Editing Bona Dea (section)

==Festival and cult==

===Republican era===
The known features of Bona Dea's cults recall those of various earth and fertility goddesses of the [[Greco-Roman world|Graeco-Roman world]], especially the [[Thesmophoria]] festival to Demeter. They included nocturnal rites conducted by predominantly or exclusively female initiates and female priestesses, music, dance and wine, and sacrifice of a sow.{{Sfn|Versnel|1992|pp=31–33}} During the [[Roman Republic]]an era, two such cults to Bona Dea were held at different times and locations in the city of [[Rome]].

One was held on [[Roman festivals#Maius|May 1]] at Bona Dea's [[Aventine Hill|Aventine]] temple. Its date connects her to [[Maia (mythology)#Roman Maia|Maia]]; its location connects her to Rome's [[Plebs|plebeian]] commoner class, whose [[tribune]]s and emergent aristocracy resisted [[Patrician (ancient Rome)|patrician]] claims to rightful religious and political dominance. The festival and temple's foundation year is uncertain &ndash; [[Ovid]] credits it to [[Claudia Quinta]] (c. late 3rd century BC).<ref>Ovid, Fasti, 2, 35; he is the only source for this assertion.</ref> The rites are inferred as some form of mystery, concealed from the public gaze and, according to most later Roman literary sources, entirely forbidden to men. In the Republican era, Bona Dea's Aventine festivals were probably distinctly [[plebeian]] affairs, open to all classes of women and in some limited fashion, to men.<ref>{{harvnb|Brouwer|1989|p=398|ps=: "And considering the fact that the aristocracy were only a small percentage of the population, it is not surprising that most expressions of Bona Dea worship originate from the lower classes."}}</ref> Control of her Aventine cult seems to have been contested at various times during the Mid Republican era; a dedication or rededication of the temple in 123 BC by the [[Vestal Virgin]] Licinia, with the gift of an altar, shrine and couch, was immediately annulled as unlawful by the [[Roman Senate]]; Licinia herself was later charged with inchastity, and executed. By the Late Republic era, Bona Dea's May festival and Aventine temple could have fallen into official disuse, or official disrepute.<ref>{{harvnb|Wildfang|2006|pp=92–93}}, citing Cicero, ''De Domo Sua'', 53.136.</ref> 
 
The goddess also had a winter festival, attested on only two occasions (63 and 62 BC). It was held in December, at the home of a current senior annual [[Roman Magistrates|Roman magistrate ''cum imperio'']], whether [[Roman consul|consul]] or [[praetor]]. It was hosted by the magistrate's wife and attended by respectable matrons of the Roman elite. This festival is not marked on any known religious calendar, but was dedicated to the public interest and supervised by the Vestals, and therefore must be considered official. Shortly after 62 BC, Cicero describes it as one of very few lawful nocturnal festivals allowed to women, privileged to those of aristocratic class, and coeval with Rome's earliest history.{{Sfn|Brouwer|1989|p=398}}

==== Festival rites ====
The house was ritually cleansed of all unauthorized male persons. Then the magistrate's wife and her assistants<ref>Possibly, her own female servants.</ref> made bowers of vine-leaves, and decorated the house's banqueting hall with "all manner of growing and blooming plants" except for [[Myrtus|myrtle]], whose presence and naming were expressly forbidden. A banquet table was prepared, with a couch (''pulvinar'') for the goddess and the image of a snake. The Vestals brought Bona Dea's cult image from her temple<ref>Presumably her Aventine Temple.</ref> and laid it upon her couch, as an honoured guest. The goddess' meal was prepared: the entrails ([[Glossary of ancient Roman religion#exta|''exta'']]) of a sow, sacrificed to her on behalf of the [[Roman people]] (''pro populo Romano''), and a [[Glossary of ancient Roman religion#libatio|libation]] of sacrificial wine.<ref>The sacrifice could have been offered by the Vestals or, according to Plutarch, by the hostess; see [[Bona Dea#Cult themes|Cult themes]] in this article.</ref> The festival continued through the night, a banquet with female musicians, fun and games (''ludere''), and wine; the last was euphemistically referred to as "milk", and its container as a "honey jar".<ref>Winter festival summary based on Brouwer (1989) as summarised in {{harvnb|Versnel|1992|p=32}}, and {{harvnb|Wildfang|2006|p=31}}. For Roman sources, cf. Plutarch, Lives: Life of Caesar, ix (711E), Life of Cicero, xix (870B); Juvenal, vi.339 (a satirical treatment); and Plutarch, Roman Questions, (Loeb), 20–35, [https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/Roman_Questions*/A.html available via link to Bill Thayer's website]</ref> The rites sanctified the temporary removal of customary constraints imposed on Roman women of all classes by [[Mos maiorum|Roman tradition]], and underlined the pure and lawful sexual potency of virgins and matrons in a context that focused on female lust, instead of the lust of men.{{Sfn|Versnel|1992|p=44}} According to Cicero, any unauthorized man who caught even a glimpse of the rites could be punished by blinding, but he offers no example of this.<ref>Cicero, ''De Haruspicum Responsis'' XVII.37 – XVIII.38; cited in Brouwer, pp. 165–166.</ref> Later Roman writers assume that apart from their different dates and locations, Bona Dea's December and May 1 festivals were essentially the same.<ref>See W. Warde Fowler, The Roman Festivals of the period of the Republic, MacMillan (New York, 1899): pp. 102–106. [https://www.questia.com/read/23313966?title=The%20Roman%20Festivals%20of%20the%20Period%20of%20the%20Republic%3a%20An%20Introduction%20to%20the%20Study%20of%20the%20Religion%20of%20the%20Romans] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120624005758/http://www.questia.com/read/23313966?title=The%20Roman%20Festivals%20of%20the%20Period%20of%20the%20Republic%3A%20An%20Introduction%20to%20the%20Study%20of%20the%20Religion%20of%20the%20Romans|date=2012-06-24}}</ref>

===Clodius and the Bona Dea scandal===
The Winter festival rites of 62 BC were hosted by [[Pompeia (wife of Julius Caesar)|Pompeia]], wife of [[Julius Caesar]], senior magistrate in residence and [[pontifex maximus]]. [[Publius Clodius Pulcher]], a [[populares|popularist]] politician and ally of Caesar, was said to have intruded, dressed as a woman and intent on the hostess's seduction. According to Plutarch, [[Aurelia (mother of Caesar)|Caesar's mother, Aurelia]] concealed the cult objects of the Goddess's mysteries from the intruder; but as the rites had been [[Glossary of ancient Roman religion#vitium|vitiated]], the Vestals were obliged to repeat them, and after further inquiry by the [[Roman senate|senate]] and [[pontifices]], Clodius was charged with desecration, which carried a death sentence. [[Cicero]], whose wife [[Terentia]] had hosted the previous year's rites, testified for the prosecution.<ref>{{harvnb|Beard|Price|North|1998|pp=129–130, 296–7}}. Clodius' mere presence would have been sacrilegious: the possibility of his intrusion for sexual conquest would be an even more serious offense against Bona Dea. See also Brouwer, p. xxiii, and {{harvnb|Herbert-Brown|1994|p=134}}</ref>

Caesar publicly distanced himself from the affair as much as possible – and certainly from Pompeia, whom he divorced because "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion".<ref>The proverbial phrase "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion" is based on Caesar's own justification of this divorce, following the scandal. See Cicero, ''Letters to Atticus'', 1.13; Plutarch, ''Caesar'' [https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Caesar*.html#9 9-10]; [[Cassius Dio]], ''Roman History'' [https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/37*.html#45 37.45] and Suetonius, ''Julius'' [https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Julius*.html#6.2 6.2 and 74.2] {{Webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20120530163202/http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Julius*.html#6.2 |date=2012-05-30 }}</ref> He had been correctly absent from the rites but as a [[paterfamilias]] he was responsible for their piety. As ''pontifex maximus'', he was responsible for the ritual purity and piety of public and private religion. He had the responsibility to ensure that the Vestals had acted correctly, then chair the inquiry into what were essentially his own household affairs. Worse, the place of the alleged offense was the state property lent to every pontifex maximus for his tenure of office.{{Sfn|Herbert-Brown|1994|pp=134, 141-143}} It was a high-profile, much-commented case. The rites remained officially secret, but many details emerged during and after the trial, and remained permanently in the public domain. They fueled theological speculation, as in [[Plutarch]] and Macrobius: and they fed the prurient male imagination &ndash; given their innate moral weakness, what might women do when given wine and left to their own devices? Such anxieties were nothing new, and underpinned Rome's traditional strictures against female autonomy. In the political and social turmoil of the Late Republic, Rome's misfortunes were taken as signs of divine anger against the personal ambition, religious negligence and outright impiety of her leading politicians.

Clodius' prosecution was at least partly driven by politics. In an otherwise seemingly thorough account, Cicero makes no mention of Bona Dea's May festival, and claims the goddess' cult as an aristocratic privilege from the first; the impeccably [[Patrician (ancient Rome)|patrician]] Clodius, Cicero's social superior by birth, is presented as an innately impious, low-class oaf, and his popularist policies as threats to Rome's moral and religious security. After two years of legal wrangling, Clodius was acquitted – which Cicero put down to jury-fixing and other backroom dealings – but his reputation was damaged.<ref>{{harvnb|Beard|Price|North|1998|pp=129–130, 296–7}}. In 59 BC, to further his political career, which otherwise might have stalled, Clodius renounced his patrician status for a questionable adoption into a [[plebs|plebeian]] ''[[gens]]'', and was elected [[Tribune|tribune of the people]]. To his opponents, he was a dangerous social renegade; he was murdered in 53.</ref> The scandalous revelations at the trial also undermined the sacred dignity and authority of the Vestals, the festival, the goddess, office of the pontifex maximus and, by association, Caesar and Rome itself. Some fifty years later, Caesar's heir Octavian, later the ''[[princeps]]'' [[Augustus]], had to deal with its repercussions.{{Sfn|Herbert-Brown|1994|pp=141-143}}

===Imperial Era===
Octavian presented himself as restorer of Rome's traditional religion and social values, and as peacemaker between its hitherto warring factions.<ref>As a dutiful heir, he [[Imperial cult (ancient Rome)#Caesar's heir|deified the dead Caesar and established his cult]], but he took pains to distance himself from Caesar's mortal aspirations, and cultivated an aura of personal modesty. His religious reforms reflect an ideology of social and political reconciliation, with a single individual (himself) as focus of empire and its final arbiter.</ref> In 12 BC he became pontifex maximus, which gave him authority over Rome's religious affairs, and over the Vestals, whose presence and authority he conspicuously promoted.<ref>His restoration of the Vestals began even before his pontificate. On his return from the final battle of the civil war, at [[Battle of Actium|Actium]] he was greeted by a procession of women, headed by the Vestals.</ref> His wife Livia was a distant relative of the long-dead but still notorious Clodius;{{Sfn|Herbert-Brown|1994|p=146}} but also related to the unfortunate Vestal Licinia, whose attempted dedication of Bona Dea's Aventine Temple had been thwarted by the Senate. Livia restored the temple and revived its May 1 festival, perhaps drawing attention away from her disreputable kinsman and the scandalous events of 62 BC.<ref>Phyllis Cunham, in Harriet Flower (ed), The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic, Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 155.[https://books.google.com/books?id=i1rQqJo_flwC&pg=PA155 googlebooks partial preview.] Livia's association with the Vestal Licinia is itself not unproblematic. Licinia was tried on an almost certainly trumped-up charge of broken chastity, acquitted, then re-tried, found guilty, and executed on the strength of two prophecies in the Sibylline books. She was a contemporary of the [[Gracchi]], and was probably a victim of the turbulent factional politics of the time. Livia's actions may also have helped to repair and elevate Licinia's posthumous reputation. Augustus is known to have called in, examined and censored many oracles, including the Sybilline books. According to {{harvnb|Herbert-Brown|1994|p=144}}, he might have removed the prophecies that had been used to condemn Licinia.</ref> Thereafter, Bona Dea's December festival may have continued quietly, or could simply have lapsed, its reputation irreparably damaged. There is no evidence of its abolition. Livia's name did not and could not appear in the official religious calendars, but Ovid's Fasti associates her with May 1, and presents her as the ideal wife and "paragon of female Roman virtue".<ref>{{harvnb|Herbert-Brown|1994|pp=130; citing Ovid, ''Fasti'' V. 148–158}}. As a non-divinity, Livia could not have appeared on the religious calendar. [[Claudius]] deified her long after her death.</ref> Most of Bona Dea's provincial and municipal sanctuaries were founded around this time, to propagate the new Imperial ideology.{{Sfn|Brouwer|1989|pp=237–238}} An [[Imperial cult of ancient Rome|imperial cult centre]] in [[Aquileia]] honours an [[Augusta (honorific)|Augusta]] Bona Dea [[Ceres (mythology)|Cereria]], probably in connection with the [[Grain supply to the city of Rome|corn dole]].{{Sfn|Brouwer|1989|p=412}} Other state cults to the goddess are found at [[Ostia Antica|Ostia]] and [[Portus]].{{Sfn|Brouwer|1989|pp=402, 407}} As the Vestals seldom went beyond Rome's city boundary, these cults would have been led by leading women of local elites, whether virgin or matron.{{Sfn|Parker|2004|p=571}}

Livia's best efforts to restore Bona Dea's reputation had only moderate success in some circles, where scurrilous and titillating stories of the goddess' rites continued to circulate. Well over a century after the Clodius scandal, Juvenal describes Bona Dea's festival as an opportunity for women of all classes, most shamefully those of the upper class &ndash; and men in drag ("which altars do not have their Clodius these days?") &ndash; to get drunk and cavort indiscriminately in a sexual free-for-all.<ref>Juvenal, ''Satires'', 6.316–344. See Brouwer, p. 269, for further commentary.</ref>

From the late 2nd century, an increasing religious [[syncretism]] in Rome's traditional religions presents Bona Dea as one of many aspects of [[Virgo (astrology)|Virgo]] Caelestis, the celestial Virgin, Great Mother of the gods, whom later [[Mariology|Mariologists]] identify as prototype for the Virgin Mary in Christian theology.<ref>Stephen Benko, ''The virgin goddess: studies in the pagan and Christian roots of mariology,'' BRILL, 2004, p. 168. Other goddesses named ''Caelestis'' or ''Regina Caelestis'' (Heavenly Queen) include [[Juno (mythology)|Juno]], the ''[[Magna Mater]]'' (also known as "the Syrian Goddess" and [[Cybele]]), and [[Venus (mythology)|Venus]], the one goddess ritually excluded from Bona Dea's rites.</ref> Christian writers present Bona Dea – or rather, Fauna, whom they clearly take her to be – as an example of the immorality and  absurdity at the heart of traditional Roman religion; according to them, she is no prophetess, merely "foolish Fenta", daughter and wife to her incestuous father, and "good" ''(bona)'' only at drinking too much wine.<ref>Lactantius appears to draw on [[Varro]] as his source for ''Fenta Fatua''. ''Fenta'' appears to be a proper name; Fatua is translatable as "female seer" (one who foretells fate), or a divinely inspired "holy fool", either of which might carry Varro's intended meaning: but also as merely "foolish" (in Arnobius, for getting drunk in the first place, or because stupefied by drinking wine, or perhaps both). Arnobius gives two 1st century BC sources (now lost) as his authority: Sextus Clodius, and Butas. See Brouwer, pp. 233-4, 325.</ref>