Women in Roman Religion
Published Sep 15, 2009 · K. Hersch
The Classical Review
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Abstract
T.’s bold and lively book gives readers a compact, but not for that reason simplistic, introduction to Roman women’s religious roles from the founding of Rome through the empire. The women of the title are investigated against the backdrop of Roman mythology and history, the religious calendar and the importation of cults originally foreign to the Italian peninsula. Comparisons with men’s roles in Roman society, as well as evidence drawn from inscriptions, help to generate a complete picture of the signiμcant role of women in the formation of the Roman state and the perpetuation of its power. T. sets the stage with a useful chapter on the literary record, brie·y examining the women who helped to shape early Roman history and helpfully reminding readers of the biases of the sources (both literary and material). Close readings of Virgil and Livy provide a new appreciation of familiar tales of women who were sacriμced, willingly or unwillingly, on the altar of Rome’s greatness. T. shows well how capricious the Romans’ conception of the ideal woman may appear to us. The loud, outré Clodia of the Pro Caelio was ‘disloyal, impious, cheaply bought’ (p. 20); the ostentatious Fulvia and her motherin-law Julia won hearts and minds when, dressed as mourners, they publicly protested the designation of Mark Antony as a public enemy (p. 21). In the following chapter, T. examines women’s roles in the festivals and ceremonies recorded in the Roman religious calendar. The overarching theme here is fertility: perhaps not surprisingly, women’s participation in the worship of deities who would promote healthy childbearing and successful parturition again reinforces the prescribed roles of chaste maiden and fertile and faithful wife. Chapter 3 investigates the introduction of priestesses and goddesses of debated or foreign origin who would come to determine the life of Rome: the Sibyls, Magna Mater and Isis. While the utterances of divinely inspired women contained in the Sybilline Books had the power to shape the fate of Rome, T. points out that the consultation of these prophecies was the exclusive right of elite men, who from time to time admitted new sayings into the approved corpus in order to further either personal or national interests. T.’s investigations of the Pergamene Magna Mater (later con·ated with Cybele) and Egyptian Isis guide readers through the Romans’ varied e¶orts to subsume and control the female deities of their neighbours: whereas the μrst was successfully reclaimed as a link to Rome’s Trojan origins, the second endured frequent expulsions because of Rome’s uneasy relationship with Egypt. In the fourth chapter T. builds on recent scholarship on the Vestals by investigating their roles as storehouses of latent procreative power whose chastity and guardianship of Vesta’s sacred ·ame were inextricably tied to the health of the state. A Vestal’s real or imagined sexual indiscretions represented a rupture with the gods of Rome, and an o¶ending priestess, as a scapegoat, was hidden beneath the earth and ‘in death expiated the whole society’ (p. 89). Following the thread of the unchaste Vestal, T. next guides readers through famous scandals connected to women’s worship that were similarly believed to threaten the lives of all Romans. Reevaluating the scandalous ‘Bacchanalian a¶air’ (186 B.C.E.), T. notes that while the sexual impropriety of the cult’s participants
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