Aprodita
Aprodita is the Messapic goddess of love, attested in votive inscriptions of Salento, most fully in a stele from Ceglie Messapica that addresses her as 'ana aprodita' ('the lady Aprodita'). She is usually understood as a borrowing of Greek Aphrodite, reflecting the close contact between the Messapii and their Greek neighbours, although some linguists have proposed instead a native Indo-European theonym meaning roughly 'the coming-forth of daylight', i.e. the dawn or the morning star, comparing Proto-Albanian forms. The word lahona, which appears in the same Ceglie text ('lahona theotoridda'), was once read as a cult-epithet of the goddess but is now generally taken to be the personal name of a female dedicant rather than a title of Aprodita herself.
Domains
- love and desire
- dawn and the morning star
Powers
- to kindle love and desire
Epithets
- anade Simone, Carlo, and Simona Marchesini. Monumenta Linguae Messapicae. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2002, vol. 2, on 'ana aprodita'. (secondary)
Sources
- Aprodita is the Messapic goddess of love, invoked as 'ana aprodita' ('lady Aprodita') in a votive stele from Ceglie Messapica, generally identified with Greek Aphrodite though possibly a native dawn / Venus theonym.: de Simone, Carlo, and Simona Marchesini. Monumenta Linguae Messapicae. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2002, vol. 2, s.v. 'aprodita'. (secondary); Matzinger, Joachim. Messapisch. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2017, on the theonym aprodita. (secondary)