Chapter Thirty-One -
Figure 31.4 The Lenus Mars temple at Trier. (Landesmuseum, Trier.)with a consort Nemetona, and Apollo Grannus with Sirona, but they also appear
alone, as does Mercury in many guises, as Iovantucarus and Cnabetius and
Abgatiacus.^53 Celtic cult centres continue to be frequented, and two specifically
Celtic features that would strike any visitor to the area are the cult figures of the
mother-goddesses or matronae and the Jupiter columns or Gigantensdulen, which
are iconographically unique.
The iconography of the deae matres or matronae, Celtic though they are, is not
fully developed before the Roman period. From this period, there are numerous rep-
resentations, normally showing three female figures, seated side by side, dressed in
matronly fashion, with attributes expressive of fertility and nurturing, such as fruit,
loaves of bread, and indeed children. The Rhineland matronae are distinguished in
inscriptions by local epithets, such as that on one of the finest of all extant matronae
reliefs, found at Bonn and dedicated in AD 164 by a Cologne magistrate to the
Matronae Aufaniae, whose cult is peculiar to the territory of the Ubii, between
Cologne and Bonn (Figure 3 I. 5 ). 54 Other epithets seem always to associate the
matronae with a particular locality, and on the lower Rhine some of these epithets
seem distinctly Germanic rather than Celtic, suggesting that this very Celtic cult won
followers among the Batavi and other northerners who had settled there.^55 Equally
un-Roman are the Jupiter columns or Gigantensdulen, about 150 of which are
known, up to 15 metres high. Dedicated to Jupiter, sometimes in company with
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