Mefitis, goddess of sulphurous vapours
Oscan · deity · Oscan Sabellic religion; pre Roman to Roman Italy · Recorded classification
Mefitis is among the most distinctively Italic of the Oscan deities, with no exact Roman equivalent. Her name was attached to mephitic places across central and southern Italy, but her great cult was the open-air sanctuary at Rossano di Vaglio in Lucania, set at a crossing of cattle-tracks beside a still-flowing spring. There the surviving Oscan dedications declare that the lands and waters belong to the goddess, and pair her with other powers such as Mamers and, in syncretic form, Venus. She embodies the ambivalence of the volcanic landscape, whose rising gases could poison or cure, and she was honoured as a goddess of fertility, water and the liminal threshold between the underworld and the living surface.
Domains
- sulphurous vapours
- springs and fertility
Powers
- to make the earth breathe out healing and deadly vapours
Epithets
- UtianaAdam Adamik, 'The cult of the goddess Mefitis in light of literary and epigraphic sources', Graeco-Latina Brunensia 26.2 (2021), 5-22. (secondary)
Relations
- consort of: Mamers, the war godA dedication from Rossano di Vaglio couples Mamers and Mefitis, associating the war god with the goddess of the sanctuary.Michel Lejeune, Méfitis d'après les dédicaces lucaniennes de Rossano di Vaglio (Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters, 1990). (secondary)
- ally: Herentas, goddess of desireAt Rossano the goddess of desire appears in the syncretic formula Venus-Mefitis, binding Herentas to Mefitis within the same Lucanian cult.Adam Adamik, 'The cult of the goddess Mefitis in light of literary and epigraphic sources', Graeco-Latina Brunensia 26.2 (2021), 5-22. (secondary)
Sources
- Mefitis is the Oscan-Sabellic goddess of sulphurous earth-vapours, springs and fertility, worshipped from the seventh century BCE to the second century CE and centred on the Lucanian federal sanctuary at Rossano di Vaglio.: Michel Lejeune, Méfitis d'après les dédicaces lucaniennes de Rossano di Vaglio (Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters, 1990). (secondary); Adam Adamik, 'The cult of the goddess Mefitis in light of literary and epigraphic sources', Graeco-Latina Brunensia 26.2 (2021), 5-22. (secondary)