From Good Goddess to Vestal Virgins: Sex and Category in Roman Religion (11 page)

57

the bottomless greed and wild extravagance of women, are its most obvious manifestation.
2
Women were a threat to the stability of society. But somewhat paradoxically women were also perceived as weak-willed and simple-minded, incapable of managing their own affairs, and in need of male protection and supervision.
3
Such atti- tudes and the political and legal incapacity that necessarily accom- panied them applied to all women. Wives, however, appear to have been a particular subject of misogynistic discourse. In particular, the attitude to wives appears to have been marked by anxiety and ambivalence.

The cult of Bona Dea offered a glimpse of how male ambivalence towards women was incorporated into the dynamics of myth and ritual. At different levels it established and undermined, affirmed and denied the dichotomy of male and female. Female space was simultaneously forbidden to and dominated by males. But the cult of Bona Dea, as we shall see, represented only one dimension of what was a complex ideological discourse on the nature of gender relationships.

Roman religion categorized females in terms of their sexuality or, more accurately, in terms of the stages of their sexual relationship with men. From a general perspective women who were, or were potentially sexually active constituted a separate ritual group to women who were not. The former category was again divided into two opposed groups
—
wives and prostitutes. This chapter will be concerned with the display of this division in myth and ritual. Women who were not sexually active were also further categorized into two groups
—
virgins and old women, that is, women before and after the sexually active stage. This group was much less impor- tant in ritual and was never explicitly polarized as were wives and prostitutes. Although young children of both sexes participated in the ritual life of the family and the city, virgins did not form an ele- ment of cult in the way that matrons and prostitutes did.
4
Though the Vestal Virgins did represent in some ways the status of virginity, their case was a special one.
5
The references to old women in cult are also extremely rare.

This chapter will be divided into three sections. The first will show that it was the married woman who was perceived as the great- est threat to the male dominated system; the second will examine Roman myths dealing with wives, and show how they reveal a deep ambivalence in male attitudes to married women; and the third will show how this ambivalence was reflected in ritual practice.

No woman escaped the stab of the satirists
’
pen. Neither social class nor sexual status insulated women from satirical invective. The most formidable example of invective against women, Juvenal
’
s massive sixth satire, nearly seven hundred lines of vicious, misogy- nistic, vituperation is directed chiefly at the married woman
—
uxor
. The satire, addressed to a young man about to be married, is on the theme of the suicidal folly of marriage. There was to be no respite from the horrors of matrimony for the unlucky husband. However the satirist does grudgingly admit that once upon a time women actually were virtuous. True, this was in the dim and distant past, either in the legendary age of Saturn, or in the early years of the Republic, before Rome was corrupted by long years of peace and excessive wealth. Virtue was forced on women in those days, says Juvenal, because life was hard and they had neither time nor oppor- tunity for corruption. A sting in the tail perhaps, but none the less it was a hint of ambivalence, a respite from hatred however begrudg- ing, in a monument to misogyny. The virtuous wife was pushed so far back in time that she was inaccessible, but she existed as an ideal, if only that. Juvenal provided only a glimpse of such an ideological respite from the relentless attacks of misogyny. Elsewhere the ambivalence of the discourse about women is more clearly articulated.

Livy, writing much earlier of the repeal of the Oppian law in 195 BC, attributed to Cato and Valerius
—
consul and tribune respec- tively for that year
—
a debate on the dangers posed by married women
—
matronae
—
to the state.
6
The rhetoric of misogyny is very similar to that found in satire but the issues that are being dealt with are quite different. The Oppian law was a piece of sumptuary legisla- tion which had been passed almost a generation previously when Rome was reeling from the defeat at Cannae. The apparent purpose of the law was to curb female extravagance. Two tribunes, Valerius and Fundanius, were now proposing a repeal of the law, since the state was enjoying a period of prosperity and there was no longer any need for legislative control on consumption. But as there was opposition to this proposal, the
matronae,
who wanted the law repealed, had in a body lobbied the voters making their way to the forum to vote on the bill. It was the appalling and unprecedented sight of
matronae
in the public streets talking to men who were not their husbands, that prompted Cato
’
s attack on women.

Juvenal
’
s poem was concerned with women as individuals, who posed a threat to men only in their private capacity as husbands. Livy
’
s passage offers a different perspective. Cato
’
s resentment and anxiety were directed at a particular category of women, the
matronae
.
7
But it was not the
matronae
themselves that he feared; it was the fact that they had organized themselves into a lobby and were attempting to influence the legislative process. The
matronae,
by their capacity for collective action, posed a threat not merely to individual males but to the very foundation of the social and politi- cal structure. Legislative power belonged to a domain that was exclusively male. But Cato
’
s words suggest a fundamental insecurity about men
’
s dominance of that domain; women were capable of encroaching on it and men had to guard their territory vigilantly. Consider the following excerpts from the speech:

I thought it a fairy tale and a piece of fiction that on a certain island the men were destroyed root and branch by a conspir- acy of women; but from no class is there not the greatest dan- ger if you permit them meetings and gatherings and secret consultations.

(Livy, 34.2.3
–
4)

Our ancestors permitted no woman to conduct even personal business without a guardian to intervene in her behalf; they wished them to be under the control of fathers, brothers, hus- bands; we
—
Heaven help us!
—
allow them now even to inter- fere in public affairs, yes, and to visit the forum and our formal and informal sessions
(iam etiam rem publicam capessere eas patimur et foro quoque et contionibus et comitiis immisceri).
What else are they doing now on the streets and at the corners except urging the bill of the tribunes and the repeal of the law?

(
ibid.,
2.11)

If you suffer them to seize these bonds one by one and wrench themselves free and finally to be placed on a parity with their husbands do you think that you will be able to endure them? The moment they begin to be your equals they will be your superiors.

(
ibid.,
3.2)
8
Cato feared political domination by women. Such a threat could

come from one category of women only
—
the
matronae
. This notion that
matronae
were capable of collective political action was not peculiar to Cato. Roman myth abounds in similar tales and there are plenty of examples from historical times, as Valerius points out in reply to Cato. Through Cato and Valerius Livy was expressing a common theme in Roman attitudes towards women.
Matronae
were a double source of anxiety; they were a threat to husbands as well as to the old established
—
male dominated
—
traditions of the state.

But though the threat from
matronae
was political, it was expressed in terms of women
’
s sexuality and by means of sexual innuendo.

Give loose rein to their uncontrollable nature and to this untamed creature
(indomitio animali)
and expect that they will themselves set bounds to their licence
(licentia)
…
it is com- plete liberty, or rather if you wish to speak the truth, complete licence that they desire.

(
ibid.,
2.13
–
14)

Whatever the nature of the threat from women, whether it was directed at individual husbands or the hallowed institutions of the state itself, whether it came from individual women or from orga- nized groups of them, it was always seen to stem from their sexual- ity. Women were seen, moreover, as being incapable of curbing their dangerously wild natures on their own initiative. If men were to avoid the consequences of untamed female sexuality, they had to do the taming themselves, ideally domestically where each man kept strict control over his own wife, or if that failed, by law. The conse- quences of failing to control women would be social and political turmoil.
9

Cato
’
s diatribe, like Juvenal
’
s, was not all unrelieved gloom. Here too we can discern an ambivalence towards women. Cato also admits the existence of the virtuous woman, but like Juvenal puts her out of contemporary reach. Female virtue existed in the old days because those grand old Romans
—
maiores nostri
—
knew how to control their women. Subsequent wealth and ease had caused the degeneration of both men and women. This state of affairs was deplorable in men but dangerous in women. Thus, although my examples were taken from two very different literary genres, with very different social agendas, the rhetoric of misogyny is quite simi-

lar. More particularly the ambivalence in the attitude towards women was expressed by Cato in a manner very much like that of the sixth satire. It is arguable that both Livy and Juvenal drew on a wider tradition of misogynistic discourse that obtained in Roman society.

Livy however went further than Juvenal. He shifted the focus of male ambivalence towards women from the past onto the present. Valerius replying to Cato
’
s warning is made to use examples from the past to redeem contemporary women. The phenomenon of
matronae
organizing themselves to act in ways which had political repercussions was not unprecedented in the history of Rome. Valerius cites four examples: the Sabine women; the women led by the mother of Coriolanus who went to him in a body and persuaded him to withdraw his Volscian army and desist from a threatened attack on Rome; the women who ransomed the city from the Gauls with their own jewellery; and the women who in a body escorted the image of Cybele into Rome. These were all actions taken by women in times of the gravest national crises and each time the outcome had preserved and strengthened the state. But their importance in this particular debate was to give immediacy to the ambivalence that Cato would have relegated to the past. Forcing the comparison between women from the semi-mythical past and those lobbying for the repeal of the Oppian law effectively mitigated the force of the misogynistic attack and blurred the stark outlines of the female threat as Cato had laid it out.

A similar ambivalence informs the stories which constituted Rome
’
s self-representation, and in which women featured in important ways. In this section I shall examine the myths of Romulus
’
birth, the Sabine women and Lucretia, from the perspective of attitudes towards women in general and wives in particular.

The myth of the birth of Romulus reveals much about the way the Romans separated women into sexual categories and about the ways those categories were defined in relation to men. The story concerns three sexually defined categories of women
—
virgins, wives and prostitutes. Romulus
’
mother was a virgin; the Vestal, Rhea Silvia. The most prominent part in the story was given to a prostitute, Romulus
’
nurse and foster mother, Acca Larentia, who

was also an object of cult in Rome. The figure of the
matrona
is con- spicuous by its absence. Of female sexual categories the
matrona
was arguably the most important since, as I shall show, it was only by a
matrona
that a male Roman citizen could have children that were legally his own. The absence of the
matrona
from the founda- tion myth is therefore significant, as is the usurpation of her position by the prostitute.

The story is well known, and I shall here delineate only those fea- tures that are of particular interest to this discussion. The Vestal Virgin, Rhea Silvia
—
Ilia in some versions
—
gave birth to twin boys, Romulus and Remus. The babies were exposed by order of their mother
’
s wicked uncle, the king, but were saved and suckled by a wolf. Later they were found by the shepherd Faustulus, who took them home to be nursed and reared by his wife, Acca Larentia, who was a prostitute, and therefore called Lupa
—
she-wolf
—
a name commonly given to prostitutes.
10

In historical times the Vestal Virgins were strictly bound by an obligation to observe the most uncompromising chastity.
11
The very survival of the state depended on their unequivocal sexual purity. Theoretically a Vestal could not hope to conceal a lapse from this rigid ideal, because the gods themselves would reveal it by means of prodigies. The offending Vestal and her lover would be sought out and punished; she by being buried alive, he by being flogged to death. Significantly, the fate of a potential child is never mentioned; presumably because it was not thought possible that the woman
’
s transgression could be hidden long enough for her to bear a child. Nevertheless, Romulus
’
mother was a Vestal Virgin. The myth cir- cumvented this difficulty in all sorts of ways.
12
The most widely accepted tradition was that Mars was the father of the twins and that he had seduced their mother in a dream.
13
By this device the story kept the Vestal
’
s virtue unblemished. She was not made to suf- fer the traditional punishment, and her pregnancy, far from presag- ing disaster, resulted in the birth of the founder of the Roman state.
14
Romulus
’
birth, as it was interpreted by ancient writers, was paradoxical, indeed impossible, and hence wondrous. The rest of the myth of Romulus, from his being suckled by a wolf, to his myste- rious disappearance and subsequent apotheosis, was in keeping with the miraculous nature of his birth.
15
But his mother is given no further share in the story. She simply fades out of the picture. She is in fact the only significant character in the myth of the birth of the twins that plays no further part in their story.
16
It is tempting from a