Beda

Beda is one of the Alaisiagae, a pair of goddesses attested on Hadrian's Wall and brought from the Continent by Germanic auxiliaries. On the altar RIB 1593 from Vercovicium (Housesteads), the cives Tuihanti — men from the district of Twenthe in the eastern Netherlands serving in the cuneus Frisiorum — dedicate to 'the god Mars Thincsus and the two Alaisiagae, Beda and Fimmilena' and the numen of the emperor. The collective term Alaisiagae and the individual names are recorded only in their Latin epigraphic forms; their etymologies are disputed, with Beda and Boudihillia often regarded as the more Celtic-looking names and Fimmilena and Friagabis as the more clearly Germanic. The association with Mars Thincsus (Mars of the thing, the legal assembly) has led several scholars to connect the pair with the administration of justice as well as with victory in war.

Domains

• victory and war
• law and the assembly

Powers

• to grant victory to those who go to war

Epithets

• Alaisiaga

Relations

• companion: Fimmilena

Sources

• R. G. Collingwood and R. P. Wright, The Roman Inscriptions of Britain, vol. I: Inscriptions on Stone (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), no. 1593.
• Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology, trans. Angela Hall (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993), s.v. 'Alaisiagae', p. 7.
• Philip A. Shaw, Pagan Goddesses in the Early Germanic World: Eostre, Hreda and the Cult of Matrons (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2011), pp. 70–96.