddess, a Celtic deity of horses, mules, donkeys, and the people who rode and worked them. Her name comes from the Gaulish word for “horse.” She was adopted into Roman religion, especially by the cavalry, and is the only Celtic deity known to have been given an official feast day in the Roman calendar.

What was Epona the goddess of?

Epona was the goddess of horses and other equines, of cavalry and travelers, and of fertility and abundance. She protected the animals kept in stables and the soldiers and riders who depended on them. Her images often show her with symbols of plenty such as a cornucopia, an offering dish, or a basket of grain, marking her as a giver of nourishment as well as a guardian of horses.

Why did Roman soldiers worship a Celtic goddess?

Roman cavalry units adopted Epona because she protected horses, which were central to their work, and they carried her worship to forts across the empire. Her shrines appear in the stable blocks of military camps from Britain to the Danube. The emperor’s mounted bodyguard in Rome, recruited largely from the Batavians of the Rhine, kept her among them, helping spread her cult to the heart of the empire.

How is Epona usually depicted?

Epona is most often shown as a robed woman either riding side-saddle on a walking mare or seated on a throne flanked by horses and foals. She frequently holds a cornucopia, a shallow offering dish, or a basket of fruit and grain, and is sometimes accompanied by a small dog or a bird. On one famous silver bowl handle she holds a foal and wears a crown shaped like city walls.

Is Epona connected to the Welsh goddess Rhiannon?

Epona is linguistically linked to the Welsh figure Rhiannon, since both names trace back to a reconstructed Celtic title meaning “Great Queen” or “Divine Queen on horseback.” Rhiannon first appears riding a white horse no one can catch and is later forced to carry visitors on her back like a beast of burden. The two are not the same character, but they appear to descend from a shared older image of a sovereign horse-goddess.

Related Entries

Rhiannon, Rosmerta, Sucellus, Cernunnos, Taranis, Teutates, Esus, Lug, Belenus, Arawn, Pwyll, Sleipnir, Pegasus, Kelpie