From Good Goddess to Vestal Virgins: Sex and Category in Roman Religion (10 page)

inebriated woman would be more likely to commit adultery, although Valerius Maximus does suggest that as the reason. It is not intoxication that is at issue here, but the idea that wine was some- how completely outside the domain of the female. Wine represented maleness, a preserve on which women were not allowed to encroach. For a woman, especially a wife, to drink wine was equiva- lent to committing adultery. It represented in ideological terms an unmediated union of the sexes, an unlawful crossing of the bound- ary between male and female. This, I suggest, is what wine repre- sents in the story of Faunus and his daughter. The sexual separation between father and daughter is such that no ritual mediation can make a union between them licit. To make her drunk with wine was to give her the same status as a wife who had stolen wine, i.e. an adulterous wife. But incest went beyond adultery, and so even by making his daughter drunk Faunus could not compel her to submit to his advances.

From an ideological perspective wine represented the masculine pole of a male-female axis. I shall return to this theme when I discuss the significance of Liber in the cult of Ceres, Liber and Libera in the next chapter. But in the context of the present discussion we can finally make sense of the presence of wine in the rites of the Bona Dea. Wine was another instance, on a ritual level, of the symbolic presence of males at the rite. Like the pictures of males, the wine was covered up, and it was accorded further ambiguity by being called milk and being contained in a honey-pot.

Milk was believed to have been the libation of choice in older, simpler days. And this has been suggested as a reason why the wine in the rite of the Bona Dea was called milk.
155
But to explain this feature it is not enough to explain just one facet of it. The wine, the milk and the honey must be understood as it has been presented
—
as a composite whole. By now it will be possible to intuit the signifi- cance of milk in the rite: it must symbolize the female principle. It does. But not, however, only by virtue of the obvious fact that milk is produced exclusively by the female of the species. That, of course, is the basis of the ideological beliefs about the significance of milk, but those beliefs go further than that. Milk was considered to be the female
’
s equivalent of semen, continuing to fashion the infant in body and mind after it was born. Gellius, quoting the philosopher Favorinus, writes,

Just as the power and nature of the seed are able to form like-

nesses of body and mind, so the qualities and properties of milk have the same effect
…
. This is observed not only in human beings but in beasts also.

(Gell.,
N.A.,
12.1.14
–
15)
156

Moreover the quality of milk was believed to vary from individual to individual, affecting the mental and physical characteristics of the nursling. So if an infant was nursed by a woman of evil character its own character would be affected, regardless of the nature of its par- ents. In this respect milk and semen had a symmetrical relationship. The idea of milk affecting the characteristics of the nursling occurred in poetry too. In the seventh book of the Aeneid, Camilla, who was so fleet of foot that
‘
she might have flown o
’
er the topmost blades of unmown corn, nor in her course bruised the tender ears
’
, was suckled by a mare.
157
In a more practical context Soranus, when prescribing the qualities to look for when employing a wet nurse, also warned that the nature of the nursling became similar to that of the nurse.
158
Milk thus becomes a powerful symbol not just of the female but of the female
’
s procreative power. Male and female were both present at the rites of Bona Dea. But the male pres- ence was veiled while the female presence was exaggerated. The rit- ual feature of the wine that was covered up and called milk epito- mized the respective roles of both male and female in the rite.

Returning to the Parilia from the perspective of the preceding argument the significance of wine and milk at that ritual becomes comprehensible. It is possible that women had no ritual role to play at the Parilia; we know of none. Nevertheless, as the passage quoted from Tibullus makes clear, the enhancement of the shepherd
’
s viril- ity by participation in the rite affected the fertility of his wife. By drinking the mixture of wine and milk before leaping over the flames the shepherd ritually acknowledged that fact and established a symbolic if not a physical involvement of women at the rite. More- over the offering made to Pales was not this mixture of milk and wine, but pure milk.
159
In the context of the Parilia this must be seen as an acknowledgement of the female nature of the deity, lending support to Dum
é
zil
’
s position that Pales was, in Rome at least, if not elsewhere in Italy, unambiguously a goddess.
160
In the Parilia and the rites of Bona Dea then, the ritual functions of milk and wine were exploited in similar ways.

Similar, but not identical. The Bona Dea presents us with one more feature that must be taken into consideration. The wine that

was called milk came in a
‘
honey-pot
’
. A honey-pot would ordinar- ily be expected to contain honey. This one contained wine-
‘
milk
’
. It is not honey, but it is bounded and contained by the notion of honey. Why honey? Marcel Detienne
’
s admirable analysis of Virgil
’
s account in the fourth
Georgic
of the myth of Aristaeus the bee-keeper, whose bees desert him when he attempts to seduce Eurydice, offers a persuasive account of the mythological perspec- tive on honey (Detienne 1981b). Bees, Detienne argues, exemplify in the mythological context, the idea of strict chastity within marriage. They were believed to single out for attack those guilty of illicit sex- ual relationships. So strong was the bees
’
abhorrence for sexual incontinence that a bee-keeper was obliged to observe exemplary marital fidelity.
‘
The bee-keeper must approach his bees as a good husband does his lawful wife, that is, in a state of purity, without being polluted by sexual relations with other women
’
(
ibid.:
99).
161
Aristaeus
’
bees desert him, Detienne argues, because of his lapse from this ideal. A remark of Pliny
’
s neatly connects Detienne
’
s dis- cussion with mine. According to Pliny, Aristaeus was the first to mix honey and wine together.
162
A mixture of honey and wine was one of the traditional offerings made to Ceres, who was perceived as being concerned especially with sexual intercourse within mar- riage.
163

The way in which the concepts of wine, milk and honey operated within the rite of Bona Dea extended into the ritual sphere the same ideological patterns that I traced in her mythology. The overt polar- ization of the sexes is evoked in the wine that is disguised as milk, as opposed to the Parilia where, although the notion of dual sexuality is present, there was no apparent polarity and the wine and milk were mixed and drunk together. Honey which contained and bounded the wine-
‘
milk
’
represented the lawful way in which the poles could be made to collapse
—
marriage. Finally, the fact that the offering was in reality wine rather than milk, represented the sym- bolic participation of males in a rite ostensibly confined to women.

In summary, the cult of Bona Dea established the nature of the boundary between male and female. Male and female were polar opposites whose converging had to be ritually mediated. At the same time there was an acknowledgement that the opposed ele- ments existed within a common context and were interdependent. Finally it seemed to suggest a way in which society might be served by such an interdependent existence. It was indeed a rite
pro populo
.

53

INTRODUCTION TO CHAPTER 2

Misogyny was pervasive in Roman ideology. The work of the satirists, particularly Juvenal
’
s sixth satire, is perhaps the best known vehicle of misogynistic discourse. But the belief that women by their very nature constituted a threat not only to individual men, but to society in general found wide expression across the cultural spectrum. In myth and cult, in legal discourse and institutions, even in conventions of dress, we can discern the belief that women
’
s behaviour needed to be strictly regulated.

All women were subjects of misogynistic discourse. But wives
—
matronae
—
more than any other category bore the brunt of the invective against women. It took Juvenal nearly seven hundred lines of relentless invective to describe the living hell that matrimony was for a man. However the real threat from wives was the threat to the state itself. Despite the political and legal incapacities imposed upon them, women, especially married women, were perceived to possess the power to undermine male political authority and destroy the very foundation of society. Women were perceived to possess this power by their capacity for collective action. The early history of Rome is full of examples of women collaborating to influence the course of events. Most often their actions resulted in averting dan- ger to the state or in otherwise benefiting it in some way. But some- times women banded together to wring concessions from men, to influence the legislative or executive process in their favour and to the detriment of male authority. There is therefore an ambivalence in the attitude towards women which undermines somewhat the robustness of the invective against them. Even Juvenal grudgingly acknowledges that women were once virtuous. It is hardly a com- pliment. Women were virtuous only because life in early Rome was

55

arduous and they had no time to be anything else. But the ambiva- lence is there in Juvenal and elsewhere. Women and especially wives were a necessary evil.

Ambivalence towards women is also a constant theme in the myths of the founding of Rome and her political and legal institu- tions. Women played central roles in the myths that commemorated the three critical events of Rome
’
s earliest history: the founding of the city itself; the establishment of its social order and political con- tinuity; and the establishment of the Republic. In all three events the figure of the
matrona
is centrally important. The ambivalence in the attitude towards wives is played out in these stories. Wives were indispensable for the preservation of the fledgling state and its politi- cal continuity. But the earliest wives, the Sabine women, were for- eigners, outsiders, not Roman. This
‘
foreigness
’
of the wife is reflected in the legal position of the
matrona
within her husband
’
s
gens
. It is important to be aware that the
matrona
was a Roman cre- ation. Not all wives were
matronae
. The
matrona
was the product of a peculiarly Roman form of marriage. Wives were therefore in a sense a
‘
foreign
’
intrusion into a man
’
s
domus
. This too was a source of ambivalence. A chaste and industrious wife could prosper a man
’
s house and family. But an unchaste wife could destroy it. The story of Lucretia demonstrates how the potential for either outcome could inhere in the same woman.

Cult used the device of sexual categorization to isolate wives. The cults of Ceres and Flora were the focus for the categorization of wives into a ritually distinct group. This group was complemented and defined by the ritual category of prostitutes. The two cults of Ceres, who was concerned with wives, and Flora, at whose festival prostitutes played a prominent role, were structured in contrast to each other. The Floralia was a vivid, exuberant festival; the
sacrum anniversarium Cereris
a sober, somewhat forbidding affair. Critical to the display of the contrasting attitude towards wife and prostitute was the role of men in each cult. The cult of Ceres established a degree of formality and distance between men and their wives, while at the festival of the Floralia men participated on equal terms with the women.

2

CERES AND FLORA

If we could get on without a wife, Romans, we would all avoid that annoyance; but since nature has ordained that we can nei- ther live very comfortably with them nor at all without them, we must take thought for our lasting well-being rather than for the pleasure of the moment.

(Gell.,
N.A.,
1.6.2)

These words were not meant to be ironical. They are quoted in all seriousness by Aulus Gellius from a speech
‘
On Marriage
’
delivered to the people by an
‘
earnest and eloquent man
’
(gravis ac disertus vir),
Q.Metellus Numidicus, when he was censor in 102 BC.
1
Since the speech was intended to encourage Roman citizens to marry, Gel- lius wonders if Metellus was wise to have admitted
‘
the annoyance and constant inconveniences of the married state
’
. But he concludes that Metellus could have done no less. Being a

blameless man with a reputation for dignity and a sense of honour,
…
it did not become him to say anything which was not accepted as true by himself and by all men, especially when speaking on a subject which was a matter of everyday knowl- edge and formed a part of the common and habitual experi- ence of life.

(
ibid.,
3
–
6)

Misogyny was a pervasive force in Roman ideology. Metellus
’
speech as Gellius interprets it was neither an isolated nor an excep- tional example of Roman attitudes to wives. The diatribes of the satirists, on the themes of the insatiable lusts, the unbridled licence,