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Matres and Matronae

Terracotta relief of the Matres (the Vertault relief), from the Gallo-Roman settlement of Vertillum (Vertault) in Gaul.
An altar of the Aufanian Matronae, excavated in the Bonn Minster (Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn)

The Matres (Latin for "mothers")[1] and Matronae (Latin for "matrons")[1] 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.[2]

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 that include local epithets such as a dedication to the Matribus Gallaicis "to the Galician Mothers";[3] and also in the Romano-Celtic culture of Pannonia in the form of similar reliefs and inscriptions to the Nutrices Augustae, "the august Nurses" found in Roman sites of Ptuj, Lower Styria.[4]

  1. ^ a b Lindow 2002, p. 224.
  2. ^ Simek 1996, pp. 204–205.
  3. ^ CIL II 2776.
  4. ^ K. Wigand, "Die Nutrices Augustae von Poeticio" Jahreshrift Österreiches Archäologisches Institut 18 (1915), pp 118-218, illus., noted by Susan Scheinberg, "The Bee Maidens of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes" Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 83 (1979), p 2.
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