EGERIA

Form: Latin.

A goddess of fountains, who was also a goddess of birth, and possessed the gift of prophecy. It was from her fountain in the sacred enclosure of the Camenae, before the Porta Capena in Rome, that the Vestal Virgins brought the water necessary for the baths and purifications of their office. There was another fountain of Egeria in the precincts, of Diana at Aricia. In Roman story Egeria was the consort and counsellor of king Numa, who used to meet her in a grotto in the precincts of the Camenae. After the death of her beloved, she fled to the shrine of the Arician Diana, by whom, as her wailings disturbed the worship, she was changed into the fountain which bore her name. Married women worshipped her at Rome, as a goddess of childbirth.