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In ancient Roman religion, Feronia was a goddess associated with wildlife, fertility, health and abundance. She was especially honored among plebeians and freedmen. Her festival, the ''Feroniae'', was November 13, Ides of November, during the ''Ludi Plebeii'' ("Plebeian Games"), in conjunction with Fortuna Primigenia; both were goddesses of Praeneste.〔William Warde Fowler, ''The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic'' (London, 1908), pp. 252–254; Peter F. Dorcey, ''The Cult of Silvanus: A Study in Roman Folk Religion'' (Brill, 1992), p. 7.〕 ==Origins and functions== Varro places Feronia in his list of Sabine gods〔Varro, ''De lingua latina'' (5.74 ) (Latin).〕 who had altars in Rome. Inscriptions to Feronia are found mostly in central Italy.〔Dorcey, ''The Cult of Feronia'', p. 109.〕 She was among the deities that Sabine moneyers placed on their coins to honor their heritage.〔Gary D. Farney, ''Ethnic Identity and Aristocratic competition in Republican Rome'' (Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 82.〕 She may have been introduced into Roman religious practice when Manius Curius Dentatus conquered Sabinum in the early 3rd century BC.〔Farney, ''Ethnic Identity'', p. 286, citing Coarelli.〕 Many versions of Feronia’s cult have been supposed, and it is not quite clear that she was only one goddess or had only one function in ancient times. Some Latins believed Feronia to be a harvest goddess, and honoured her with the harvest firstfruits〔Livy xxvi.11.8.〕 in order to secure a good harvest the following year. Feronia also served as a goddess of travellers, fire, and waters. In Vergil's ''Aeneid'', troops from Feronia's grove fight on the side of Turnus against Aeneas.〔Vergil, ''Aeneid'' 7.800.〕 The Arcadian king Evander recalls how in his youth he killed a son of Feronia, Erulus, who like Geryon had a triple body and a triple soul; Evander thus had to kill him thrice.〔''Aeneid'' 8.564, and Servius's note to the passage.〕 Erulus, whom Vergil identifies as king at Praeneste, is otherwise unknown in literature.〔Lee Fratantuono, ''Madness Unchained: A Reading of Virgil's Aeneid'' (Lexington Books, 2007), pp. 242 and 248.〕 Georges Dumézil〔Georges Dumézil La religione romana arcaica. Con un 'appendice sulla religione degli Etruschi Edizione e traduzione a cura di Furio Jesi: Milano Rizzoli 1977 (Italian translation conducted on an expanded version of the 2nd edition of ''La religion romaine archaïque'' Paris Payot 1974) pp. 361-366.〕 considers Feronia to be a goddess of wilderness, of untamed nature and her vital forces, but honoured because she offers man the opportunity to put those forces to good use in acquiring nurture, health and fertility. She fecundates and heals, therefore despite her being worshipped only in the wild she receive the firstfruits of the harvest, because she permits men to domesticate the wild forces of vegetation, favouring the transformation of that which is uncouth into that which is cultivated. Thence her shrines were all located in the wild, far from human settlements. Two stories about her sanctuary of Terracina highlight the character of Feronia as goddess of the wilderness. Servius writes that when a fire destroyed her wood and the locals were about moving the statues to another location, the burnt wood turned green all of a sudden.〔Servius ''Ad Aeneidem'' VII 800 as cited by Dumézil 1977 p. 362.〕 Pliny states that all attempts at building towers in times of war between Terracina and the sanctuary of Feronia have been abandoned because all are without exception destroyed by lightningbolts.〔Pliny ''Natural History'' II 146 as cited by Dumézil 1977 p. 362.〕 The goddess thus refused any continuity and linkage with the nearby town. Her ''lucus'' at Capena was a place where everybody was allowed to come for worship and trade, attracting people from different nations, Sabines, Latins, Etruscans and other even from farther away, providing everybody with a neutral territory in which peace must not be perturbed.〔Dumézil 1977 p. 364 citing Dionysius of Halicarnassus ''Roman Antiquities'' III 32, 12.〕 Dumézil compares her to Vedic god Rudra: he is similar to Feronia in that he represents that which has not yet been transformed by civilization, he is the god of the ''rude'', of the jungle, at one time dangerous and uniquely useful, healer thanks to the herbs of his reign, protector of the freed slaves and of the outcast. Feronia though has only the positive or useful function of putting the forces of wild nature at the service of man. Her name reveals she is one of the Roman and Italic goddesses whose name is formed by a derivate terminating with the suffix ''-ona'', ''-onia'' of a noun denoting a difficult or dangerous state or condition: the deity is a sovereign of that danger only to help man to best avoid damage or get the greatest advantage, such as Angerona for the ''angusti dies'' near the winter solstice. Her name is to be derived from a Sabine adjective corresponding to Latin ''fĕrus'' but with a long vowel, such as the cognate words in every Indoeuropean language (e.g. Greek θήρ, θήριον). ''Fĕrus'' means "not cultivated, untamed" (''Thesaurus Linguae Latinae''), "of the field, wood, untamed, not mitigated by any cultivation (Forcellini ''Totius Latinatis Lexicon'') which fits the environment of the sanctuaries of Feronia and is very close to ''rudis, rude'', root of the name of Vedic god Rudrá as well. Festus's entry on the ''picus Feronius''〔Festus p. 308 L 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Feronia (mythology)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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