Sirona (also Đirona or Dirona) was an ancient Celtic goddess of healing, associated with curative and thermal springs, worshipped in eastern Gaul, the Germanies and the Danube provinces. She is attested chiefly as the consort of Apollo under his healing surname Grannus, appearing with him in a large group of Latin dedications and reliefs, though a number of dedications name her alone. Her most distinctive attributes are the snake and a bowl of eggs, taken as emblems of healing and renewal. No classical author names her, the evidence being epigraphic and iconographic.
Name The goddess is named only in Latin inscriptions, most often as Sirona. The initial is also written as D, giving Dirona. On an altar at the sanctuary of Hochscheid the S is cut with a horizontal stroke through it, a device used for a Gaulish sound that Latin could not represent. This alternation between S and D is generally taken to indicate an initial derived from st or ts, elsewhere represented by the tau gallicum Đ, giving the underlying form *Stirona.
The name is formed with the theonymic suffix -ona, which recurs in the names of other Gaulish goddesses such as Epona, Matrona and Damona. Most scholars derive its first element from the Proto-Indo-European word for 'star', *h₂ster, which gives Proto-Celtic *sterā-, so that the name means something like 'star (goddess)'. Ranko Matasović notes that Sirona, if it belongs to this root, may preserve the lengthened grade *stīr-ōnā.
A different derivation connects the name with a Celtic word for 'ox' or 'heifer'. On this reading Sirona is directly comparable to Damona, whose name is taken as 'divine ox', and to the Galatian dynastic name Deiotaros 'divine bull'.
Cult Sirona was the consort of the Celtic Apollo, most often invoked under the surname Grannus, a god of healing and of thermal springs. According to Cassius Dio, the emperor Caracalla sought a cure from Apollo Grannus, as well as from Asclepius and Serapis, which shows the standing of the healing god in the early 3rd century AD. In several dedications her partner is named simply Apollo, without the surname Grannus, and in one he is Apollo Sol.
Her cult was concentrated in the Germanies and eastern Gaul, above all in the valley of the upper Moselle, among the Treveri, and in the Mainz area. Dedications also come from the territories of the Aedui and the Leuci, and from further afield: the Danube provinces of Raetia, Noricum and Pannonia, the province of Dacia, and the city of Rome. An early dedication from Bordeaux, set up by a man with a Celtic name, stands somewhat apart from this main distribution. The god Grannus himself had a still wider cult, reaching Grand in the Vosges, Aachen (Aquae Granni), Rome, and as far as Scotland and Sweden.
The people who dedicated to Sirona include imperial procurators, town councillors, a legionary veteran, wardens of temples and, frequently, women. A number of dedications name Sirona on her own, without Apollo, which is taken to show that she had an independent standing and was not merely a female counterpart to the god. She occurs alone at Bordeaux, Trier, Mühlburg, Wiesbaden and Mainz, among other places. At Corseul in Brittany she is named Tsirona and is invoked together with the numen of the emperor, a pairing that points to her high standing.
Her most important sanctuary was at Hochscheid, in the Hunsrück between Trier and Mainz, in the land of the Treveri, who took a particular interest in her cult. In the 2nd century AD a temple was built around a spring whose water fed a small cistern, and visitors left figurines, coins and other offerings. The shrine was richly furnished for so remote a place and may have been paid for by the owner of a nearby villa. From it come two cult statues that rank among the finest works of Romano-Celtic art. Apollo is shown in classical guise, a young naked god resting his lyre on his griffin. Sirona wears a long robe and a diadem, a snake is coiled round one forearm, and in her other hand she holds a bowl of three eggs. At this site Apollo's surname is not given, but he is taken to be the Apollo Grannus found with Sirona at other Treveran shrines, such as the spring of Apollo and Sirona at Bitburg.
Interpretation Sirona is generally understood as a goddess of healing and fertility attached to curative springs. Her iconography supports this reading. The snake is a symbol of fertility, healing and the underworld, and the eggs held with it stand for renewal. The same pairing of a snake with grain or fruit recurs for the related healing goddess Damona, whose surviving image at Alesia shows a head crowned with ears of grain and a hand entwined with a snake. The serpent is one of a set of native animal attributes, comparable to the bear of Artio and the stag of Cernunnos. In other images Sirona holds fruit and ears of grain, as at Sainte-Fontaine, or grapes, as at Mainz, and small clay figurines show her seated like a mother goddess with a small dog, perhaps present as a healer.
Because her name is usually derived from a word for 'star', Sirona has also been read as an astral deity. Jan de Vries took her, with caution, as possible evidence for a Celtic cult of the stars. Paul-Marie Duval held that her association with the solar Apollo confirmed the astral reading. Helmut Birkhan counts her among the celestial deities, as the consort of the sun god. In her role as a deity with healing powers, Birkhan also likens her to the mother goddesses. On the competing derivation from a word for 'ox', she would instead belong with the bovine deities.
The pairing of Sirona with Apollo Grannus belongs to a well-known type of Gallo-Roman divine couple, in which the god bears a Roman name, or a Roman name with a Celtic surname, while the goddess keeps a purely Celtic one. Bernhard Maier suggests that the different treatment of the two names may have expressed the subordination of the native goddess to the Roman god. Edith Mary Wightman read the same pattern as a reflection of conquerors marrying local women.
Because her images occur both alone and with Apollo, James MacKillop argues that Sirona existed as a goddess of fertility and healing before the Roman period and survived the fusion of Gaulish and Roman religion. He adds that her cult was later displaced by that of Borvo over much of the Celtic world.
Epigraphy Sirona is named in some thirty Latin dedications, most of them from eastern Gaul and the Germanies, with a further group from the Danube provinces and a single dedication from Rome. She is most often paired with Apollo under his healing surname Grannus, though several dedications name her alone.