From Good Goddess to Vestal Virgins: Sex and Category in Roman Religion

FROM GOOD GODDESS TO VESTAL VIRGINS

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FROM GOOD GODDESS TO VESTAL VIRGINS

Sex and category in Roman religion

Ariadne Staples

London and New York

First published 1998 by Routledge

11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge

29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

© 1998 Ariadne Staples

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data

Staples, Ariadne

From Good Goddess to Vestal Virgins: Sex and Category in Roman Religion/Ariadne Staples.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Women and religion—Rome. 2. Rome—Religion.

3. Women—Rome. 4. Rome—Social life and customs. I. Title BL815.W6S73 1998

292.07
′
082–dc21 98–7381

ISBN 0-203-43547-8 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-74371-7 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-13233-9 (Print Edition)

To the memory of my father and to my mother

with my love

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CONTENTS

Preface
ix

INTRODUCTION
1

INTRODUCTION TO CHAPTER 1
11

1 THE CULT OF BONA DEA
13

Hercules and Cacus
17

Hercules and Bona Dea
24

The women’s goddess
30

‘A rite so ancient…’
32

Bona Dea and the mysteries of Mithras
36

Opertanea Sacra
40

Wine, milk and honey
44

INTRODUCTION TO CHAPTER 2
55

INTRODUCTION TO CHAPTER 3
97

1. VENUS
   99
   

   Venus Verticordia
   103
   

   Venus Obsequens and Venus Erycina
   113
   

   Venus and Bona Dea
   125
   

1. Part IV The Vestals and Rome
   

   INTRODUCTION TO CHAPTER 4
   129
   

2. THE USES OF VIRGINITY: THE VESTALS AND ROME
   131
   

The transvaluation of virginity
135

Virginity and the ritual representation of Roman integrity
147

PREFACE

This book is a revised version of my doctoral dissertation. I should like to begin by thanking the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust, whose generous grant made it all possible.

Over the years many people have read various versions of differ- ent chapters, and given generously of their time and expertise. This book is immeasurably better for their insights. It is impossible to thank them individually but I would like to record here my debt to them all. Some however have gone so far beyond the call of duty or even of friendship that I cannot let this opportunity pass by without mentioning them with special gratitude.

John Crook steered me through the intricacies of Roman Law, a subject with which I had very little acquaintance when I first went to him for help. Under his guidance I realized that the law was both fascinating and fun. His enthusiasm for his subject proved so infec- tious that I decided to make law my life
’
s work. I should also like to thank him for his unwavering belief that this study should be pub- lished. It was that belief, and his insistence that I get on with the job no matter what, that kept me at the task of revision when the added burden of a Yale law school curriculum made it at times almost intolerable.

I should also like to thank Mary Beard, who was a dedicated and conscientious dissertation supervisor. It was while I was being supervised by Keith Hopkins for a term that, encouraged by him, I started reading works of anthropology; this would have been a very different book if I hadn
’
t. Joyce Reynolds spent far more hours than she should have reading various versions of different chapters and her meticulous comments saved me from many an error. Richard Saller and John Scheid both took time during their brief visits to

Cambridge to read my drafts and talk to me about them. I thank Jack Holtsmark for his friendship and encouragement while I was living in Iowa City. He actually read the entire dissertation and took the time to give me careful written and verbal comments. Jim Whit- man is still waiting patiently for two class papers that I owe him from my first year in law school. He has always been a sympathetic listener to a harried student
’
s tales of woe about a book that never seems to get finished. To all of them I say thank you. But my greatest debt, I think, is to Jeremy Tanner. His friendship and support through good times and bad, and his steady conviction that I could do it, gave me the courage I needed to pull it all together.

I hope they all enjoy this book despite its numerous shortcomings which are my responsibility entirely.

New Haven January 1997

INTRODUCTION

The last couple of decades have seen a remarkable evolution in the study of women in antiquity. Forty years ago Charles Seltman could write with a straight face,
‘“
Women.
”
There is no need to attempt a definition. We are always with them and they with us
’
(Seltman 1956:15). Or more astonishing yet,
‘
Woman has always been able to maintain her right to unpredictability, and this, which is really part of her charm, has supplied her with a perpetual strategic advan- tage over the predictable ways and thoughts of her males
’
(
ibid.:
20). A few years later Balsdon in a monograph devoted to
Roman Women: Their History and Habits,
wrote that
‘
the history of early Rome was written by men
…
[who]
…
appreciated the fact that women as a sex were obviously of no great historical importance
’
(Balsdon 1962:25). For many years Balsdon
’
s was the definitive work on Roman women.

The change in the historiographical landscape today is startling. There is a prolific and constantly expanding literature on women in antiquity.
1
The study of women is now of fundamental importance to the study of cultural history. Scholarship on ancient women has developed in two directions. First there has been a surge of interest in precisely those areas of human existence in which women
’
s roles have always been pivotal and acknowledged as such: family, mar- riage, child rearing and so forth. At the same time, legal scholars have focused attention on women
’
s legal status and the ways in which it changed and developed over time. Second, scholars have tried to identify ways in which women were culturally constructed and defined. This is an ongoing attempt to understand not only what it meant to be a woman in the ancient world (the subjective

1

experience of women), but also how women were perceived both by themselves and by men (the objective experience).

This book is a study in the latter tradition. It is a book about women
’
s participation in Roman religion, but it is not a book about Roman religion as women experienced it. I do not tell a story about fertility rites or all-female festivals or virgin priestesses, although they all figure prominently in the tale. It is rather about how religion constructed and defined women; how Roman cults and rituals both created and reflected a society
’
s perception of its female members.

The question that may be considered the starting point of my enquiry is why Roman women were never allowed a constitutional role
—
not even the basic right to vote. Roman women of the late Republican period (roughly the period I concern myself with in this book) were, from a late twentieth-century perspective, something of a paradox.
2
Freed from the tedious chores of domesticity by (often very great) personal wealth,
3
Roman women enjoyed a remarkable degree of social and financial independence despite the heavily male dominated society in which they lived. Many were, to judge from the representations of women such as Cornelia (mother of the Grac- chi), Servilia (mother of Brutus), Sempronia (who participated in Catiline
’
s conspiracy), or Hortensia (daughter of the orator, Horten- sius), accomplished, highly educated, politically competent, and indeed sometimes possessed of considerable political influence as well.
4
Guy Fau, for example, traces the
‘
emancipation
’
of the Roman woman, showing what enormous strides women made socially, economically and juridically (Fau 1978). But despite their extraordinary achievements and accomplishments women never did achieve any degree of political authority in their own right. Nor did they ever pose a real threat to the political dominance of men. Some scholars would challenge this observation. Nicholas Purcell argues, for example, that Roman women were more powerful politi- cally than they have been given credit for (Purcell 1986). But he fails to make the critical distinction between the informal influence women wielded through their relationships and connections with men, and the legitimate constitutional authority vested in men. Simi- larly Richard Bauman has described in careful detail how women not only played a part in but even influenced the political process (Bauman 1992). Both accounts are valuable in demonstrating that Roman women were politically sophisticated and eminently capa- ble of effective political action. This accords perfectly with the theme of
‘
emancipation
’
. But it begs a huge question. Why, if

women were manifestly capable of participating in the political pro- cess, did they never succeed in acquiring a legitimate constitutional role? Why was their political involvement always either a
‘
politics of protest
’
as Bauman calls it, or a politics of individual influence? Bauman gives plenty of examples of women organizing themselves in order to wring concessions out of the political system. The protest against the Oppian Law is one such example; another is Hortensia
’
s protest before the triumvirs against the unfair taxation of women (
ibid.:
31 and 81). But if women were capable of this kind of organi- zation
—
and there is no reason to doubt that they were
—
why was there never any attempt at a
‘
struggle of the sexes
’
along the lines of the
‘
struggle of the orders
’
? It is a fact
—
something rare in the study of women in antiquity
—
that Roman citizen women never had the vote. While women for one reason or another, individually or in groups, were undoubtedly politically powerful, this is no substitute for legitimate political authority. Why did these women never seek such authority? The question becomes even more compelling when we are faced with evidence that despite women
’
s political incapacity men feared that they could, and would (unless kept firmly in their place), usurp power and undermine the very structure of male domi- nated society. Men perceived the public, collective action of women as a threat to the stability of the male establishment.
5