Boudihillia
Continental Germanic · deity · Continental Germanic religion under Rome (1st c. BCE – 3rd c. CE) · deity
Boudihillia (spelled Baudihillia on the stone) is one of the Alaisiagae, named together with Friagabis on the Housesteads altar RIB 1576, dedicated by the numerus of Hnaudifridus, a Germanic irregular unit on Hadrian's Wall. She forms, with Friagabis, a second attested pair of these goddesses parallel to Beda and Fimmilena. Her name is generally analysed as Celtic, containing an element related to *boudi- 'victory', which suits the martial setting of the dedication; like all the Alaisiagae she survives only in the Latin epigraphy of the Wall, brought there by Continental Germanic soldiers from the Rhine frontier.
Domains
- victory and war
Powers
- to grant victory to those who go to war
Epithets
- Alaisiaga
Relations
- companion: Friagabis
Sources
- R. G. Collingwood and R. P. Wright, The Roman Inscriptions of Britain, vol. I: Inscriptions on Stone (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), no. 1576.
- 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.