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Epona
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. She and her horses might also have been leaders of the soul in the after-life ride, with parallels in Rhiannon of the Mabinogion. The worship of Epona, "the sole Celtic divinity ultimately worshipped in Rome itself", as the patroness of cavalry, 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 Although known only from Roman contexts, the name Epona ('Great Mare') is from the Gaulish language; it is derived from the inferred Proto-Celtic *''ekʷos'' 'horse', which gives rise to modern Welsh ''ebol'' 'foal', together with the augmentative suffix ''-on'' frequently, though not exclusively, found in theonyms (for exa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rhiannon
Rhiannon is a major figure in the Mabinogi, the medieval Welsh story collection. She appears mainly in the First Branch of the Mabinogi, and again in the Third Branch. She is a strong-minded Otherworld woman, who chooses Pwyll, prince of Dyfed (west Wales), as her consort, in preference to another man to whom she has already been betrothed. She is intelligent, politically strategic, beautiful, and famed for her wealth and generosity. With Pwyll she has a son, the hero Pryderi, who later inherits the lordship of Dyfed. She endures tragedy when her newborn child is abducted, and she is accused of infanticide. As a widow she marries Manawydan of the British royal family, and has further adventures involving enchantments. Like some other figures of British/Welsh literary tradition, Rhiannon may be a reflection of an earlier Celtic deity. Her name appears to derive from the reconstructed Brittonic form *''Rīgantonā'', a derivative of *''rīgan-'' "queen". In the First Branch of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gallo-Roman Religion
Gallo-Roman religion is a fusion of the traditional religious practices of the Gauls, who were originally Celtic speakers, and the Roman and Hellenistic religions introduced to the region under Roman Imperial rule. It was the result of selective acculturation. Deities In some cases, Gaulish deity names were used as epithets for Roman deities, and vice versa, as with Lenus Mars or Jupiter Poeninus. In other cases, Roman gods were given Gaulish female partners – for example, Mercury was paired with Rosmerta and Sirona was partnered with Apollo. In at least one case – that of the equine goddess Epona – a native Celtic goddess was also adopted by Romans. The Jupiter Column was a distinctive type of religious monument from Roman Gaul and Germania, combining an equestrian Jupiter overcoming a giant (or sometimes Jupiter enthroned) with panels depicting many other deities. Eastern mystery religions penetrated Gaul early on. These included the cults of Orpheus, Mithras, Cybel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Celtic Mythology
Celtic mythology is the body of myths belonging to the Celtic peoples.Cunliffe, Barry, (1997) ''The Ancient Celts''. Oxford, Oxford University Press , pp. 183 (religion), 202, 204–8. Like other Iron Age Europeans, Celtic peoples followed a polytheistic religion, having many gods and goddesses. The mythologies of continental Celtic peoples, such as the Gauls and Celtiberians, did not survive their conquest by the Roman Empire, the loss of their Celtic languages and their subsequent conversion to Christianity. Only remnants are found in Greco-Roman sources and archaeology. Most surviving Celtic mythology belongs to the Insular Celtic peoples (the Gaels of Ireland and Scotland; the Celtic Britons of western Britain and Brittany). They preserved some of their myths in oral lore, which were eventually written down by Christian scribes in the Middle Ages. Irish mythology has the largest written body of myths, followed by Welsh mythology. The supernatural race called the Tuatha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia, and was ruled by emperors. From the accession of Caesar Augustus as the first Roman emperor to the military anarchy of the 3rd century, it was a Principate with Italia as the metropole of its provinces and the city of Rome as its sole capital. The Empire was later ruled by multiple emperors who shared control over the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire. The city of Rome remained the nominal capital of both parts until AD 476 when the imperial insignia were sent to Constantinople following the capture of the Western capital of Ravenna by the Germanic barbarians. The adoption of Christianity as the state church of the Roman Empire in AD 380 and the fall of the Western ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Matres And Matrones
The Matres (Latin for "mothers") and Matronae (Latin for "matrons") were female deities venerated in Northwestern Europe, of whom relics are found dating from the first to the fifth century AD. They are depicted on votive offerings and altars that bear images of goddesses, depicted almost entirely in groups of three, that feature inscriptions (about half of which feature Continental Celtic names and half of which feature Germanic names) and were venerated in regions of Germania, Eastern Gaul, and Northern Italy (with a small distribution elsewhere) that were occupied by the Roman army from the first to the fifth century. Matres also appear on votive reliefs and inscriptions in other areas occupied by the Roman army, including southeast Gaul, as at Vertillum; in Spain and Portugal, where some twenty inscriptions are known, among them several ones which include local epithets like a dedication to the ''Matribus Gallaicis'' "to the Galician Mothers"; and also in the Romano-Celtic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry grammatical information (inflectional suffixes) or lexical information ( derivational/lexical suffixes'').'' An inflectional suffix or a grammatical suffix. Such inflection changes the grammatical properties of a word within its syntactic category. For derivational suffixes, they can be divided into two categories: class-changing derivation and class-maintaining derivation. Particularly in the study of Semitic languages, suffixes are called affirmatives, as they can alter the form of the words. In Indo-European studies, a distinction is made between suffixes and endings (see Proto-Indo-European root). Suffixes can carry grammatical information or lexical information. A word-final segment that is somewhere between a free morpheme and a b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theonym
A theonym (from Greek ''theos'' (Θεός), "god"'','' attached to ''onoma'' (ὄνομα), "name") is the proper name of a deity. Theonymy, the study of divine proper names, is a branch of onomastics (the study of the etymology, history, and use of proper names.); it helps develop an understanding of the function and societal views of particular gods and may help understand the origins of a society's language. Analysis of theonyms has been useful in understanding the connections of Indo-European languages, and possibly their religion. In all languages, the analysis of the possible etymological origin of a theonym can serve as basis for theories of its historical origin. Metaphysical and mystical meanings are also discerned in theonyms, as in Kabbalah. Theonyms can also appear as all or part of a name for a human, animal, thing or place. See also * -onym * Theo * Theology * Thealogy, similar origin as above, but female instead * God (word) * Names of God * Nomenclature * Ono ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sirona
In Celtic polytheism, Sirona was a goddess worshipped predominantly in East Central Gaul and along the Danubian limes. A healing deity, she was associated with healing springs; her attributes were snakes and eggs. She was sometimes depicted with Apollo Grannus or Apollo Borvo. She was particularly worshipped by the Treveri in the Moselle Valley. Sirona's name The name of the goddess was written in various ways: ''Sirona'', ''Đirona'', ''Thirona'', indicating some difficulty in capturing the initial sound in the Latin alphabet. The symbol Đ is used here to represent the ''tau gallicum'', an additional letter used in Gaulish representing the cluster ''ts'' which was interchangeable with ''st''- in word-initial position and it is not a form of the letter "D". The root is a long vowel Gaulish variant of proto-Celtic ''*ster-'' (''*h2ster'') meaning ‘star’. The same root is found in Old Irish as ''ser'', Welsh ''seren'', Middle Cornish ''sterenn'' and Breton ''steren(n)''. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luxembourg MNHA 264 Epona Contern
Luxembourg ( ; lb, Lëtzebuerg ; french: link=no, Luxembourg; german: link=no, Luxemburg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ; french: link=no, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg ; german: link=no, Großherzogtum Luxemburg is a small landlocked country in Western Europe. It borders Belgium to the west and north, Germany to the east, and France to the south. Its capital and most populous city, Luxembourg, is one of the four institutional seats of the European Union (together with Brussels, Frankfurt, and Strasbourg) and the seat of several EU institutions, notably the Court of Justice of the European Union, the highest judicial authority. Luxembourg's culture, people, and languages are highly intertwined with its French and German neighbors; while Luxembourgish is legally the only national language of the Luxembourgish people, French and German are also used in administrative and judicial matters and all three are considered administrative languages of the country. With an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pausanias (geographer)
Pausanias ( /pɔːˈseɪniəs/; grc-gre, Παυσανίας; c. 110 – c. 180) was a Greek traveler and geographer of the second century AD. He is famous for his ''Description of Greece'' (, ), a lengthy work that describes ancient Greece from his firsthand observations. ''Description of Greece'' provides crucial information for making links between classical literature and modern archaeology. Biography Not much is known about Pausanias apart from what historians can piece together from his own writing. However, it is mostly certain that he was born c. 110 AD into a Greek family and was probably a native of Lydia in Asia Minor. From c. 150 until his death in 180, Pausanias travelled through the mainland of Greece, writing about various monuments, sacred spaces, and significant geographical sites along the way. In writing ''Description of Greece'', Pausanias sought to put together a lasting written account of "all things Greek", or ''panta ta hellenika''. Living in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Augmentative
An augmentative (abbreviated ) is a morphological form of a word which expresses greater intensity, often in size but also in other attributes. It is the opposite of a diminutive. Overaugmenting something often makes it grotesque and so in some languages, augmentatives are used primarily for comical effect or as pejoratives. Many languages have augmentatives for nouns, and some have augmentatives for verbs. Germanic languages English In modern English, augmentatives can be created with the prefixes: *''over-'': e.g., ''overlord'' and ''overqualified''. *''grand-'': e.g., ''grandmaster'' and ''grandparent''. *''super-'': e.g., ''supermarket'' and ''superpower''. *''mega-'': e.g., ''megastore'' and ''megastar''. *''arch-'': e.g., ''archrival'' and ''archangel''. Since the early 1990s, the prefix ''über-'' or ''uber-'' has also frequently been used as a borrowing from German. The suffix -zilla, expressing a monstrous quality, can also be considered an augmentative form. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Demeter
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Demeter (; Attic: ''Dēmḗtēr'' ; Doric: ''Dāmā́tēr'') is the Olympian goddess of the harvest and agriculture, presiding over crops, grains, food, and the fertility of the earth. Although she is mostly known as a grain goddess, she also appeared as a goddess of health, birth, and marriage, and had connections to the Greek Underworld, Underworld. She is also called Deo (). In Greek tradition, Demeter is the second child of the Titans Rhea (mythology), Rhea and Cronus, and sister to Hestia, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. Like her other siblings but Zeus, she was swallowed by her father as an infant and rescued by Zeus. Through her brother Zeus, she became the mother of Persephone, a fertility goddess. One of the most notable Homeric Hymns, the ''Homeric Hymn to Demeter'', tells the story of Persephone's abduction by Hades and Demeter's search for her. When Hades, the King of the Underworld, wished to make Persephone his wife ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
