| |
The state religion permitted a few other women to act
as priestesses, but under tight controls. It usually required them to
be patrician matrons still married to their first husband (univirae,
or “one-man women”). The flaminica Dialis (priestess of Jupiter),
though subject to this requirement, had unusual privileges as part of
a priestly couple. The flamen could not sleep away from her for more than
three consecutive nights, and lost his office if his wife died. She wore
the red veil of Roman brides and officiated at ceremonies in honor of
Juno every month. [Scheid, 401] Like the Vestals, the flaminica enjoyed
a suspension of male guardianship. [Lefko/Fant, 191]
State goddesses like Mater Matuta and Fortuna Primigenia embodied patrician
norms. They elevated matrons of rank and mothers of sons over other women.
The statue of Mater Matuta was veiled like a patrician matron. [Ogilvie,
70] In the Matralia rites, noble, univirae matrons took a slave into her
temple, simply in order to drive her out in a fury “with slaps and
blows.” [quote in Olmsted, 251; Scheid, 386, 405] These officially-sanctioned
cults upheld women's legal status as dependent minors. Roman women made
offerings to Fortuna Virilis on August 1st so that their blemishes would
be hidden from the male gaze. The rite aimed to “regain the loss
of the waning affection and the desire of men for their wives or mistresses.”
[Fasti IV, 133ff, in Webster, 171fn177]
Though barred from most official temple culture, Roman women celebrated
their own rites commemorating birth, harvest, and death. They laid out
offering tables for Juno Lucina for a week following every birth.
Every woman could offer sacrifice, burn incense, pour the libation,
play instruments, dance, and sing magic formulas for all the rites of
the life cycle... she could sing the dirges [nenia] and make
the gesture [planctus]
appropriate for calling out to the deceased [conclamatio]. She
could carry out
the immemorially old customs of primitive faith. [Drinker, 146]
Italian women kept the ancient goddess veneration alive in its pre-Roman
sanctuaries. Wreath-crowned votaries carried torches to Diana’s
temple at Nemi, where a volcanic lake lay in a hollow surrounded on three
sides by forested cliffs. On its shores a temple stood in a sacred grove.
A bronze priestess pouring libation shows the cultural mix at Nemi circa
125 BCE: she wears an Italic diadem, Greek robes and a Celtic torc. [Brendel,
428-9] Her temple was said to copy that of Artemis Tauropolis, in faraway
Crimea. [Strabo, V, 3, 2] Diana Nemorensis (“of the grove”)
was related to the Celtic forest goddesses Nemetona, Nemetobriga, Arnemetia.
The lake at Nemi was called the Mirror of Diana. It was fed by the spring
of Egeria, who was also worshipped there. [Darrah, 28]. Women came to
Egeria’s sanctuary to pray for children and easy birth: “Almost
countless clay models of the uterus have been found near her shrine, together
with the torch, the symbol of midwives and of the Mater Matuta, who in
the early hours of the morning opened the uterus and bade the baby come
forth.” [Hurd-Mead, circa 49] The sanctuary of Nemi at Aricia remained
an important center of goddess veneration under the empire. It welcomed
the votaries of Isis. A relief found at the site depicts African women
dancing in bliss.
Another major religious center was the Roman temple of Diana on the Aventine
Hill. Her ancient statue was modelled on Artemis of Ephesus, by way of
Marseilles. An ancient bronze pillar stood on the hill, inscribed with
the Aventine canon: laws governing the festivals of all Latin cities.
Every hearth in Italy celebrated the festival of Diana on August 13th,
when the Latin league was first founded. Diana had another grove at Tibur,
where she was called Opifera, “help-bringing.” [Palmer, 58,
77; Ogilvie, 65-7]
Opifera was also a title of Bona Dea, the “good goddess,”
whose temples nourished a culture of female sovereignty and outright resistance.
Tradition said that women built the sanctuary of Bona Dea in the distant
past, and its association with the women's mysteries endured. [Drinker;
Goodrich, 256] No men were allowed in this temple or the nearby temple
of Diana, the headquarters of plebian women. Diana was seen as a protector
of the oppressed classes, especially the enslaved. This was true of Bona
Dea and Ceres as well. [Spaeth, 92, identifies Ceres as the goddess of
the plebeians.]
Bona Dea's Roman temple was built over a cave where the priestesses kept
sacred serpents. An ancient source says that these snakes “neither
felt nor inspired fear.” [Scheid, 391] Statues of the goddess show
a snake coiling around her right arm, drinking from an offering bowl in
her hand. Her left arm cradles a cornucopia, the attribute of Fortuna
and Terra Mater. Her priestesses ran an herbarium: “... all kinds
of herbs are found in her temple, from which the priestesses mostly make
medicines which they distribute...”[Hurd-Mead,
49; quote, Brouwer, 224] Snakes and healing herbs were also kept at the
grove of the goddess Angitia or Anguitina at lake Fuscinus. [Piscinus,
online]
At the sanctuary of Bona Dea in Paestum archaeologists have discovered
body images “left by cured or ailing women” along with quantities
of wine cups. “Over the centuries, her intercession was variously
sought for such purposes as healing, fertility, being freed from slavery,
fruitfulness in agriculture and for the protection of the entire Roman
people.” [Pace]
Inscriptions shower Bona Dea with titles: Caelestis (heavenly), Augusta,
Sancta (holy), Heia, Regina Triumphali, Lucifera (light-bringing), Obsequens
(well-disposed), Opifera (aid-bringing), Pagana, Agrestis and Sevina (goddess
of the countryside, fields, and seeds). As Domina (lady), she is thanked
for healing an eye disease. She is linked to other goddesses: Fortuna,
Ceres, Juno, the Parcae, Hygeia, and Venus Cnidia. [Brouwer, 236, 346,
376, 388-92, 416, 419, titles; 235, 315, 312, 413-19 on goddesses]
[Graphic: Fenta Fauna
nursing a goat
amidst dancing
and music-making
women. Pompeii,
Villa of Mysteries.]
Bona Dea was itself a title, not the actual name of the
goddess, which was taboo. (Servius wrote that “it was forbidden
to call her by her name.”) Her secret name was Fenta Fauna or Fenta
Fatua. Fauna was depicted as an old woman with pointed ears holding a
serpent. Fenta was the name of a Gaulish goat-goddess the Romans called
Caprina Galla. Her Roman counterpart was Juno Caprotina, who wore a goatskin
cloak and drove a chariot drawn by goats. Enslaved women were prominent
among her devotees. The title Fatua, though Latin, was also borne by goddesses
of southern Gaul. [Brouwer, 221; Palmer, 167, 16, 35]
The names Fatua and Fauna are both associated with oracular cults. The
name Fatua comes from fatuari, “to speak for,” implying
prophetic utterances inspired by the goddess, with overtones of the Fatae,
goddesses of destiny. Fauna and Faunus were linked to prophecies spoken
in ecstatic or intoxicated states.
Bona Dea was a goddess of entranced prophecy. The serpent coiled around
her arm had oracular significance (as with the Pythia) and symbolized
healing power (as with the goddess Hygeia). Her rites were celebrated
with wine, music and revelry.[Brouwer, 369: see also 335, where Pliny
links intoxication and stupor with the language of prophecy]
Cornelius Labeo equated the “Good Goddess” with Earth and
Maia and Ops, as the source of all life, caring and help for living things.
He noted that she was likened to Juno and Proserpina and Hecate and Semele.
Festus linked her to Damia, a goddess of growth. Bona Dea had two festivals,
one on May 1st—a date that was never to relinquish its link with
the pagan mysteries—and a nocturnal, movable feast around December
3. The May rites included the sacrifice of a pregnant sow, traditionally
offered to Terra Mater and Ceres. Matrons wearing purple headbands roasted
the pig on the hearth and offered the bacon to Bona Dea with libations.
(Later, sow-shaped cakes were offered.) The eldest woman presided, while
young women took part in public games. [Labeo from Macrobius, in Brouwer,
224; 351; Scheid, 391]
Cicero knew of no cult older than Bona Dea's. [Brouwer, 257] He and other
writers portrayed it as restricted to patrician women, a claim dramatically
contradicted by the epigraphic evidence. Inscriptions show freed slaves
as the single largest category of Bona Dea devotees—and priestesses.
Plebians are well-represented too. Lower-class devotees dedicated hundreds
of inscriptions to Bona Dea at altars, wells, and sanctuaries, as well
as donating mirrors, basins, sacrificial tables, and temple repairs. [Brouwer,
256-7, 262ff, 281ff presents masses of evidence vs aristo theory, and
notes that our only sources on the goddess were men, who were excluded
from her mysteries.]
The literary sources also emphasize that all males, even animals, were
excluded from the mysteries of Bona Dea, and male images were covered
up during rites held in homes. Unquestionably, the Bona Dea rituals took
place in female space. But men also dedicated offerings to the “Good
Goddess,” and a few are even listed as priests. [Ibid, 281, 255-8]
If in fact some men were admitted to the rites, the women selected them,
on their own terms. Bona Dea was known as Feminea Dea, a “women’s
goddess,” and mythology illuminates this emphasis.
Fenta Fauna is called the wife, or daughter, or sister of Faunus. His
exact relation to her is less important than his abuse of power: he beats
her to death with myrtle sticks. (Caning was a traditional Roman punishment
of wives and daughters.) By all accounts, Fauna struggles against a male
in authority over her, who responds with violence. Plutarch explains that
her husband, the seer Faunus, killed her with myrtle rods when he discovered
she had been secretly been drinking wine—a pleasure forbidden to
women under old Roman law.
Arnobius repeats the same story, using the name Fenta
Fatua. [Brouwer, 356, 196, 233, 216] Lactantius, who calls Fenta Fauna
the sister and wife of Faunus, says the same thing. He briefly alludes
to her prophetic power: “... she was called Fatua since she used
to foretell women their fate, as Faunus did men.” [Lactantius, op
cit. fix this] This reference points back to the archaic shrines of the
Fatae at Albunea, the seat of the Tiburtine sibyl.
Varro summarized revisionist theories about the goddess, claiming that
she owed her divinity to her batterer who, repenting of killing his wife,
“conferred divine honor on her...” [In Lactantius, op cit]
He also reinterpreted the subversive women's mysteries into a mindless
embrace of the conventional patrician code of female seclusion, saying
that women venerated Bona Dea for her great modesty, so extreme “that
no man, except her husband, has ever seen her during her lifetime or has
ever heard her name.” (This puts an entirely different spin on the
ritual taboo against naming the goddess.) Servius agreed, making Faunus'
daughter “the chastest of all women and well-trained in all skills.”
[Brouwer, 218, 221] But Macrobius reported another version on the theme
of female oppression: Faunus tried to force his daughter to have sex with
him, and beat her with myrtle twigs when she resisted. He prevailed over
her by turning into a serpent and penetrated her in this form. [Brouwer,
224]
All sources agree that myrtle twigs were forbidden in the precincts of
Bona Dea, and that her rites involved a vessel of wine covered with a
cloth, always referred to as the "honey-jar," and its contents
as "milk." [Arnobius, in Brouwer, 216; Macrobius, in 224] Wine
was a sacrament, as in the Dionysian mysteries. The tabooed mention of
wine harks back to the role its prohibition to women played in the primary
myth of Fenta Fauna, who was put to death for drinking it, as old Roman
law demanded.
This injustice, and the battery and rape of Fauna, symbolized women's
oppression to her votaries. Patriarchy was the reason for the exclusion
of men from the rites. So Macrobius compared Bona Dea to Medea, another
wronged woman who was deified: “... no man may enter her temple
on account of the wrong she suffered at the hands of her thankless husband
Jason.” [Brouwer, 224]
Bona Dea was the only old Roman deity who admitted freed slaves to the
priesthood, as the foreign religions of Kybele, Isis, and Mithras also
did. No social distinction between ex-slaves and the freeborn was evident
in the veneration of Bona Dea. Many devotees and magistrae (priestesses)
were of foreign origin. They formed collegia that, in addition to celebrating
the rites, functioned as social clubs and burial societies. [Ibid, 258
fn25, 373]
Festivals and shrines of Diana and the Bona Dea became the focus of a
female culture of resistance that encompassed oppressed classes and foreigners.
To the unease of patrician men, matrons of rank, prostitutes, poor women,
and slaves participated together in the rites of Bona Dea and in the increasingly
popular African and Asian religions. Tibullus warned husbands: “Be
on your guard whenever she goes out and says she is going to visit Bona
Dea's sanctuary, forbidden for men.” [Brouwer, 177]
Men of the senatorial class were hostile to the mystery religions. These
sodalities were considered all the more subversive for welcoming “despised
sectors of society, such as women and slaves.” Senator Cassius Longinus
denounced large households with foreign slaves whose religion was different
than their masters. Over a century later, Juvenal complained about the
Syrians and other foreigners pouring into Rome. [L/W, 109-10] Rome was
repressing foreign religions as early as 213 BCE, according to Livy. [Vermaseren,
38] The Senate interdicted the Mysteries twice during the Republic, in
186 BCE and again in 64 CE, when Augustus abolished all the collegia.
They came back, but the state tried to keep them under a tight rein. [Brouwer,
374]
The center of the ecstatic Mysteries was the Aventine hill. This rural
part of the city was home to some of Rome's oldest temples, such as those
of Carmenta, Mercury, and Diana. Plebeian worship of the Aventine triad—Ceres,
Liber and Libera—thrived there. It was also the headquarters of
Bona Dea. It even had a neighborhood named after her; we read of “the
women of the Bona Dea quarter” being treated to mead and cakes.
[Brouwer, 385] Many foreigners settled in this commoners' quarter, bringing
their own religions. The Aventine became the center of multicultural cross-pollination
of deities, rites and symbols. [Pailler, 42, 130]
Among them were very old deities of pre-Roman Latium. The goddess Ops
was honored in the Consualia, a festival celebrating the storage of harvested
grain, on the Aventine. [Pouthier, 103fn] Worshippers of the goddess Stimula
(“goad”) entered into divine possession in a sacred wood at
the bottom of Aventine hill, along the Tiber river. Stimula was eventually
syncretized with Ceres (herself interchangeable with Tellus and Ops) and
with Semele, the mother of Dionysos. [Pailler, 251, 94, 133-4] A fresco
in the Villa of Mysteries at Pompei depicts her as a winged being who
whips a kneeling devotee with a cane.
Many newcomers to the Aventine were conquered nationalities, especially
Etruscans and Campanians, who had been deported from their homelands.
The southerners brought in Eleusinian, Dionysian and Orphic rituals from
their homeland, which the Romans called Magna Graecia. Most of the priestesses
of Ceres came from this region. In the supplications of the ritus Graecus,
great processions of singing women wound their way along the Tiber to
the Aventine temple of Juno. These rites blended easily with the Aventine
cults of Ceres, Stimula and Mater Matuta. [Pailler, 250, 278-9, 131, 6,
10; Scheid, 394 on carmen, ritus] On certain days the women raised a lamentation
at every crossroads, as Ceres had cried out and, as Servius wrote, as
women wailed in the rite of Isis. [Spaeth, 107]
The mystery religion that emerged from this fusion came to be called the
Bacchanalia, after a Roman name for the rites of Dionysus (Bacchus). A
growing number of Roman women were attracted to these ceremonies, where
they stepped outside of male control and into a ceremonial world led by
women: “Always in Dionysian initiation scenes, it is women who act
as the leaders and initiators: the women have control of the veiled men
or boys who are evidently the neophytes.” [Godwin, 41] Most of the
initiates were female.
Titus Livy acknowledged that these mysteries “had at first been
a woman's sanctuary, and ordinarily no man was admitted... usually matrons
were chosen in turn to act as priestesses.” [find cite] This statement
contradicted Livy's own claim that the whole thing had been started by
a low-born Greek man. Unfortunately, his clearly biased account is virtually
the sole historical source on the first mass witch hunt. Livy presents
the official senatorial rationale for the “pitiless repression”
that stamped out the matres bacchicae in 186 BCE. [Paillier, xiii, 8,
14, 596]
|
|