Valentia
Umbrian · deity · Roman era Umbria; 1st 3rd c. CE · deity
Valentia is known from a single sentence. Writing in 197 CE and drawing on a lost work of Varro, Tertullian lists the gods that Italian towns had taken for their own by municipal consecration, and gives Ocriculum — modern Otricoli, in southern Umbria — the goddess Valentia. Nothing else about her survives: no temple, no festival, no image, no myth, no kin. Her name belongs with Latin valere, 'to be strong', but what she was thought to do for Ocriculum is not recorded, and the entry does not supply a function she is not credited with. She is a local Italian deity reported by a Christian author, not a Christian figure.
Domains
- tutelary protection
Sources
- Tertullian, Apologeticum 24.8.
- Standard discussion of Apologeticum 24 as a list drawn from a lost work of Varro, used to argue that every community should be free to keep its own gods.