II DIVA ANGERONA Everyone Knows How Often Both in Ancient and More

Everyone knows how often both in ancient and more recent times scholars have attempted to interpret the nature and name of the goddess Angerona. And yet to me we seem to have made hardly any progress in this attempt. Aust 1 and Wissowa 2 have collected the relevant passages from ancient authors and other documents which I think it unnecessary to copy out. Neither the disease of angitia nor 'worries to be dispelled,' as urged on us by the ancients, are of any help towards an interpretation. Mommsen 3 thought Angerona was a goddess in charge of the New Year. He sought to derive the name from angerendum, &1to 't'ou &voccpepea6ocL 't'Ov ~A.Lov. The explanation was accepted by Wissowa but rightly rejected by others (Walde-Hofmann s.v. 'ganz unwahrscheinlich'). Recently Eva Fiesel 4 and Altheim 6 have sought an Etruscan origin for the name and connected it with the gentilitial name anx.arie, ancarie, anx.aru, ancaru. The suggestion is rejected by Vetter,8 and I cannot agree with it either. To the arguments offered by Vetter I can add the following. First, the derivatives in Latin of Etruscan names ending in -u usually end in -onius not -onus. 7 Secondly, the name Angerona seems to fit very well into a large series of such names belonging to truly Roman (or Sabine) goddesses. First of all we have Abeonam, Adeonam, Intercidonam, all

1 RE I, 2I8gff. 1 Rosch. Lex. I, 348ff; Rel. u. Kult.• 24I. 8 CIL I p. 409. ' Language II (1935) 122ff. 6 Hist. of Rom. Rel. (1938) 114f. Latona is not comparable, being un doubtedly formed differently (cf. also Walde-Hofmann s.v.). 8 Glotta 28 (1940) 197: 'The conjectures are ingenious but not well ground ed. Phonetically there is the difficulty that the family name, which was certainly borrowed by the Etruscan from the Italic, when reproduced in Latin always has the tenuis (c, ch) whereas in the name of the goddess it is always the media. The supposition of an Etruscan goddess ancaru is unproven'. 7 Cf. e.g. Nehring, Glotta 13 (1924) 14; also Stolte ibid. 14 (1925) 289ff. A late attestation of the form Angeroniae (Gloss. Labb. p. I2) is not relevant. 22 DIVA ANGERONA named after an action and that, if I am not mistaken, in popular speech on the analogy of those that follow. For, secondly, several similar names of goddesses have come down to us derived from substantives, the best known of which are Bellona (or Duellona) and Pomona. To these we must at once add Populona, later com bined with Juno as I uno Populona. The word here is substantival, not adjectival in form, and after a while the Romans did not hesitate to corrupt it into 'Populonia'. 8 Then M ellona 9 and Bubona 10 can be added to the list. It may perhaps be rash to designate Annona as a member of this company,U since I have the same doubt whether a goddess of that name is ancient as I do in the case of Orbona 12 and Fessona. 13 Even if these were really goddesses believed to care for the bereaved and infirm, I for one should rather suppose that the names were formed at a later period on the analogy of the others. Against that, I have no hesitation in adding V allon(i)a, 14 a goddess who reigned over valleys according to Augustine, C.D. 4, 8. The fact that this name is written with -i- in one single case seems to me no good reason to regard it as having been formed in any other way. In Populona we noted the same variation, and later we have it also in Fessona (thus in Augus tine, C.D., 4, 2r; the inferior codices have Fessonia) and in Mellona (thus in Augustine, C.D. 4, 34, but Mellonia appears in Arnob. 4. 7ff.). Thus if she who presides over bellum, war, is called Bellona; over populus, the people, Populona; over mel, honey, Mellona; over boves (bubos? cf. bubile or ovile), cattle, Bubona; over valles, valleys, V allona, it is natural to enquire whether Angerona too can be referred to a substantive indicating the thing over which the goddess presides. With this in view it certainly seems worth considering the adjective angustus, from which we easily derive a substantive

a Cf. W. Otto, Philol. 64 (I905) I72. 1 Cf. Peter, Rosch. Le~. 2, I, 203. 10 Cf. Wissowa, R. u. K.1 I99. Io; on the etymology of the word see Walde-Hofmann s.v. bilbulus. 11 Cf. Oehler, REI, 2320; Wissowa, R. u. K.1 302. 11 Cf. Wissowa, R. u. K.• 244· 1• Cf. Peter, Rosch. Le~. 2, I, 298. u Cf. Peter, Rosch. Le~. 2, I, 228.