Jonathan Polkest's Relubbus Studio, Cornwall

Sculptures of Epona fall into half a dozen categories; riding, standing or seated before a horse, standing or seated between two horses . a tamer of horses in the manner of POTNIA THERON and the symbolic mare and foal.In the equestrian tyoe, common in Gaul, she is depicted sitting sidesalad on a horse or lying on one; in the imperial type she sits on a throne flanked by two or more horses or goals. In distant Dacia she is represented on a stela (now in the SZÉPMÚVEZETI MUSEUM, BUDAPEST) in the format of CYBELE, seated frontally on a throne with her hands on the necks of her paired animals ;her horses are substitutions for CYBELE's lions. Epona is mentioned in The Golden Ass by APULEIUS where an aedicular niche with her image on a pillar in a stable has been garlanded with freshly picked roses. In his satires the roman poet JUVENAL also links the worship and iconography of Epona to the area of a stable. Small images of Epona have been found in Roman stables and barns over a wide territory.The probable date of ca 1400 BC ascribed to the chalk horse carved into the hillside turf at UFFINGTON may be too early to link directly to EPONA like the Cornish traditional Hobby Horse, the ending of the ritual, as formerly in Padstow; the OSS would be submerged into the sea.