EPONA SALVATOR?: ISIS AND THE HORSE GODDESS IN APULEIUS’ METAMORPHOSES

Jeffrey Winkle (Calvin College)

Our knowledge of the horse goddess Epona comes almost exclusively through archeological and iconographic sources. The written record from antiquity is frustratingly scanty and scattered (brief mentions in Juvenal, Tertullian, and Minucius Felix), and when she is mentioned at all it is always in passing—no real textual meat to sink interpretive teeth into. As such she has always been primarily understood as a protector of horses and stables as well as a tutelary goddess of cavalry. While she surely carried out these roles, there are iconographical clues which suggest that Epona may have also functioned as a chthonic deity or psychopomp. In a handful of images she is depicted with “otherworldly” symbols, most notably a key or the door to Hades. But, again, without text we are largely left to speculation.

Enter Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. At a glance Epona’s appearance in the novel seems innocuous. Lucius (soon after becoming an ass) encounters a shrine to the goddess decorated with roses (the antidote to his asinine state) but is tragically spirited off before he can taste them. I contend that Apuleius plants this scene (as he does the statues of Diana and Victory in Book 2) as a hint of the Isiac salvation to come. By looking closely at other imagery in the novel and setting it alongside the iconographic record, a more secure case for Epona’s “otherworldly” persona can be made, particularly through her identification with Isis herself.

Epona shows up in other, more subtle scenes. In Book 6 the kidnapped Charite (who, too, is a savior-figure, foreshadowing Isis) escapes from the brigands’ cave on Lucius’ back. Here (in one of the many art/life confusions in the novel) she strikes a very Epona-like pose, even proclaiming that she will have a portrait made of the escape. Apuleius’ description of the girl on the donkey strikingly corresponds with surviving depictions of Epona as well as with the worship of the goddess as described by Minucius Felix. Also, at the end of the novel, Lucius’ transfigured state is emphasized by the return of his white horse, Candidus. This, too, could be a nod toward the horse goddess and her possible identification with Isis and the “otherworldly”. In later Celtic myth Epona becomes Rhiannon who also acts as psychopomp and is symbolized by a white horse.

Extra-Apuleian evidence seems to point to this identification as well. Minucius Felix (albeit vaguely) associates the worship of Isis with that of Epona in his Octavius. Also, a pair of Eponas from Pompeii suggests Isiac connections: 1) a lost fresco (survives in a 19^th century engraving) depicts the two goddesses together watching over a bakery/mill. 2) A fresco from another mill shows an Epona on a donkey nursing a child in the manner of Isis kourotrophos.

Since Lucius spends the better part of eleven books as a donkey, it makes sense that one of the guises of Isis/Providence would be the protector of all things equine. Set next to the iconographic record Apuleius’ Metamorphoses seems to present not so much the loose syncretism of its author but rather textual hooks on which we can at last hang our pictures.