Ritona

Ritona, also known as Pritona, is a Celtic goddess chiefly venerated in the land of the Treveri in what is now Germany. Her cult is attested at Pachten and at Trier, where she "had a carefully built little temple" in the Altbachtal complex. At Pachten her temple also had a theatre, presumably dedicated to performances of a religious nature. A single inscription also honours her at Uzès in southern France.

Her name, related to the same root as Welsh rhyd ‘ford’, suggests that she was a goddess of fords. The variant ‘Pritona’ is directly attested twice: on the goddess's only inscription at Pachten (PRITONAE DIVINAE SIVE CA[...]IONI) and in conjunction with ‘Ritona’ on an inscription from Trier (DEA RITONA PRITONA). ‘Pritona’ is also restored in a further, more fragmentary inscription from Trier (RITO/[NAE] SIVE EX IU[SSU PR]/ITONI[AE?]).

Lothar Schwinden characterizes her as a mother goddess on the basis of the statue of a seated goddess found at Pachten, which he connects with the well-known local type of seated mother goddesses with dogs or babies on their laps (cf. Aveta).