Cupra

Cupra is the best-attested Umbrian goddess outside the Iguvine Tablets, and the only one in this batch documented by inscriptions rather than by a liturgy. Four dedications from Plestia, in the 4th century BCE, call her 'Cupra, mother of the Plestini'; a bronze plaque from Aja della Croce near Fossato di Vico, in the Umbrian language, dedicates a cistern to Cubrar Matrer. Her name is taken to mean 'the Good', making Cupra Mater 'the Good Mother'. She began as a Picene warrior goddess protective in life and death, and as her cult spread into Umbria with merchants and transhumant shepherds she lost the martial attributes and kept the association with water and springs; two towns in Picenum, Cupra Marittima and Cupramontana, still carry her name. Comparisons with Bona Dea and Venus are old and are recorded here as comparisons only.

Domains

• motherhood
• springs
• protection

Powers

• to stand as mother to a named community, the Plestini

Epithets

• Matres (Mater)

Sources

• Plestia dedications (4th c. BCE); bronze plaque from Aja della Croce near Fossato di Vico (2nd c. BCE), Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Perugia.
• Study of the presence and transformation of the cult of Cupra in Picenum and Umbria from the Iron Age to the Roman imperial period, on her Picene martial origin, her Umbrian maternal form and her link with springs.
• S. Marchesini, 'Cubrar matrer: goddess of the Picenes?' — on the name-forms and the goddess's Picene identity.