40 FROM GOOD GODDESS TO VESTAL VIRGINS

ing a decision already made. They had no room to manoeuvre politically and their decision appears to have been a mere formality, an expression of conventional religious wisdom that they had to present formally to the senate so that it could proceed to take action in the matter. Furthermore I suggest that the level of the fuss generated by the event could only have been sustained if Clodius’ crime had been perceived as heinous. Nowhere is it suggested that it all could have been dismissed as a youthful escapade. The gravity of his conduct was never disputed. Indeed Clodius was forced to go to improbable lengths to ‘prove’ his innocence. The elaborate fiction that he had not even been in Rome at the time of the incident101 was not meant, I suggest, simply to convince the jury, who had been heavily bribed and were guaranteed in any case to acquit him,102 but also to influence the general perception of the incident. This was no marginal rite that had been violated, but one which occupied an important niche in the civic system.

OPERTANEA SACRA

The cult of Bona Dea is a study in paradox. Nowhere is this more evident than in the secret December rites that Clodius made notorious. ‘One of the characteristic devices of the non-traditional religions of the Graeco-Roman world was secrecy,’ writes Richard Gordon, in his opening remarks in an article on the mysteries of Mithras. ‘Secrecy contrasted with the public character of the dominant civic cults intimately associated with the cultural and political power of the elite’ (Gordon 1988:45). Of the Adonia, Marcel Detienne writes, ‘the Adonia, an exotic festival tolerated by the Athenian city on the periphery of the official cults and public ceremonies were a private affair’. One mark of this marginal status of the Adonia was the fact that it took place not in a sanctuary or other public place, but in the house of a private individual (Detienne 1977:65). In 186 BC when the consul Postumius was investigating the exposure of the secret rites of Bacchus in Rome, one of the more sinister developments of the cult was seen to be the fact that what had started out as a daytime ceremony had been changed by the Campanian priestess into a nocturnal one.103 Nocturnal ceremonies conducted by women were a source of potential danger to the well ordered state and Cicero would have none in his ideal state, with one exception: nocturna mulierum sacrificia ne sunto praeter olla, quae pro populo

THE CULT OF BONA DEA 41

rite fient—‘Let there be no nocturnal sacrifices by women, with one exception: that which is performed for the welfare of the people’.104 Sacrificia pro populo referred to the rites of Bona Dea.105

Secret, nocturnal, conducted by women in a private house, yet far from being a threat to the state, the festival ensured its well-being. What is to be made of this enigmatic cult? I turn now to the rituals connected with the cult—specifically the rituals connected with the December festival. Bona Dea had a temple on the Aventine built by the senate and dedicated by a Vestal Virgin.106 Ovid describes it as a temple which ‘abhors the eyes of males’.107 This is the only reference to a temple for the goddess that we have for this period.108 Ovid’s dramatic description has, reasonably enough, been taken to mean that men were excluded from the temple.109 Yet Ovid himself, this time in the Ars Amatoria, appears to suggest that this exclusion may not have been all-encompassing. ‘The Good Goddess repels from the temple the eyes of men except such as she bids come there herself.’110 Who were these men who were allowed into the temple? Dedicatory inscriptions to Bona Dea found in Rome indicate that both men and women worshipped her.111 Moreover she was believed to possess powers of healing, and in this capacity was identified with the Greek Medea by some ancient exegetists.112 It is a reasonable surmise that men as well as women benefited from the healing arts of her priestesses and visited the temple to avail themselves of it. Bona Dea was also a prophetic deity113 and here again men might well have had recourse to her talents. But none of this satisfactorily explains Ovid’s claim: fuget a templum oculos Bona Diva virorum,/praeterquam siquos illa venire iubet.114 This seems to suggest some sort of male official of the cult rather than an ordinary worshipper. But we have no way of knowing for sure, and not enough evidence even to make an informed guess. However Ovid’s testimony is important in that it allows us to say with confidence 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 adventitious. 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

42 FROM GOOD GODDESS TO VESTAL VIRGINS

Dea and the ritual that was conducted in conjunction with the temple 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 conducted. In 63 BC the festival was held in Cicero’s house117 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 definition 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 magistrate, 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 signal from the goddess that the course of action Cicero was contem- plating—i.e. summary execution of the Catilinarian conspirators—

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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 alternative accommodation for the night. This could hardly have been effected unobtrusively.123 Second, all traces of previous male presence had to be masked. Even pictures of males, we are told, had to be covered up—not removed, but covered up.124 Those draped objects, present throughout the proceedings, could not have failed to serve as reminders of what lurked beneath the drapery—symbolic representations of men. Not only that, but in the house of a senior magistrate, portraits and busts of men would have included those of distinguished ancestors, and would thus have largely been representative of those who had held positions of power in the state. Absent males, dead and alive, representing the continuous power of the Roman state, dominated with a symbolic presence a rite ostensibly restricted to females.125

What exactly did these women do all night? Cicero writes of elaborate ceremonial (Sacrificium…fit incredibili caerimonia).126 Juvenal paints a lurid picture of a drunken orgy.127 Clodius disguised himself as a female musician in order to infiltrate the ceremony of 62 BC.128 There may well have been music, even dancing, but Versnel’s hypothesis that the festival of Bona Dea provided a ritual setting for the licentious behaviour of women is not supported by the evidence.129 Such a hypothesis could only have been based on Juvenal’s description, for nowhere else do we find a suggestion of debauchery in connection with the rites. But quite apart from the literary context

—the infamous sixth satire—which in itself would be sufficient to challenge an uncritical acceptance of its contents as historical evidence, Juvenal makes it quite clear that what he is describing is not the prescribed practice of the rites but a deplorable lapse from the strict standards of the past. ‘O would that our ancient practices, or at least our public rites were not polluted by scenes like these.’130

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)