Free From Good Goddess to Vestal Virgins: Sex and Category in Roman Religion by Ariadne Staples

that the exclusion of males was not as strict as we have been led to think by the large quantity of writing in contemporary and later ages of the Clodius affair. I am not suggesting that the general claim, from Cicero down to the Christian apologists, that the rites Clodius violated were strictly confined to women was in any way adventi- tious. But I am suggesting that the insistence on that aspect of the cult may have clouded our perception of the overall picture. It is entirely possible that selected males may have had a role to play in some of her rites, although not in the December festival.
    Our knowledge of what actually went on in the temple of Bona
    Dea and the ritual that was conducted in conjunction with the tem- ple on the Kalends of May is very slender indeed. 115 But thanks to Clodius we have a slightly better idea of what took place early in December. The most striking feature of this rite was that it did not take place in the temple of the goddess but in a private house — the house of a consul or a praetor for the year in question. 116 We have references to two separate occasions on which the rites were con- ducted. In 63 BC the festival was held in Cicero ’ s house 117 and in the following year in Caesar ’ s, 118 when they were consul and praetor respectively. This poses a very interesting problem: here was a cult perceived to have been strictly confined to women; it was sacrilege for a man to even know what went on; yet the performance of its rituals was mediated by male status. What is more, this status was politically defined. It was not confined to a member of a particular class, for example, the senatorial class. If that had been the case, it would have been harder to argue for male mediation for the venue of the rites, for women too were defined by class, even if that defini- tion was derived from their relationship with men. 119 But political status unequivocally excluded women. At the same time it anchored a cult, full of avowedly dangerous elements, firmly in the nexus of state-sponsored rituals. A deliberate choice was made to hold the rites in a private house, for the Bona Dea did possess at least one temple in Rome. The reason for holding them in the house of a mag- istrate, I suggest, was to provide a symbolic if not physical presence of men at the rite.
    The symbolic presence of men in the rites of the Bona Dea was not limited to the venue of the festival. The wife of the magistrate in question appeared to play a leading part in the business of the evening although it is impossible to know what exactly her duties entailed, or how far her authority extended over the activities involved. The Vestal Virgins were present, and it appears that it was they who actually performed the rites. 120 In 62 BC when a man — Clodius — was discovered in the house, it was not the Vestals but Aurelia, Caesar ’ s mother, presumably taking the initiative from her disgraced daughter-in-law, who ordered that the rites be stopped immediately. 121 The Vestal Virgins later repeated them. During the rites celebrated the previous year, when flames leaping out of a dead fire signalled a prodigy, it was interpreted as a divine message for the presiding matron for that year, Cicero ’ s wife, Terentia. It was a sig- nal from the goddess that the course of action Cicero was contem- plating — i.e. summary execution of the Catilinarian conspirators —
    had divine endorsement, and it was his wife who was sent to tell him so. 122
    The self-conscious and ostentatious way in which the exclusion of males from the house was effected also served to emphasize their ‘ presence ’ within it. For one thing the men — and a wealthy Roman household contained a sizeable number of them — had to find alter- native accommodation for the night. This could hardly have been effected unobtrusively. 123 Second, all traces of previous male pres- ence had to be masked. Even pictures of males, we are told, had to be covered up — not