Angerona

Angerona or Angeronia is a goddess of early Rome.

Your cult statue was erected in the Temple of Volupia at Porta Romanula. The portrait she showed with " bandaged and sealed " mouth. They also made ​​the finger gesture of silence.

The great age of the cult can be recognized that Pliny Angerona sets in relation to the secret name of Rome. That it was a secret name for the public acknowledgment of the tribune Quintus Valerius Soranus scholars and executed 82 BC (if that was the reason ), should not be betrayed, it should by the sealed mouth and the gesture, according to Pliny the presentation of the Angerona remember. They were held therefore also for the actual patron goddess of Rome.

At this point, Pliny also mentions the feast of Angerona that Angeronalia or Divalia, which were celebrated on December 21.

The interpretation had already caused difficulties in ancient times, because at the time when the Roman antiquarians began to deal with the old cults and deities, Angerona was from the living memory of the people seem to have disappeared.

Some initiated from the name of the goddess of angor ( "fear ", " anxiety " ), others of a disease, angina, as during an outbreak of disease, the goddess helped. Gesture and installation in the Shrine of Volupia, the goddess of well-being, they brought together well so that well-being is finally adjusting if you remain steadfast in fear and anxiety and is silent about it.

In modern times, have Theodor Mommsen and after him Hendrik Simon Versnel an interpretation from the date of the feast of the winter solstice and from the name with angerere ( " usher " ) " usher in the sun again " in the sense of trying. The gesture of silence and the relationship with Volupia be characterized but not explained.