Angerona
Roman · deity · regal · deity
Angerona has her mouth bound. Her statue showed her gagged, or with a finger to her lips commanding silence, and her feast fell on 21 December at the solstice — the turn of the year, and the shortest day. Ancient explanation connected her with angor, the constriction of anxiety, which she was asked to lift; another connected the bound mouth with the secret name of Rome, which nobody was permitted to say aloud in case an enemy learned it and called the city's gods away. A goddess who enforces silence is a strange thing to leave out of a register, and she has been missing from this one.
Domains
- secrecy
- protection
Sources
- Reference treatment of Angerona, her iconography and her festival.