Resumen de Epona Salvatrix?: Isis and the Horse Goddess in Apuleius’ "Metamorphoses"
This essay attempts to add its voice to the handful of scholars who have seen specific clues in Books 1-10 of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses which directly or indirectly point to the “surprise” Isiac ending. The following pages suggest that we might read (or more specifically, a second century audience would have read) Lucius’ encounter (immediately following his transformation) at the shrine of the horse goddess Epona (3.27)—and other passages in the novel which may recall this goddess—as a direct foreshadowing of and link to the appearance of Isis in Book 11. Literary and material evidence roughly contemporary with Apuleius (while not exactly abundant) suggest that Isis and Epona were indeed linked in the Roman era—largely because of their shared connections with fortune, abundance, maternity, and liminality—to the point of even being syncretized into facets of the same goddess. Would the mention of Epona have triggered an association with Isis in the minds of the novel’s original audience?
