Abstract
Some healing gods in Gallia Belgica and in the Germaniae, especially in Germania superior had feminine deities as consorts. Seven goddesses were concerned by that characteristic in provinces that contains hundreds. The identification of such goddesses needs to use precise criteria explored in the paper. That will help us to prove that they were mainly from Celtic origins. But besides that Celtic origin, the form of cults and the aspect of sanctuaries were Romans, and the dedicants were well aware of the Roman habits.
Highlights
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Few scholars have paid attention to their feminine consorts in the western part of the Roman Empire, and even fewer have studied the Northern provinces, such as Gallia Belgica and the Germaniae. In these provinces, which counted hundreds of feminine deities, six goddesses can be identified as consorts of the healing gods
This article identifies the function of the god, the kind of uncovered offerings made to the god, the organisation of the sanctuary, and the presence of thermal facilities where water was utilized in the healing process as criteria which we can use to determine whether a goddess was a consort of a healing god or not
Summary
In Gallia Belgica and the Germaniae, thirteen goddesses of water and springs can be identified but only a few were consorts of healing gods and even fewer represented the Salus. Gallia Belgica was known to privilege Celtic goddesses over Roman or Greek deities (Ferlut, 2014) and the analysis of the corpus (Appendix 1) proves that the province hosted the largest number of inscriptions dedicated to those feminine consorts of healing gods – 33 in Belgica and 21 in Germania Superior. In the majority of inscriptions the gods had Roman names, as in the case of Mercury and Apollo, even with a topic epithet, but their consorts were Celtic goddesses so far, including Maia, whatever her Roman name may be: Populations from these provinces decided to use names from the province, mainly because these goddesses were primarily goddesses of springs and water, like Damona. Identifying the gods’ feminine consorts and their functions is a challenge but it is an important scholarly undertaking since it allows us to focus on the different kinds of rituals practised at the time, in the deities’ sanctuaries
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