From Good Goddess to Vestal Virgins: Sex and Category in Roman Religion (20 page)

depended for their meaning on the capacity of women to bear chil- dren.
25

The female categories in the cult were defined according to sexual- ity and their relationship to each other was symmetrical. Unlike in the cults of Ceres and Flora, the rites were not designed to under- score the differences in function and behaviour of the two cate- gories. On the contrary they performed the same ritual and they performed it together. The male category was one of gender rather than sexuality and it occupied a different position
vis
à
vis
each of the female categories. The cult of Venus Verticordia presided over the way each of these female categories related to the single male category. For example, a
matrona
’
s relationship to a single man, her husband, would differ from the relationship of a prostitute to men. As for virgins and especially the Vestals, their relationship to males, marked by strict prohibition, would again differ markedly from the other two categories. I suggest, therefore, that the cult title Fortuna Virilis was meant to invoke and include within the cult the male principle that was fundamental to its meaning. Moreover, Fortuna Virilis was invoked, according to Ovid, in the baths themselves, so that the blemishes on the naked female body might be made invisi- ble to men. Verrius Flaccus, as we have already seen, in a comple- mentary exegesis, invokes male sexuality as the reason why Fortuna Virilis was worshipped by women in the men
’
s baths.

It must by now be clear why Mommsen
’
s interpolation is mislead- ing and why it is unnecessary to construct a model of two competing cults in order to explain our evidence on the cult of Venus Verticor- dia. The evidence all points in the direction of a single cult to a single goddess. Verrius Flaccus
’
statement that the
humiliores
bathed in the men
’
s baths does not necessarily make an argument for a schism of the cult.
Humiliores
does not necessarily refer to prostitutes but simply to a class which was economically, socially and legally underprivileged.
26
A possible explanation, offered tentatively here, that would reconcile the evidence of Verrius Flaccus and Ovid is that the festival, though open to women of all ranks, was in practice celebrated only by women of the lower classes: the
humiliores
.

To turn briefly to the rites themselves, Ovid mentions three ritual prescriptions: first, the statue of the goddess was to be stripped, washed and re-adorned; second, the women themselves were to bathe under boughs of myrtle; and third, they were to drink a ritual potion. What is immediately striking about Ovid
’
s description is the perception of the close affinity between goddess and worshipper.

The distance usually maintained between the two is here tran- scended. The cult statue, signifier of the deity, was undressed, washed and adorned just as the women undressed, bathed and adorned themselves.
27
The tantalizing question, for which we unfor- tunately do not have an answer, is whether the ritual bath of the worshippers and the washing of the statue took place simultane- ously. The stated purpose of the ritual bath is also significant. Blem- ishes on the naked female body would thereby be hidden by Fortuna Virilis from the eyes of men. On one level the implication of this is that it would enhance the women
’
s desirability. But it also implies that the women would be endowed with the quintessential quality of the goddess
—
physical perfection. Apparently the power of Venus Verticordia to unite disparate categories operated even with regard to this fundamental division of deity and mortal. Within the con- fines of the ritual, goddess and worshipper were united in a common sexuality.

The symmetry between the goddess and her followers was main- tained in the remaining prescriptions of the cult. Ovid provided an aetiological myth to explain the necessity for bathing under myrtle. Once, after a bath, Venus used a myrtle bough to screen herself from the lewd gaze of satyrs. The women recreated this incident in the mythology of the goddess by bathing under myrtle. Similarly they drank the ritual potion of poppy pounded with milk and honey in imitation of the potion drunk by Venus as a mark of her sexuality:
‘
when Venus was first escorted to her ardent spouse she drank that draught: from that moment she was a bride
’
.

In the cult of Venus Verticordia it is possible to discern all the cat- egories defined by gender and sexuality that we have encountered in the rites of Bona Dea, Ceres and Flora. Even the exceptional status with which the virginity of the Vestals was endowed in Roman ide- ology has been assimilated into the cult. Most interestingly, we have here a recognition of the male as a sexually defined rather than a politically defined category. In recognizing these various categories and operating in terms of them, the cult of Venus Verticordia
—
and, as I shall shortly argue, other cults of Venus as well
—
remained within the ideological framework that linked the cults of the Bona Dea, Ceres and Flora. But what set the cult of Venus Verticordia apart within that framework, was the manner in which it treated the ritual categories. It operated, as I have already observed, on a princi- ple of inclusion rather than of exclusion, thereby offering an alterna- tive model albeit within the same system.

We have very little evidence about the cult of Venus Obsequens. Her temple near the Circus Maximus was believed to have been the old- est temple of Venus in Rome.
28
It was built by Q.Fabius Maximus Gurges, who, when he dedicated the temple in 295 BC, gave the goddess the cult title
‘
Obsequens
’
because she had proved propi- tious towards him during his campaign against the Samnites.
29
Livy said that the temple was built on the advice of the Sibylline books, which had been consulted because of alarming prodigies that took place after the Samnite war had been successfully completed.
30
Fabius Gurges built the temple with money collected in fines from women convicted of adultery. It is not clear whether the prodigies were believed to have been caused by the adultery and whether the temple was a means of appeasing the goddess.

The only other piece of information that we have about this cult is that the anniversary of the temple fell on 19 August, which was also the day of the Vinalia Rustica. We know nothing about the cere- monies that marked the observance of the anniversary. All we have is the foundation legend. It suggests that Venus Obsequens was con- cerned with at least two areas of human activity: war and its success- ful outcome, and the sexual morality of
matronae
. The concern for matronal chastity was something Obsequens shared with the cult of Venus Verticordia. But the cult of Verticordia was exclusively devoted to sexual categories. In the cult of Obsequens good matronly conduct and successful military activity were given equal value. The connection, if any, between these two spheres of conduct is hard to discern, at least to the modern eye. None the less these were the two perceptions
—
bearing in mind that there could well have been others connected with the rites that we know nothing about
—
that were evoked by the cult of Venus Obsequens. The absence of any evidence about the nature of the rites precludes any insight as to how these seemingly unrelated themes were played out. At the very least the cult of Verticordia suggests a high probability that both categories
—
women as matrons, men as soldiers
—
would have participated in them.

The cult of Venus Erycina is more widely attested. It reveals con- cerns similar to those of the cult of Obsequens. The power of the Roman state, defined politically and militarily, and the concerns of prostitutes both came under the aegis of Erycina. Venus Erycina was imported into Rome from Sicily. The cult of Venus of Eryx in Sicily

was regarded as being of very great antiquity and of great and endur- ing power. Diodorus Siculus describes it as follows:

A man may well be filled with wonder when he stops to sum up the fame which has gathered about this shrine; all other sanctuaries have indeed enjoyed a flush of fame, but fre- quently sundry happenings have brought them low, whereas this is the only temple which, founded as it was at the begin- ning of time, not only has never failed to be the object of vener- ation but, on the contrary, has as time went on ever continued to enjoy great growth.

(Diod. Sic., 4.83)
31

The cult was rich and powerful but, more importantly, it was seen to have been adopted by a succession of significant individuals and powerful groups to their advantage: first Eryx, then Aeneas, both sons of Venus, the Sicanians, the Carthaginians and finally the Romans.

The Romans were not content with merely adopting the cult. Although after the capture of Sicily in the first Punic war they were able to lay claim to the sanctuary, they re-created the cult of Eryx in Rome itself. The circumstances under which they did so, make it easy to overlook the significance of the move from a ritual perspec- tive. The devastating defeat at Lake Trasimene in 217 BC was believed to have been at least partly the consequence of religious neglect. Q.Fabius Maximus, the recently appointed dictator, rec- ommended consultation of the Sibylline books, which in turn pre- scribed a host of religious measures to be taken, including the dedication of a temple to Venus Erycina.
32
It is easy to lose Venus Erycina in the crowd of other deities that were to be supplicated in one way or another on this occasion. But in fact, this particular mea- sure was in many ways the most remarkable. Venus, for one thing, was honoured twice. She was to share in the
lectisternium,
the ritual banquet offered to a dozen deities, which was another of the mea- sures prescribed at the time, and where traditionally she was paired with Mars. But this was, for want of a better way of putting it, a generic Venus, rather than a representative of a special cult. The implications of the temple to the special cult figure, Venus Erycina, were different. This cult was established and indeed derived its name from a geographical location far away from Rome. It might have constituted Roman territory by this date, but that did not make

it part of Rome.
33
In this respect it was not different from the Mater Magna of Pessinus, Cybele, who was transferred to Rome in 204 BC, in circumstances very similar to those which had led to the adop- tion of the cult of Erycina a few years earlier.
34
Nor was it different from the cult of Juno of Veii, which had been transferred to Rome at the beginning of the fourth century BC. But the manner in which the cult of Venus Erycina was transferred to Rome was strikingly differ- ent in that there was an absence of the ritual circumstance and symbolic action that marked the transition of both Juno and Cybele.
35

Juno of Veii was moved to Rome in 396 BC after Veii had been captured by Camillus. Her adoption was an example of the custom of
evocatio
whereby a non-Roman deity was formally invited to transfer his or her allegiance to Rome. In this instance Camillus had
‘
evoked
’
both Juno and Apollo.
36
Livy thus describes the way in which Juno was moved to Rome:

When the wealth that belonged to men had now been carried away out of Veii, they began to remove the possessions of the gods and the gods themselves, but more in the manner of wor- shippers than of pillagers. For out of all the army youths were chosen and made to cleanse their bodies and to put on white garments, and to them the duty was assigned of conveying Juno Regina to Rome. Reverently entering her temple they scrupled at first to approach her with their hands, because this image was one which according to Etruscan practice none but a priest of certain family was wont to touch; when one of them, whether divinely inspired or out of youthful jocularity asked,
‘
wilt thou go, Juno, to Rome?
’—
whereat the others all cried out that the goddess had nodded assent. It was after- wards added to the story that she had also been heard to say that she was willing. At all events we are told that she was moved from her place with contrivances of little power, as though she accompanied them voluntarily, and was lightly and easily transferred and carried safe and sound to the Aven- tine, the eternal home to which the prayers of the Roman dictator had called her; and there Camillus afterwards dedi- cated to her the temple which he himself had vowed.

(Livy, 5.22.3
–
7)
37

There is a considerable degree of symbolic action involved here. For

example, the men chosen to transport the goddess were carefully selected; Livy is careful to distinguish this event from pillage. Then there is the ritual purification, the donning of special garments, the initial reluctance to touch the statue, even the initial
evocatio
—
all this must be read as a way of marking out a boundary that a deity moving from one religious system to another would have to cross. The climax of the ritual and its most important feature was the con- sent of the goddess herself to the move. Merely to have carried the statue away to Rome would not have made Juno Regina Roman. The gods could not be acquired by plunder. The crossing of a ritual boundary of any kind, whether internally within a single religious system, or from one system to another, needed to be ritually marked out.

This point is made even more emphatically in the case of Cybele, the Magna Mater. In the transmission of her story we see similar sorts of ritual elements as in the story of Juno, but presented with a greater degree of elaboration. There was a lot more at stake in the adoption of this ritual which contained a much greater degree of non-Romanness than did the cult from Veii. The extraordinary nature of the symbolic action surrounding the arrival of the cult of the Magna Mater reveals an underlying anxiety about the introduc- tion of a cult which in the form of its sexually anomalous priests, the castrated
Galli,
contained at least one element that no ritual manipu- lation could assimilate into the Roman religious system.