The figure of Britannia, one of four statues that encircle the base of the replica statue of Queen Anne that stands in front of St Paul's cathedral in London.
From the Secret London Blog: (
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"ANNE was Queen when St Paul’s was built in 1710. The weather-beaten original of this 1712 sculpture by Francis Bird was replaced with a replica by Richard Belt in 1885. The figures on the base represent England, Ireland, France and North America, all of which Queen Anne laid claim to. Note the Royal Coat of Arms of the time are quartered with the French Fleur-di-Lis as well as the Irish Harp and English Lions.
The original (and many say better) statue ended up in the possession of a 19th-century travel writer, Augustus Hare, and can be seen at his former home, Holmhurst, in Baldslow in Sussex. . . ."
Hibernia is the Latinicized form of the Greek place name for Ireland, which was taken from the Celtic goddess Éiru or Éire.
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"In Irish mythology, Ériu, (modern Irish Éire), daughter of Ernmas of the Tuatha Dé Danann, was the eponymous matron goddess of Ireland.
The English name for Ireland comes from the name Ériu and the Germanic (Old Norse or Old English) word land.
Since Ériu is represented as goddess of Ireland, she is often interpreted as a modern-day personification of Ireland, although since the name "Ériu" is the older Irish form of the word Ireland, her modern name is often modified to "Éire" or "Erin" to suit a modern form. . . .
Also from Wikipedia: (
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Hibernia
Hibernia is the Classical Latin name for the island of Ireland. The name Hibernia was taken from Greek geographical accounts. During his exploration of northwest Europe (c. 320 BC), Pytheas of Massilia called the island Iérne (written ?????). In his book Geographia (c. 150 AD), Claudius Ptolemaeus ("Ptolemy") called the island Iouernía (written ???e???a, where "??"-ou stands for w). The Roman historian Tacitus, in his book Agricola (c. 98 AD), uses the name Hibernia. The Romans also sometimes used Scotia, "land of the Scoti", as a geographical term for Ireland in general, as well as just the part inhabited by those people.
???????a Iouernía was a Greek rendering of the Q-Celtic name *Iweriu from which eventually arose the Irish names Ériu and Éire. The name was altered in Latin (influenced by the word hibernus) as though it meant "land of winter"."
And finally, from the ENCYCLOPAEDIA AEDICULAE ANTINOI: (
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"Let’s start with the territorial goddess, Hibernia. From the earlier Greek geographers, one of the population names of Ireland gave it its name, possibly similar to *Iwerdon in origin, but which became hellenized by the Greeks as Ivernii. The Romans, being rather punny, called it Hibernia because they thought it was so remote and cold that only hibernation was possible there! It’s not likely that this name would have changed, and so the goddess Ériu, whose name ultimately derives from similar roots to Ivernii, would have become known elsewhere as Hibernia. As a goddess of the land itself, I suspect she would have had visual elements similar to Ceres or Tellus Mater in her Hiberno-Roman depictions. She would be bare-breasted, possibly holding an infant and ears of wheat. And, no doubt, Roman ethnographers would write of how the many passage tombs of the country were places where an Eleusis-like mystery tradition took place in times long past in honor of the goddess Hibernia.
Given that many deities in Roman Britain were in some manner similar to Irish deities, it seems likely that a number of them would have been localized continuations of the Romano-British (or, in some cases, Gallo-Roman) cults. . . . "