From Good Goddess to Vestal Virgins: Sex and Category in Roman Religion (9 page)

Who ever sneered at the gods in the days of old? Who would have dared to laugh at the earthenware bowls or black pots of Numa, or the brittle plates made out of Vatican clay? But nowadays at what altar will you not find a Clodius?

(Juv., 6.342
–
345)

The solemnity of the rites cannot be doubted. When Clodius was discovered, the women with great presence of mind evicted him and repeated the rites. This is not in keeping with a picture of a drunken orgy. In 63 BC the goddesses
’
will was signalled by a flame shooting out of a dead fire. I suggest that the fact that the fire had gone out may be taken to imply that the rites were at an end, when, if Juvenal
’
s description were to be taken seriously, the women would have been worn out by debauchery. Yet the sign was noted, inter- preted and promptly reported. In the time of the late Republic and early Principate at least, the rites of Bona Dea were a serious busi- ness, meticulously performed to ensure the well-being of the Roman people.

The rites of Bona Dea were not merely part of the civic religion, they were a part thereof
par excellence
. When Roman writers referred to a rite performed
pro populo
or
pro salute populi
they were invariably referring to the rites of Bona Dea.
131
How these rites were believed to ensure the safety of the people is not clear to a mod- ern historian. It is a question never posed by our sources, not even by curious Greeks like Plutarch. My own thesis, which will be elabo- rated during the course of this book, is that the concept of boundary in general and sexually defined boundary in particular, was closely linked with the notion of the welfare of the state. It was expressed in its most extreme form in the priesthood of the Vestals as I shall argue in the final chapter. For the moment we need to look more closely at how the notion of boundary operated in the rite of the Bona Dea by examining more of the ritual features of the cult.

Two details of the ritual that took place in December are particu- larly important in terms of this analysis. One is the exclusion of myrtle from the house where the festival was to be celebrated, the other is the use of wine at the festival. Plutarch surmised that the rea- son that myrtle was excluded from Bona Dea
’
s rites was because it was a plant sacred to Venus and Bona Dea was a chaste goddess.
132
Both myrtle and wine were used by Faunus in the story, in a vain attempt to force his daughter to yield to his incestuous advances.
133
As a result, myrtle was excluded from the rites altogether, and wine was brought in a honey pot
(mellarium)
and called milk.
134
The sig- nificance of the exclusion of myrtle will be more conveniently dis-

cussed in
chapter 3
, where I examine aspects of the cult of Venus. Here I shall examine the significance of wine in Bona Dea
’
s festival.

Again the most useful approach to the problem is through an examination of another rite
—
the Parilia, which was celebrated on 21 April. Our main source for the Parilia is Ovid, who claims to have participated in the festival, and describes it in gratifying detail.
135
It appears to have been principally a rite for shepherds, designed to purify the sheep and ensure both their preservation from harm and their fertility during the coming year. Both ancient and modern commentators appear to agree on this point.
136
But that wasn
’
t all it was. The Parilia was also regarded as a celebration of the birthday of Rome, although the festival itself, like those of Her- cules at the
Ara Maxima
and Bona Dea, was perceived to have existed before Rome was actually founded.
137
The Parilia was a fes- tival admirably suited to accommodate the multivalent significa- tions that cults were endowed with, and which helped maintain their vibrancy and meaning as social, political and economic struc- tures evolved.
138
Already in the time of Ovid, the rite had acquired many layers of meaning, as Ovid
’
s eager attempt to interpret them shows.
‘
The multitude of explanations creates a doubt and thwarts me at the outset,
’
he complains, then devotes twenty-two lines to a dizzy succession of baffling interpretations.
139
The evidence we have for the ritual practices of the Parilia serves only to mystify if considered simply in the context of this single rite. However, when put into the wider context of Roman cult practice it is possible to formulate a plausible hypothesis as to their meaning and function. In terms of this analysis, the rites of Bona Dea and the Parilia will give each other meaning. It is important to bear in mind, however, that there is no discernible structural parallelism of the sort that was demonstrated between the rites of Hercules and Bona Dea. Here it is rather a case of two separate rites within a common polytheistic reli- gion, embedded in the same cultural matrix, using a ritual mecha- nism in a similar way. The ritual mechanism in this case is the use of wine and milk in the Parilia and the wine that is called milk in the rites of Bona Dea. Neither of these two features makes much sense when the cults are considered separately. But they do make quite a lot of sense when the two cults are compared. For this reason the following discussion will be a bit disjointed. I shall start with a dis- cussion of the Parilia, switch to the rites of the Bona Dea, then return to the Parilia before summing up the argument.

This is not going to be a comprehensive analysis of the rites of the

Parilia
—
only an examination of one particular aspect of them which will help shed some light on a feature of the cult of the Bona Dea. The most striking feature of Ovid
’
s description of the Parilia is fire. Indeed it is the fires of the Parilia that Ovid tries to explain in his exegetical exercise. The fire appears to have a twofold function: purificatory and generative, concepts which indeed appear closely interrelated in other areas of religious ideology.
140
First of all the sheep are purified with fire in which sulphur is burned together with special ritual fumigants supplied by the Vestal Virgins.
141
The purification is followed by a prayer. The structure of this prayer as set forth by Ovid reveals the close connection between purificatory and generative power in the rite. The prayer for expiation of all involuntary infractions of ritual injunctions, whether committed by sheep
—
e.g., browsing on graves
—
or shepherd, is smoothly trans- posed into a prayer for bountiful offspring for the sheep and prosper- ity for the shepherd. And the fire is the single signifier for both aspects.

That fire is used to purify is a commonplace in many religions in different cultures. Its generative aspects are not so intuitively dis- cernible. But in Rome, as we saw, fire was a symbol both of the male principle and also of the generative power of the male. This symbol- ism is also present in the rites of the Parilia where fire is used to sig- nify the generative or procreative power of the male, not just of the ram but of the shepherd as well. The shepherd having uttered his prayer
—
four times
—
washes his hands in dew, drinks wine and milk mixed together, then leaps over the fires set three in a row. From a reading of Ovid it is impossible even to guess at the meaning of this but Tibullus provides a clue.

And drenched in wine the shepherd will chaunt the feast of Pales the shepherds holiday. Ye wolves, be ye then far from the fold. Full of drink he will fire the light straw heaps in the appointed way, and leap across the sacred flames. Then shall his dame bear offspring, and the child take hold of his father
’
s ears to snatch a kiss; nor shall the grandsire find it irksome to watch by his little grandson
’
s side, nor, for all his years, to lisp in prattle with the child.

(Tib., 2.5.87
–
94)

The shepherd leaps across the flames, according to Tibullus, in order that his wife
—
matrona
—
may bear offspring.
‘
Lustful be the

ram
’
, prays Ovid,
‘
and may his mate conceive and bear, and many a lamb be in my fold.
’
142
If I
’
ve read Tibullus correctly (and it does seem quite straightforward) the same prayer could, with equal valid- ity, have been said for the shepherd himself on this occasion. The generative power of the fire touched man and beast alike.

This is a most remarkable rite. It was usually women who, until very recently, were concerned with fertility, and there are many aspects of Roman religion which address the problem of female fer- tility. The
‘
fertility goddess
’
worshipped by women is a common- place in popular notions of pagan religion in general. But in the Par- ilia it is the fertility of the male that appears to have been at issue. What is meant here by
‘
fertility
’
is no more than lustfulness, yet it is striking that the capacity of the female to bear offspring was per- ceived to depend on the fertility of her mate. Nowhere is mention made of women participating in this rite. But it is highly improbable that they were not present in some capacity. The Parilia was very much a multi-faceted ritual. It was both public and private, rural and urban: 21 April was a merry day in Rome and there must have been celebrations everywhere.
143
But the most prominent ritual role was played by men.

The sex of the deity Pales who was the object of sacrifice at the Parilia was a matter for controversy in ancient times and most mod- ern scholars have believed that she was one of those deities whose sex was unknown
—
those addressed by the formula
sive deus sive dea
in formulary prayers.
144
Dum
é
zil however has argued convinc- ingly that Pales was a goddess (Dum
é
zil 1970:380
et seq.
). A feature of the rite gives further support to Dum
é
zil
’
s hypothesis. Tibullus speaks of the shepherd at the Parilia as drenched in wine
(madidus baccho)
and drunk
(potus)
.
145
Ovid describes him drinking wine mixed with milk before leaping through the flames.
146
But the liquid offering made to Pales was simply milk. Where milk and wine occur together in ritual they seem to correspond to the male-female dichotomy inherent in the cults of which the rituals were a part. But to demonstrate this convincingly it is necessary to look at the rites of Bona Dea.

Wine was brought into the rites of Bona Dea but it was called milk and its container was called a honey-pot. It was also kept covered. The ancient aetiology for this was that Faunus had tried to make his daughter drunk with wine, hoping thereby to seduce her. Another explanation was that the cult of Bona Dea was a very old one, and in the old days libations to the gods were made with milk not wine.
147

But whatever it might have been called, what was brought in to the rite was wine not milk. Moreover myrtle had the same function in the myth as wine did and it was unambiguously excluded from the rite. Wine was not.

In the ideology of the early Romans wine and women apparently did not mix.
‘
In Rome
’
, writes Pliny,
‘
women were not allowed to drink wine.
’
148
The reason for this prohibition is very problematic. Pliny seems to suggest that the reason was an economic one
—
the theme of the passage is that wine, in the early days of Rome that Pliny was talking about, was a scarce and precious commodity and had to be carefully husbanded. Yet it appears from examples of women who were punished for drinking wine and from other sources, that the basis for the prohibition was ideological rather than economic. It appears that the prohibition against drinking wine was particularly important in the case of
matronae
. In their case drinking wine was tantamount to adultery. They were pun- ished in the same way for both
‘
crimes
’
. A law attributed to Romu- lus states that for wives the penalty for the crimes of adultery and drinking wine was death.
149
Egnatius Maetennus, says Pliny, beat his wife to death for drinking wine, and Romulus acquitted him on the charge of murder.
150
Valerius Maximus, following the same tra- dition, though his character is called Egnatius Metellus, writes that when the man killed his wife
‘
everyone considered this an excellent example of one who had justly paid the penalty for violating the laws of sobriety
’
.
151
Cato, describing the powers of husband over wife, mentions two serious marital offences for which wives could be severely punished by their husbands: committing adultery and drinking wine.
152
Moreover men needed to be vigilant to be sure that their women folk were not secretly imbibing. It was the custom for women to kiss their male kinsfolk on the mouth, and after they were married they did the same to their husband
’
s kinsfolk. The ancient commentators felt that an explanation was needed for this curious custom. It was done, according to both Pliny and Cato, for the purpose of detecting whether the women had been drinking or not. If they had, the odour of the wine would betray them to their relations.
153

But merely to label this prohibition ideological is to beg the ques- tion. What we have here is not simply a distaste for the sight of a tipsy woman, such as Ovid expresses in the
Ars Amatoria
when he warns his female readers to drink moderately at parties because a drunken woman is an ugly sight.
154
It is not simply a fear that an