The bear was probably another guise of Artio as the sacred animal of her cult. The goddess seemed to offer the fruit to a large bear which walked towards her from a nearby tree. The Romans later renamed the province Germania Superior.Ī devotee called Lucinia Sabinilla living near Bern, Switzerland offered a group of six bronze statues to the goddess Artio in the second or third century AD.Īrtio was a seated goddess with fruit in a lap and a bowl of fruit in her right hand. Tiberius led military campaigns which incorporated the alpine regions of northern Gaul into the Roman province of Gallia Belgica in 22 BC. Julius Caesar subdued the Helvetti in 52 BC. The Helvetti migrated to Switzerland from Gaul in the final centuries BC Bern, meaning “bear”, was the site of an oppidum belonging to the Helvetti tribe. The centre of the cult of Artio was in Bern, Switzerland. The Helvetti paid homage to Artio as a goddess of bears, hunters, fertility, wild animals and nature in the alpine regions of Switzerland. The spirit of Artio manifested itself as a she-bear wandering over the wilderness of mountains and forests. The goddess, Artio, was the divine protector of wild bears in the alpine regions of Central Europe.Īrtio means “bear goddess” in Gaulish and probably revered by followers in the form of a divine bear. Artio was an obscure Gaulish goddess whose cult flourished in Switzerland and the Rhineland between the Iron Age and Roman era.
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