Angerona

This article is about the Roman goddess. For the genus of the tensioners, see Angerona (genus) .

Angerona (sculpture by Johann Wilhelm Beyer , 1773–1780, Schönbrunn Palace Park )

Angerona or Angeronia is a goddess of early Rome.

Her cult image was placed in the Temple of Volupia at the Porta Romanula . The portrait showed her with her mouth "bandaged and sealed". She also made the gesture of silence with her finger.

The great age of the cult can be recognized by the fact that Pliny relates Angerona to the secret name of Rome. That this secret name, for whose public naming the scholar and tribune Quintus Valerius Soranus 82 BC Was executed (if that was the reason), should not be betrayed, the portrayal of Angerona should be remembered through the sealed mouth and the gesture according to Pliny. That is why she was believed to be the real patron goddess of Rome.

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

The interpretation was already difficult in antiquity, because by the time the Roman antiquarians began to deal with the ancient cults and deities, Angerona had apparently already disappeared from the living memory of the people.

Some derived the name of the goddess from angor ("fear", "anxiety"), others from an illness, angina , as the goddess helped when the disease broke out. Gesture and setting up in the sanctuary of Volupia, the goddess of well-being, were brought together in such a way that well-being finally occurs if one remains steadfast in the face of fear and anxiety and remains silent about it.

In modern times, Theodor Mommsen and, after him, Hendrik Simon Versnel attempted an interpretation from the time of the festival at the winter solstice and from the name with angerere (“ bring up”) in the sense of “bring the sun up again”. The gesture of silence and the relationship to Volupia are not explained by this.

literature

• Emil Aust : Angerona . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume I, 2, Stuttgart 1894, Col. 2189 f.
• Fulvio Canciani:  Angerona . In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). Volume I, Zurich / Munich 1981, pp. 729-793.
• Eva Fiesel: Etruscan ancar. In: Language . Volume 11, No. 2 (June, 1935), pp. 122-128, especially pp. 126ff.
• Hendrik S. Versnel: Angerona. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 1, Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-476-01471-1 , Sp. 701.
• H. Wagenvoort: Diva Angerona. In: Mnemosyne . 3rd series, Volume 9, Issue 3 (1941), pp. 215-217 (Latin).
• Georg Wissowa : Angerona . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 1,1, Leipzig 1886, Col. 348-350 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Angerona  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Varro , De lingua latina 5,164. Macrobius , Saturnalia 1,10,7 .
2. ↑ ^{a b} Pliny , Naturalis historia 3.65: ore obligato obsignatoque simulacrum habet.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Macrobius, Saturnalia 3,9,4 .
4. ↑ Macrobius, Saturnalia 1,10,9.
5. ^ Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum I, p. 409.
6. ↑ Hendrik S. Versnel: Transition and Reversal in Myth and Ritual. 1993, pp. 164-176.