sign in sign up
<<
Home , Augustus (title), Bona Dea, Fortuna, Jupiter (mythology), Lucretia, Pietas

CHAPTER I

Sexualuirtue 0n d,isplaltI: thecults of and honoursfor w0men

pulcherrima. . . forma,maximum decus''' Pudicitia The loveliest form of beaury the greatestadornment pudicitia (Senecato hismother Helvia)

celebrated and This book begins with a chapter about pudicitia as publicly its association rewarded in Roman sociery.A striking asp ectof pud'icitiawas community, both with public and visual displayby -"iried wornen to rhe their cultivation throrrgh their appear"rr.. and demeanour and through manifestationof of pudicitiaas a goddess.This first chapter exploresthe as playing pudicitia as p.ironified abstractvirtue, a goddessdescribed " own shrines,cult an active role in the lives of ancient Romans,with her association statuesan4 cult. It introduces k.y themes such as pudicitia's the boundaries with marriedwomen, public display,and the negotiationof that lend of social status.The chapte, exposessome of the tensions "lro its dangerous this ideal of displayingpudicitia Ltsfrisson: its elusiveness; in the face proximity to, arrd ,tr"i.r.d relationshipwith, beauty; its fragiliry of suspicionand gossiP. to pudicitia was a personal qualiry that needed to be displayed .and woman (and seen by others. Roman ,o.i.ry d..rrr"tded that a married must strive particularly one involved in celebrating the cult of pudicitia) in her to display the qualiry of pudicitia ro ih. resr of the communiry forth from a marriedwoman; it would person.Ideally fudici'tio*Luld shine Seneca turn headswhen she walked d.ownthe street.As the philosopher a woman is writes to his mother Helvia, the most befitting ornamenr for kind of pudicitia:'in you is seenthe unique ornament, the most lovely 'The man in the L.".r.yr, the gr.",.r, glory - pudiiirir' .' most fortunate

, end of this chapter,belorn''.I here Sen. Dial. ru.t6.4.For further discussionof this passagesee.the igloryi; the head of the chapter and at,the end translate ,r'tAnTetxtumas'orn ment' and.decus at ", is an attemPt to caPturethe range of the chapter decusistranslated. as'adornmen,'. ihirvariation

17 lu SexualMorality in Ancient (accordingto the writer Val€riusMaximus)' hasamongst his other world' 'a blessingsthe ideal wife, whose supremacyis summed up thus: she is wife who is conspicuous in her pudicitia and in her fecundity' (uxorem pudicitia et fecunr/itateclnspicuam).3 It is not enough that a wife merely regulateher sexualbehaviour in the acceptedways; it is required that her in this area be conspicuous(conspicua) plain for all to see, so remarkableas to attract attention.aAncient sourcesalso tell us that women competedpublicly among themselvesrn pudicitia, and that official honours were bestowedon thosewho were judged outstanding. describesa crown of pudicitia (coronapudicitiae) that was awardedpublicly by the communiry to individuals pre-eminent in the qualiry, and several episodesin Roman history involve women honoured for their pudicitia.t Throughout the empire,people declared the pud.icitiaof themselvesand of their spouseson funeraryepitaPht.u These aspectsof Roman sexualvirtue - its need for publiciry, its loud, artenrion-seekingnature - presenta challenge.In this context, the (com- 'modesty' monly offered)term simply will not do asa translationof pudici- tia.7 It is alsoclear that pudicitia is somethingdifferent from the repressive 'chastity' 'continence' or which those from cultures under the influence of puritan Christian sexualethics might expect.s6 competition of sexual continence alone makes no sense,unless you expect almost every partic- ipant evenruallyto buckle under the strain and give in to the allure of adultery.One cannot competein not dotngsomething; there must be more to competitivepudicitia than this.e

of meanings of the term, which embracesa senseof visual appeal, of honour and virtue, and 'decoration', of award; the English term with its rwo sensesof beautification and of (say) medals for military service, is erymologically related and has something of the same scope. The nuancesof the word, and its significancein the context of this passage,will be further explored below. t For more on whom seeChapter 3 below. I Val. Ma-x.7.r.t of Q. Metellus Macedonicus. For the closerelation berweenfecundiry (fecundita.iland pudicitia in Roman thought see also Liry 42.34.3;Sen. Dial. n.t6.1 (cited below); Tac. Ann. r.4r.z (seeChapw below). 7 'distinguished' a For the visual quality of pudicitia cf. Pompon. r.46 where pudicitia is (insignis);Thc. Ann. r.4r.z where Lt rspraeclara; for further referencesto the need for pudicitia to be visually evident seebelow, pp. 6g-ll 6 Val. Ma,x. t.t.3; other referencesdiscussed below S.. Forbis r99o, Lattimore ry62. It has been translated thus recently (and these examplesare taken more or lessat random) by Cape zooz: zo7 andRives 1999:zo5.Iam not suggesting,of course,that their usesof the term areludicrous, since their conrexts do not require them to put the pressureon the definition that mine does; the referencesmerely illustrate that this is one of the current standard translations of pudicitia tnto English. 'Chastiw' is the mosr common translation of pudicitia into English in curreRt scholarship: e.g. 'female CantarellaryST: ryr; Palmer's rg74 article describespudicitia as chastiry' throughout. A comparison might be madewith the contemporary phenomenon of evangelicalChristian abstinence 'The Rirg Thing', which is all about display; photographs of large groups of teenagersholding out their rings for the camera adorn the official website at www.silverringthing.com. Sexualuirtue on d'isPlaYI 19

My first chapter,then, will focus on one aspectof a sexualvirtue in the Rom"n .trli,rre of d,isplay:the phenomenon of the ritual cultivation of pud;citid asdiviniry, witkrthe associatedthemes and narrativesthat emerge fro- the sourcesthat menrion such cultivation. \7e will explorethis k.y aspecrof pudicitia'srole in the public domain, its associationwith married women,and implicationsof the sources'insistence on the centralityofvisual display.\(/hereas Thucydides loudly proclaims the of remaining silent on the subject of *o*err,'o Roman sourcesdeclare that pudicitia musr be publicised.However, they remain properly impreciseabout the detailsof i,, publiciqy, shying away from the actualitiesof cult practice or detailedphysical descriptionsof virtuous women; our sourcesare coy or marginal.

PUDICIIIA AS GODDESS

PudicitiA rs one of many abstract moral qualities *rat manifest as divine beingsin Roman culture." She appearsin the lists of divinities reeledoff by tJ.ptics such as Pliny rhe Elder. Referencesto such a deiry or personi- fication in extant literature are sparse,but they do span our whole period of concern,from 'Amphlnj,o to 'ssixth satireand beyond." Identification of such referen.eris complicatedby the fact that Latin does not distinguish berweenlower- and upper-caselefters, and thus Pudicitia andpudicitia areone and the same,allowing a slippag: berweenthe active divine being, controlling the livesof mortals from without, and the virtue within.' j HJwever, fro*"the latefirst century cn,pudicitiais alsorepresented visuallyas a personifiedfigure on coins produced by men and women of the imperial family,'+ and possiblyon other, large-scalemonuments such asthe Transitoriurn.t5 Pudicitiawasareal and powerful presencein the life of the ciqF,impinging on the ethical developmentof individuals, as an invocation to her in the work of the earlyimperial moralist Valerius Maximus attests.In a brief

to Thuc. 2.45.2. tt Axtell See l.,troi.,..ion, pp. z5-7 aboveand Beard, North and Price 1998,vol. I: 62, Fearsr98r, r9o7, Mueller zoaz and Feeney t998: 87-92. Cic' Wrr' " Plaut.Atnph.9z9 (seeCh"pt.i 4-belornip. ziS), Li.y r.i8.t (seeChapter z belo\4',P. 9i; (see rcr 6 belou', z8l); Calp. Decl' 3 (see 3.6 (seeCh"pi.. 6 below, i. tgo)t Cic. Catil. z.z5 Chap P. Mart. 6-7'u 6'r Chapter 5 bio*,, p.tlt); Val.Max. 6.r.praef.(discussed below and Chapter 3); Juv' anci14 (discussedbelow p. l;); Piin. IYat. z-t4-t' I-r I shall usuallv use the 1o*., casero refer to all manifestations of pudicitia. rhroughout, so as to maintain this flexibiliq', but u,hereit is the personificationthat is specificallyinclicated I shall use the upper case. 'a For ,.pr"r.r-r,ationsof Pudicitia on imperial coinagesee Mueller loo?: z4-6. tt Suchis the arqumentof D'Ambrar99i. 10 SexualMorality in prefacero a chapter of anecdotesillustrative of the virtue of puc/icitia.,he addressesthe personified quality as a deiqy,invoking her in the formal languageof prayer and suggestingthat she is responsiblefor inspiring the catalogueof deedsthat follow:'6

unde te virorum pariterac feminarumpraecipuum firmamentum, pudicitia, invocem? tu enim prisca religione consecratosVestae focos incolis, tu Capitoli- nae Iunonis pulvinaribus incubas, tu Palati columen augustos penates sanctissi- mumque Iuliae genialem torum adsidua statione celebras,tuo praesidio puerilis aetatisinsignia munita sunt, tui numinis respectusincerus iuventae flos permanet, te custode matronalis stola censetur:ades igitur et cognoscequae fieri ipsa voluisti.

From where shall I invoke you, pudicitia, the principal foundation of men and women together? For you inhabit the hearths which according to ancient aresacred to ,you lie on the sacredcouches of CapitolineJuno, on the summit of the Palatineyou celebratethe majestichousehold gods and the most sacredJulian marriage bed, standing by at all ; the glories of childhood are defended by your protection, the flower of youth remains pure out of respect for your divine power, the matronal robe is esteemedbecause you are its guard. Therefore come near and know again of those events that you yourself willed to come about (Val. Max. 6.r.praef.).

Valeriusstarts with a formal invocationof the deiry,and proceedsby listing the placesand the roles associatedwith her; finally pudicitia rs invited to stepout of the paradeof exemplaryfigures and join the author and readeras spectatorat the show of ex€mplato follow.'7The formal hymnic anaphora emphasisesher direct involvement in Roman life; using the repetition of the secondperson singular pronoun (tu . . . tu . . . tu . . . tuo . . . tui . . . te) at the head of eachphrase, Valerius first describesher numinous presencein threek.y political and religiouslocatizns rn the heart of Rome - the temple ofVesta,'8the templeofJuno on the Capitoline,'eand the seatof theJulian

t6 For a full discussionof this text seeChapter 3 below. t7 For the structure of a formal invocation seeNorden ry56: r41-q. The proem to ' De rerum natura or Catul. j4 arefiurther examplesof the same structure in . For exemplasee - further Chapters z and 3 below. ru On the hearths,temple and cult ofVesta, with its associationswith castitas,fertiliry and the weilbeing of the ciry seeBeard, North and Price 1998vol. I: 5v4; seealso r89-9r for the close associationof Vesta with the imperial family under . SeeMueller zooz: 44-68 on the representationof Vesta in Valerius Maximus. rr was one of three (with and ) celebrated in the Capitolium, on the overlooking the forum, at the centre of Roman religious practice. Like the temple of Vesta, supposed to have housed sacred items brought from Tioy, this was an institution that traced its history from the very origins of the Roman ciry. The goddessJuno was associatedwith marriage and childbirth; seefurther Mueller 1998 for the significanceof her associationhere with pudiciria. Sexualuirtue on disPlaYI 4r - setsof people imperial family on the Palatinezo and then specifiesthree women with whom sheis connected.:children, youths and married Qtueri, iuuenesand matronae). ceof adsidua The k.yvocabu laryis of protection, and the mil ftaryrresonan is picked up and statione('standing by times') in the earlier phrase ", "11 pudicitia rs a expandedon in the second haif of Valerius' description: Roman citizens grr"rd (custo) under whose protective care (praesidium) the insignia of Ir. d.f.nded (munita). Pud.irlt;o is the guard who defends to remain childhood, ,.rp.., for her godheadallows the flower of youth matronal rank is pure (sincerur), it is b..J,rre sheis its guardianthat the "rd suggestive lrr..rrred..Each group that sheprorects is describedin a manner of the related.*..pts of so.ial status,attractiveness, and vulnerabiliry'" around the The insigniaofyoung malechildren (the bulla- an amuletworn which they neck) thestolae (long robes)of married women arethe items "ria and which wear to mark them our'-,rir.r"llyfrom other membersof society rn ind.icatethe freeborn staru, *iri.h makes assaultingthem an offence;" Roman socieryit should instantly be clearwhich people are untouchable, and.the visu"tiry of statusand sexualvulnerability is clear. the The storiesthat follow are of individuals manifesting and enacting deeds'In quality of pud.icitiain a seriesof startling and unusuallyviolent and Chapter .,lshall analysein detailValerius' t.xt, and its representation to notice probl.*atisation of the conceptof pudicitia. Here it shall suffice quality that thereis a d.irectrelationship b.ti..n this goddessand the moral the that will be illustrated in the resr of Valerius' chapter. He describes now once goddessas having willed the deedsof pudyclyiatotake place and as in both againoverseeing"their enactment; ,h. it fully awareof and involved the moral acti.rlti., of mortals and the handing down of moral principles' into the The passagesuggesrs her direct intervention ,hto,tgh inspiration ethicallives of mortals,and asa powermanifested through ''3 Furthermore,the opening lin. of the passageadvertises the fundamental - claim significanceof pudicitia lo both men women an important ""d th"t will be furiher exploredin Chapter 3 below.

.o The work, addressedto There is much at stakern pudicitla's associationwith the imperial household. the princip"l? is establishing the asmoral i."d.r, is written during the rule of riterius when its subjects;see Chapter 7 below power partly through strategiesof engaging"*i,h the moral life of and Langlandszooo, Part II. ., male; seeabove Introduc- AII the groups mentioned here also require legal protection from an adult tlon, pP. zo-I. stolab,v rvomen as part of On the idea rhat Augustus had recentll,re-established the wearing of the a new visual I"ng.,."g.of politics and moraliry seeSebesta 1998' seeMueller 2oo2' esp' For more o' gods (i.,d p"rticularly pud.icitia) as interested in mortal ethics Chapterr. ^) SexttalMornlity in AncientRome I specificshrine or cult devoted Valerius Maximus 'C'oesnot mention a Lioy and. (examined below) ' to pudicitia,but other ancient sources, city of Rome housingher statue speakof two separateshrin es (sacetta) inthe near the temple of ' (an original ,hrrirr. in the Forum Boarium, Longus).'aThe sesources and a more recent,plebeian shrine in the restrictedto married women state that participation in the rituals was been married once. In such cult of proven sexualvirtue who had only a visibleand tangible form and practiceRomans created for certainviitues of them and coming together then, by publicly displayingrepresentations important such qualities were to cultivate them as d.iri."r, ,iro*.d how An account of such activiry for the communiry and for the state itself. recognisesthe cultivation of influenced.by anthropologicalmethodology *irrt moral issuesfor the civic shrinesas an importit form of .ng"g.ment ii public ritual, citizensof Rome ancient Romans.Through particip"tiori their communirF' thei, .ori*L.riry, before the eyesof participated in "rrd certain k.y valuesthat were felt and,acted out a public endorsementof communal performance the communiry together.Through their to hold. of their roie of ritual, members of ritual, as well ,h-,rgfr "r1p..tators ", str.rcturesof moral thought that Roman socierywere able to internalisethe - or at leastso our elite-authored would make them functioning citizens sourceswould haveus believe' ideology a non-textual curt practice enshrinesaspecrs of Roman -in To study .nltt is to approach medium, witho.rt phiiorophiial discussion. that which we find in many a different registe, of -oi"l thought from communication which can reach of our elite sources.Rituar is a -o?. of and gesture'and whose illiterate and.the uned.ucatedthrough symbol the and thro,rghorit ,"rks of society.The cult ethical significanceresonates "li been subjectto.anthropological ritual pr".ti.e of other culture, h"l long alternativepath of accessto the analysis,which is felt to offer an outsid.in offeredby text spokenword''5 mind"setof an alien community to that "i+ thatl should like to examine' The first mode of discourseabout pudicitia unfortunately,this is a tantalis- then, is that of ritual and cult practic.-brr,, be in a position to analysethe ing impossibility.In an idealworld we would just as Clifford rituals involved in tend.ingthe cult of Pud'icitiafirrt-h"ttd,

with a long history to which ,4 palmer Boarium was a public_spacein Rome See r974.The Forum (varro Ling' *r. Ara lr4axima associatedwith Hercules many ,rori.r-*.re attached;'4.9.19-zo. it was the site of Longus was a residentialstreet p. Fast.6'4718)'Thevicus i.r46,Fest. l4gL,Prop. -ov' history' SeeSteinby hills, with ,,rorrg associationswith pltbti"tt between the euirinal and virrrirr"l 1999:167-9 and R'rchardsonr99zt 3zr-z' '5 Feeneyry98 u7 ' Sexualuirtue on d.isplayI 43

Geertz,in an exemplarypiece of anthropologicalanalysis, observed, broke down and made senseof the rituals of the Balinesecock fight in terms of a wider socialsysrem of meaning.'6As Classicists,however, we are usedto the cold trail and the inability to get in among our subjects.At the very least,however, we might hope to be ableto analyseaspects of the ritual as chronicled by the ancient authorsthemselves, as Ariadne Stapleshas done for a number of Roman cults in which women participated.She has stud- ied various aspectsof cult practice (such as the statusof participants,the nature of the rituals that are performed, and the mythical talesassociated with a cult) in order to show how they work to dramatiseand act out the sticky issuesin Roman ideology,to set up and reaffirm boundariesand categoriesof thought, help to reinforce types of behaviour and to affirm the communiry of all these tdeas.'7 In the caseof the cult of pudicitia, no suchluck. The ancient sourcesdo have some ancient description of other cult practicesassociated with the qualiqyof pudicitia (which I shall come on to later in this chapter),'8but there is no actual description of the cult or rituals of the dei ty Pudicitia herself"If there ever were accountsthey are long gone, and we have no opportunity, unlike the modern anthropologist,to witness and interpret the activities of the participants in the cult ourselves.\7e must rely on piecing rogerhera senseof what the cult might have involved and what it might have meanr to the Romans from a miscellaneousyet severely restrictedrange of sources,hoping to make the Romans articulate anew answersto our own questions. In addition, when we do have relevantsource material, there are also issuesabout how we are to interpret ancient texts that engagewith the topics of ritual and cult. Feeneypoints out that even our apparentlymost revealingsources about Roman cult are highly problematic. There is a startling discrepanqr,for instance,in the caseof the cult of the , for which we happen to haveample sourcematerial, berween the evidence oithe ancientliterature and that of the archaeologicalsources.'e As Feeney emphasises,the literarlrtexts that write about cult (of which O.rid'sFasti rs a prominent and paradigmaticallypuzzhngexample, discussed later in this chapter)represent in themselvesinterpretation or exegesisof their subject ratherthan description,and must be takenas participants in their own form of cultural practice,rather than standing back to obsene it impartiallrr.so

16 'Deep plav: noteson a Balinesecockfight' in Geertz 1973:3-3o. t- Staples1997. These female cuits are often shou,nto pertain to the sexualin'of both men and \ /.

ro Cf. Bourdieu 1977on the idea of the theorr.of practice. Moraliry i'Ancient Rome 41 Sexual valuable, but we must not .x/hat ancient rexts say about ritual is very as expert or reliableinformants succumb to the temptation to take them about the realitYof ritual'l' aspectsof the significanceof vhile provid.ingan introd.uctionto some th.rr, this preliminary analysis the ancient rerm pudicitid rnRoman sociery, wili alsoprovide al.oPPortuniry to of ancient material relating to the cult shall first examineLivy's accoun: reflect on the nature of our sources.I :f of the cult of the goddess'within the found.ationof the plebeianversion tensionsberween the patricianand his narrativeof the third-century social self-d.efinitionand competition for plebeianorders, in the context of elite groupings.Other than 's honour within and.berween differenr social ..t1* history, we have only rwo account of a particular moment in the to Pwdiclitiaby the erotically brief referencesto the existenceof shrines (late first century ncE) and Juvenal subversiveand. satirical poets suggeststhat the cult (earlysecond century ce) This t.ry lack of evidence becauseof its sensitivenature; the of such a virtue was hard.to publicise, pudicitia wrll be further of speaking out and showing off dangers "bo,rt .*plor.d throughout this chaPter'

THE CULT OF PUDICITIA extraordinaryera of transition Livy,s history, inevitably roote{ in its own in its own concerns,relates a berween republic and i-p.ri"r rule, and description cf a living cult as found.ing myth that i, .l.arly not so much longer flourished.vritten in the fraught reflection upon a cult that no of one particularyear (almost late first century BCE,it d"escribesthe events out by an argument that flared up three centuriesearlier) that was marked rituals and,l.d to establishmentof during the publi. p.rformance of cultic ,..id .,tlt of pudicitia for plebeianwomen: " causasupplicationes eoanno prodigia murta fuerunt, quorum averruncandorum ac tus praebitum;supPlicatum iere in biduurrl senatusdecrevit; publiie vinum certamen in sacello feminaeque. insignem supplic"tion.- fecit frequentesviri inter patriciae, in forJbo.r"rio'ot aedemrotundam Herculis, pudicitiae q,r". "d plebeio nuptam' L' volumnio matronasortum. verginiam Auli firiam, patriciam afcueranr-brevis altercatio matron". q.roJ e patrib,r, .rrrpsisset ,*.ii, consuli, et in contention!- exarsit,cum se inde ex iracundiamuliebri "rri*orum patriciaepudicitiae templum ingressam'ut uni nuptam patriciam et pudicam in eiusac rerum gestarumpaenitere q,r.*,rirgf d.d.r.t";i;;;.;viri honorumve "d (Fantham zooz)' Beard' a sourceabout women's religion l, Cf. Fantham,scavears about 's Fastias North and Price 1998vol' I: 6-7 ' Sexualuirtue on displayI 4t

in vico Longo ubi exvero gloriaretur.facto deindeegregio magnifica v.erba adauxit. -odico sacelloexclusit aramque ibi habitabat,ex parte aedium quod J"tiI essetio.i 'hanc patriciarum' ego posuit ., .orrirocatisplebeiii matronis conquesra.iniuriam 'pudiciiiae certamenvirtutis aram,inquit, Plebeiaededico; ,rorq,r. hortor ut, quod sit detisqueoperaT tt' viros in hac civitaterenet, hoc pudicitiae inter matronas coli dicatur'' eodem haecara quam illa, si quid po..rr, sanctiuset a castioribus spectatae-pudicitiae ferme ritu et haecara quo illa antiquior culta est,ut nulla nisi volgatad-.i" matrona er quaeuni viio nupra fuissetius sacrificandihaberet; in oblivionem a pollutir, re. marronissolurn sed omnis ordinisfeminis, postremo venit. rhe senatedecreed a rwo- In that yearlrg6nce] therewere many prodigies,and weredistributed day perioi of public prayerro averrth. tio,rbles;wine and incense masse.A rivalry that publicly; *., and women wenr to celebratethe rituals whtch is in aroseamong the matr,nae rn the sancruaryof ?_atricianPudicitia' made this celebration the Forum Boarium near the round,temple of Hercules, was a woman particularly noteworthy.verginia, the daughter_o.fAulus, matrlnhe excluded who was married to a pt.U.ilrr, the .orrr,rl"L. Volumnius; the out of the patrician her from the sacredrites on the groundsthat shehad married into a full- order. A short dispute then bl;d from feminine argumentativeness and apudica, blown controv.rry,rvhen verginia boasted.that she,both a patrician a man to whom had entered..h. ,.r.rple of Pa"trician Pudicitia as one married to her shehad been given as a virgin, and that shehad absolutelyno-regrets.about his achievements' husband.either in term, of"hi, official positionsor in terms of In the Vicus Longus Shethen addeclto thesemagnificenr *oidr an illustrious deed. wasenough space,9t whereshe lived, sheshut ofr p"r. of a building wherethere " to^tPl"ints smallishsanctuary, and p,r, ,rp an altar h.r.,lr,d having made stro.ng of plebeian about the injusticeperperr"..i by the patricial.*:T.n to an assembly 'I^dedicat. and I urge you m,tronae,s(e s"idi .hir altar to PlebeianPudicitia, existamong that the rivalry for couragethat binds the men of this socieryshould this altar shall be women forpudicitia, that may strive th.a-t,if p_ossible, "rri lor who aremore saidto be #or. sacredthan the first, and to be cultivated by women rites as the chaste.'And this altar too was worshipped with practically the same was a matron of more ancientone: no woffran had ,h. rilrr, ao ,".iifice unlessshe the ceremonies manifest pudicitia, andshehad only b..ri*"rried to one man. Later and not only wered".,r"1,r" d,luolgato)iy*o*.., who wereconraminated lpollutis), forgoften by matr,naebut by all ranksof women, and finally they werecompleteiy (Li"y ro.z3.r-ro).

from The whole lifespan of the cult is described within this passage, that the uncertain origins ro the sealed tomb. The final sentence claims into oblivion after suffering cult has by Lil,t', own fallen "ltlecified the cult's desecration at some point in its 3oo-year history. This refrain of of a broader decline will in several other sources, and it forms Part out in Liw's narrarion of moral decline and contemporary inadequacy set +() SexwalMorality in Ancient R-ome work.l' Flowever,Liuy speaksof the original shrine itself, the one in the Forum Boarium, in the presenrrense, as if this sacredspace, at least,still survivesin his own d^y after the demise of the Republic, although his conremporaryreaders need to be advisedof its location; in this time of upheav"l r,t.h themesof lossand survivalare often in evidence. Of the practiceof the rwo cults, the actual rituals involved, other than nothittg revealed the fact thrt they arevery similar to one anotheralmost 1t exceptabout the statusof thosepeople who are permitted to cultivate the shrine. In this account the participantsare all married women, matronde, nts rePortet Uy whether patrician or plebeian,and the ritual requireme _as Li,ry place yet furthei restrictionson the membership of the grouP: they *,rrt be of manifest pudicitia and they must havebeen married only once. This group is also marked out in ritual contextselsewhere, although the ,o.rr.., do not provide a clear picture of preciselywhich cults "rror..d. they tended.li Sever"lke/ themesemerge from analysisof the passageand wili be discussedin the following pages:the relationshipbetwee n pudicitia an4 the stateof being uniuira (a one-manwoman), and the problem of how her commitmenr to one man can everbe proved of a woman during her lifetime; the relatedissues of how to displaypudicitia; the relationship betweenreligion and the institutions of government,and the intersection of the history of the developmentof statereligion with the personalmord d"utiesof Roman individuals; the significanceof the conflict betweendif- ferent socialclasses, the historicalmoment that is capturedin the narrative about the plebeiancult's foundation, and the role of puclicitiain helping tcl define protl.-atic srarusboundaries in the ; civic compe- tition for honour, and the direct ethicalengagement of women with such competition. In subsequenrchapters we shallsee that marriedwomen arenot the only kinds of p.tple who may possessthe qualiry of pwd.icitiaor for whom it is vitally i-portant,3a but the nature of the cult indicatesthat they have somespe.iaf relationship with the qualiry.This specialrelationship flags the imporiance of the marital relationsbeween husband and wife in Roman .,rf.n r.. We shallsee rhat Roman sourcesoften representthe ideaof awoman having sexwith someonewho is not her husband as deeply troubli ng.)t 'He *[o spoils' (the Latin verb ts adwlterare,'adulterate')someone else's

p For a discussionof moraliry in Liry seeWalsh :196r,esp. 46-ro9, and Chaplin 2ooo passim' 13 Seediscussion of relatedcults below and Staples1997. ra Seethe end of Chapter z below and especialiyChapter 6 on the display of pwdicitia by men in the public sphere. rt Seealso Willi ams 1999,Edward s 1993,and much of this volume. Sexualuirtue on disPlaYI 47 - the piece' wife - as adulterer,or, in Lati n, adulter is alwaysthe villain of that today Sucha circumstanceoften evokesa degreeof horror and disgust might be associatedwith sexualintercourse with children.36 One anthropo- logT.d explanationfor this attitud e to femalesexuality is that in a patriarchal and a ,oZi.ry ,,r.h as that of ancient Rome, securepaternity is important. him'17 husband wants a wife who can only have been impregnated by was a In Livy's story about the cuh's foundation Verginia boaststhat she uirgo(virgin) when shemarried her husband,that shehad had no Previous value on this uncomplicated ,.litionrf,ip with men. The srory placeshigft relationshipberween husband wife.38The structure of the cult places "rJ there- responsibiliqrfor the symbolic cultivation of pudicitia (and perhaps fore the relationsbeween husbandand wife) in the hands of the married women, rarherthan thoseof their husbands.This highlights the women's that control of their own sexualiqFin addition to any external controls The might be imposedon them by the community and by their_husband. ,.g",rl"..r oi a wife's sexualbehaviour is in part driven by her own inter- nalisedattitudes. Participation in this cult brings home to the women how import antpu.dicitia is alsoconveys their virtue to others' "nd The ,,ri..,rr., of the prohibition on those tending the shrine merit closerattention and haveb..r, extensivelydiscussed by other scholars,most recentlyNicole Boels-Janssen.3e In Livy's accountwomen do not havethe is right ro participate in the cult ( sacrifcand.i)unless their pudicitia - m"anifest-(spectoto) - has been witnessed and attested and they have been married.ro one man only. A range of questionspresent themselves, some of which - what did it mean to witn eispudicitia? how could it be made manifest?in what sorr of deedwas it evident?- arecentral to Roman sexual ethicsandwill be recurrenrthemes of this book. Another setof issuesfocuses 'one-man - on the required.status of uniuira - being a woman' which is usually taken to mean a woman who h"r -arried only once.4oThat this quality wasvalued. among R.oman women, including thosebeyond elitesta- tus and throughout th. g".ographicalempire, can be seenfrom the evidence

'paedophiiia' ;6 Cf. the discussionof modern in the Introduction above, pp. rr-r2'. of adoption' 17 Ho-,vever,an interesting f."t.,.i. of Roman kinship structures is the u'idespreadrole and remarriage lr,hich means that blood line was not always.r,r.i"l in Roman inheritance; divorce ideas also seemto have been common, and.in many ways Rome does not conform to con\rentional sexualiry' aborrtnatriarchl,, despite the dominance of th rpotr,'fo*iliasandthe strict control of female rr2'-r3' SeeGardn.r rgig, iri-ro8, Corbier rg9l,Edrvards 1993:49-io, Rawson ry86 rz, Dixon r99z: z'r'1-6' rs Seelieggiari igg, fo, marital ideaisin ancientRome, esp.Lz9-z6t; cf' Catui. 6r, Val' Mo'' discussedin Chapter 3 belorn',pp. rz61z' ii) Boels--|ansseni996. Jai See-Ireggiarir99r: z1)-6, Boels-Janssenr996,.Williams 1958, Gardner l986' SexualMoralitY in Ancient Rome in.cult worshiP of of inscriptions.a,why is this a requisiteof participants puciicitia?The pro- puc{icitia asa goddess,and what L"n it teli us about who have remarried hibition appe""r,,o exclud.efrom the cult all women their circumstances, (or been involvedwith more than one man) whatever is not aiive. evenif they havebeen widowed and their first husband the cult of women Boels-Janssen,sexplanation for this prohibition from articlethat attempts who arenor uniuirar, outlined.in a thought-provoki^g original lex templi of to reconstruct from the availableliterary sourcesthe Roman notions of the cult of pudicitid,4'is that it d.erivesfrom traditional with the impure' ritual purity and.the risk of contagion through contact is the thesis that, th. time when the shrine central to her argument "t not pertain at all to the personal was found.ed.,the iu"liqr of pudicitia did woman who had had moraliry of a *o*"rr, b,.r,orly to her physicalit"t.. A soiled, and she was sex with more than one man for whateuerreuson was of the risk of contagion prohibited from touching the cult statuebecause is that the prohibition from ritual impuriry. The argument,in other words, the temple law does stemsfrom ,.ligio,r, rather,f,"r, ethicalconsiderations: or a woman who has not distinguisha remarriedwidow from an adulteress sexwith more than been raped;all havelost their uniuirastatus by having physicalchange one man. Sexualintercourse with a particular man wreaks Boels-Janssen on a woman; h. lays his imprint ,tpotr her and afterwards, argues,she can neveragain .oT. to another man aspudica' on a perceived The denial of the .Ihi."l dimension of pud.icitia rests accordingto which d.istinctionberween the concepts of pud.or an^dpudicitia, a state' Boels- pudoris a moral qualiry wh.r.", pidltlr;a des-cnbesphysical *or"l term denoting the senseof shame Janssenargues ,h", pud.or rs " to the physical which pr.i.rrts bad behaviour, whereas pud.icitia belongs This, sheargues, realm and meanspuriry, the absenceof sexualdefilement. when the musr be the old.er,orilirr"r senseof pud.icitia,which pertained she sugg:r_tr,there rules of the temple *.i. first laid down. By Livy's time, account adds a new have been shifts in the meaning of pud.icitia, and his which introduces dimension to the cult with th."phrasesp€ctata pudicitia, moral criteria alongsidethe previouscriterion of ritual puriry.

zil-5, Forbis , 4, SeeLattimoretg6z,Forbis lggo,Treggiari I99It ry96' somewhereon the building setting out the a' That is, the inscription whici *ould"h"",r. b.." airpt"y.a 'that of Livy's phrase no woman had formal rules of participation in the cuit. Through .o-p"riron st pudicitia, and-shehad only been married the right ,o ,".iifi.e unless she was a maffon oF.rr"nif. et uni uiro nupta sa.crifcandi ro one man, (ut nulla nisi spectataepud.icitiae matruna quae fuisset,ius signunt nefasest attin{i) Boels-Janssen haberet)with that of Fer,,r, ('i, *"s to touch th. st"i,r.' , ".ri*e ne qua"Pudicitiae.(aut Fortunae Muliebris) concludes that the prohibitio.r read something like this: ,o,r.-h the statue of Pudicitia (or of signum tangito nisi quae semelnuptd esf,.'Le.tnowoman Muliebris)lr.tl.st ,h. h"t been married only once'' Sexualuirtue on disPlaYI 49

It is salutaryto be reminded of the possibiliry,indeed the inevitabiliry, time. The that the -."rrirrg, of aterm will change over the passingof looked restriction of the cult ro uniuirne may h"o. been a custom which it, and it may puzzhngor out-of-date by the ,rT. Lrvy cameto write about of pulic.itla well be mistaken ro turn to it for elucidation of the concept satisfiedby as it was conceivedof in the late Republic.asI am not wholly to point Boels-Janssen'schronological solutiorr, b,,tt she is absolutelyright sometimes out the discrepanciesin Jr. *"y that the term pudicitia is used: sexually it appearsto mean, just as she claims,the physicalstare of being It is the *ntouched,,at other times it seemsto describea moral qualiry. sexualethics conrention of this book that it is a centralconcern of Roman of the ro examineprecisely this ambiguiry of meaning, and the problem individual' dislocationb.*..n the body itJelfand the moral purposeof an engages Much of the sourcematerial that I refer to throughout this book is to be the readerin just suchquestions as where in an individualpud.icitia in issues found and how its presenceor absencemight be recognised,and revolvingaround th. relation of the moral agentto his or her body.

rHE FOUNDATION MYTH into the Livy's accounr portrays the worship of pudicitia as fully integrated a broader, official practicesof Roman civic hie.aaH.r. it constitutespart of a formal, civic responsero national troubles in the yeat ,,lg BcE during regions period when Rome was engagedin a seriesof wars in neighbouring of fr t,"ty. This response,i;i. form of two days of public celebration rituals acrossthe ciqF,is instigatedfrom on high by the senate,financed, n and presumably,from public .off.ir, and fulfilled by largenumbers of me women. This is a community event and the streetsof Rome are thronged with citizenspulling their *.igh, in order ro appeasethe sfds and deflect it the thr.",.rr.i misfortune.4sTh. communicatory aspectof cult worship the clear- the cultivation of shrinesis part of amutual relationshipbetween d.ivineand mortal: signsof dJsappro.r"lare sent from the ,conciliatory responsesare mad.e in Rome, circumstanceschange for the better.46

of the Plebeia' ai Indeed it has been suggestedthat Liry's account is designed to make sense (Wissowa r97r: tv)' and that in fact he confusesthe cult of Pud.icitiawith thlt of Fortuna Virgo r974' # Although strictly itwas part of private rather than ; seePaimer 'Litry his treatment of reiigion +r For the theme of reiigion in Livy seee.g. Levene 1993:t4{. centres di'ine favour or around clear morai premises . . . this moraliry is then consistentli' linked.in'ith 'Pi:ry impiery punished' disfa'our and consequenrsuccess or failure for Rome', or 77: is rer'varded, on the invasion of the and Roman'ictor1.guaranteeclin adr.ancebvthe -r. Cf. \raish 196r:46 failing in the virtues of and Gauls treated b' Liv1, in Book t as a disaster.".rid by Roman -fdes pietasand the consequentincurrence of divine displeasure' +(' Feenevrqq8: 8:' Blocht96' in Ancient Rome io SexualMorality considerable The a*ay of divine beingsto wh om pud.icitiabelongswield celebrationof the power over the fate of Rorie and.of h.r peoplg,.andthe enlisther suPPort cult is an act of supplicationto a goddesswhich hopesto '5.",ra1 beneficentpower for Rome againrthlrtile forcer. Virtue', then, is a such powers, whoseparronage the stareof Rome needs.She is one of many life beyond y.t h., role is importanr, affectingareas of a Roman citizen's to mentlon such those directly ,.l"t.d to the ,.",r^I politics, military, not statereligious natural phenomenaas famine , dro,rghrrand floods.Although many divine practic. i., Rome fragmented into the acknowledgem."! :l everyaspect t.irgr, everyunit *"i parr of a largeorganicwhole, in which interest of p,Iblic life, state commu"it *"r implicated. of particular "ri considering here is the factthat Liuy portrays the Romans asa community this public realm. the quality of pudicitia to belong !o narrative The ,^r"rr".i,rebelongs to rwo tf .h. broaderpolitico-historical developmentof strandsof Livy's histoiy, first, the gradual accietion and 'struggleof the Orders' Roman religiouspractices and r..orrl, the so-called who initially berwee' th! pleb.ian and the patrician classes.The women tending the celebratethe .rrlt are all patrician and they ban Verginia from has forfeited pltricjan shrine alongsidethem on th. groundsthat she !..: of high - starusthro,igh her marriag. ,o a plebeianman, albeit one lank dispute the establishment indeed Livy bindi the story of their Td ".o.r"r.rl. the old of the new cult into a wid.ernarrative about the conflict berween ians,which power of the patriciansand the emergingdemands of the plebe in rites ,.r,rlt, ir gr"iual expansionof plebeianfranchi se.47Participation and social is an important way of establishingand proclaiming political of Fortuna status,as this accountsuggests. Oth., r.l"ted cults,such as those to have Muliebris and ("Iso c.lebrating the qualiry of pudicitia), seem conflict had similar associationswith this o,r.r"r.h1"g narrativeof political and change.a8

the orig- Healthy competition is an important aspectof the tale.Liuy calls (competition) and a inal dirp,rt. in the temple oT Pudlcitia a c€rtamen

key Livian narrative or exemplum that a7 For more on this see the following chapter,where another only has a central protagonist of the trears the subject of pudicitia wrllbe discussed.This story not Lily's narrative of relations between sam. ,"-. - v.rgl.ri" - but also constitutesa turning point in abduction of the plebeian virgin patrician pl.6.ian. The patrician Appius ; attempted "rrd of the decemvirateand the verginia, dramatically th*"ried by h., f"ih..., precipitatesthe o,r.tthto* representsthe plebeian masses restoration of the port of tribrrrre of the plebs, the magistrate who the ruling bodies' and givesthem a voice among ,, F r f, -r: L-:^ ^-r ^.. on Fortuna Muliebris and cults of a8 See palmer r974, Staples '997, Boels-Janssen1996, especially Venus. Sexualuirtue on displayI 5r contentioanim1rum (contestof minds), initially beween Verginia and the other patricianwomen. Verginia'sinaugural speech to the plebeianwomen .-ph"sises a rich nerwork ;f competitiverelations. The women of Rome -*. take up the challengeof the men, among whom there is supposedto haveflourisfred a tradition of rivalry in the field of uirtus (military courage and moral excellence)which is extensivelydocumented by Livy and his conremporaries.ae\(/hile the men compete among themselvesto be the mosr virtuous, the most courageous,to be consideredendowed with the greatest uirtus,the mAtronaewhom Verginia addressesare urged to compete I*orrg themselvesfor pudicitia. Lastly,Verginia hopes that this competi- tion *org the plebeian wtatronaewrll result in an excellencein pudicitia that will t.ld tft. nigh repute of the plebeianshrine to outstrip that of the original paurcianshiir,.r ih.y should strivethat the altar may be considered more sacredand the women themselvesthought to be the chaster. Three hundred yearsafter the eventswhich he purports to relay,Livy is portraying the public cultivation of the goddess'shrine asthe complement tf rh.'p.irorai cultivation of the moral qualiry by the women who tend to be sacred,so the it. Just th. shrine must be sacred (sanctu)and seen ", womermusr themselvesbe pure (castae)toand seento be pure. Lir'1t'sfirst- cenrury BCErext suggestr intimate connection between ritual practice "r and moral life, b.r*..n the public faceof the cult and the personalethics of its celebrantsoutsid.e th. ritual time and space.It also suggeststhat the culs were concernedto engagewith the women as ethical subjects,in parallel with men. Verginia'swords imply that pudicitil tt one virtue in p"rti.,rlar with which women wer. .ng"ged, and that the field of sexual ethics is a particular spacewithin Roman ethics marked out for women. More puttlrngly perh"pr for a reader who comes with a prejudice that pudiciti, .q,rir"Jh"rtity', th. speechsuggests that pudicitia rs a qualiqFof which there are degreesand in which it is possibleto compete. How women b.h",r. within their marital relations,how they areseen to cond.uctthemselves is not, in the rerms of this passage,a Personalmoral issueas we might understandit today: a matter for the conscienceof the individual, *it"h repercussionsfor the immediate family and friends only. Rather it is intimately bound up with the cir.ic and religious dury of the individual, and with the wellbeingof the communiqFas a whole.

4e relatesthe competition For instance,rhe narrative immediately precedingthis in Lir1"su'ork PtTTtt" ttselt tor the generalsAppius and Volumnius that spurs on the Roman armv to comPete agalnst were .,icto., and toio,rt th. enemy easily (ro.i9.r8-i9). Ir4enwho savedanother's life in battle au,ardecia clrotzr ciuica(see Oakiei'1998). io For the siqnificar-rceof the terms castusand sartctussee the Introduction abor''e, Rome 5z SexualMorality in Ancient and in The cult enablesthe public celebrationof the quality of puclicitia, itselfprovid.es a medium through which women canparade their individual myth end.owmenr with pud.icitia beforethe community. Livy's foundation be_caus: speaksout and actson holds up verginia asillustrious exemplar :h. Her behalf ,frJplebeian order despitebeing herselfby birth a patrician. "f of is alsolaud.ed because she makes p.rl[c showabout the importance deed " pudicitiatosociery,and the imporr"n.. of being associatedwith the qualiqy fo, individual women. The story underlines the fact that participation of in public cults is (or rather u)asin an idealisedpast) an essentialpart at belonging and contributing ro society in general.Verginia is furious it is being"e"Jud.d from th. .,tlt by the other patrician women because in which a socialsnub, but also becaus.it d.prives Lrerof a formal space leavesa to act our hm pudicitia for all to see. Exclusion from the cult sense pudicawoman withour a meansof celebrating,and thereby making for of, this stare.By her subsequentactions she prcvides such .facilities may plebeianwomen throughout ,h. ciry roo. \fith a cult of their own ,h:I mediation participatefully in this importanr asp..l o.fcultural life, in the of of the relationthip berweenhuman and divine, and the maintenance the health of the Roman state. Pudicitia helps both to mark distinctions into the berweenwomen of differenr status,and to integratethe communiry. The storyspeaks to the ethicalsubjectiviry ofwomen. The women maln- (ot at tain their ;*; moral stand.ardsand regulate their own behaviour least send"messages to others about r,tih standardsand behaviour) with referencero pub"lic celebration and to the gods. Liuy also makes clear the is no longer that this ple"sing system is no longer operating; :"1' of tended..The cult lost its exclusivirr and was infiltrated by all kinds - women - women who were not matronae and is now gone-Yet this very retelling of its foundation servesro an extent to resuscitatesome of the functions of the cult; this story emphasisesthe importance of pudicitia, among other things, and porrrayswomen ashaving control over their own moraliry.

That there was felt ro be a close associationbetween religious cult and personalethics is clear,the nature of the associationless so. The ethical ,igrrificanceof the shrineis underlinedby referencesto it by Propertiusand both draw clear links berween J.i..r"l. The poems alluding ro the shrine the celebrationof the cult rreatmentof the shrineon the one hand, and "rd the maintenanceof standardsof socialand sexualbehaviour of individuals generallyon the other. Sexualuirtue on displaltI tJ Propertiusmentions the shrine in elegy 2.6, in which he is lamenting the moral state of the girls of his d^y and in particular that of Cynthia, about whom much of his love hasso far obsessed.The poem begins with Cynthia describedas super-courtesan welcoming all comers,and ends with her describedas faithful wife.t' Linking theseopening and closing imagesare the paranoidjealousy of the poet and his notion that girls are sexuallycorrupted by the picturesof sexualintercourse that surround them in the domestic setting, which we might justifiably identi$r as the kind of paintings that have been preservedon walls of buildings in .r' Thesetwo elementsof the poem evokethe tensionsberween rwo recurrent featuresthat fire the passionof elegiacpoetry: the context of sexuallicence and the possessivenessof the lov er.53 Propertius begins by evoking Cynthia's promiscuity; her house is throngedwith men so that in her welcomeshe outstrips even the renowned Greek courtesansLais and Thais and Phryne (lines r-6). This image is undermined aswe realisethat we are looking through the distorting lens of the gazeof the jealouslover; eventhe slightest,most innocent thing can send Propertiusinto agoniesof jealousy,as his imagination manufactures groundsfor suspicion(7-ta). This kind of tormented lust and jealousy,the poem continues,has beenthe causeof trouble before,and we move from Helen, whose beaury and ficklenessprecipitated the Tiojan war, through the Centaurs'brutal disruption of the Lapith wedding,to Rome itself;right from the start the very founder of Rome, Romul,rr,-r"rrctionedtr.,priii- pled lust when he organisedthe abduction of the Sabinewomen to make wivesfor Roman men. Sincethe beginning of Roman time, love doeswhat it likes ft5-zz). Then the poem asks:

templapudicitiae quid opusstatuisse puellis si cuivisnuptae quidlibet esse licet? What is the point of havingestablished temples to pudicitiafor girls If a brideis allowedto do whatevershe likes? (Prop. 2.6.25-6) .

BehindPropertius'question lies the assumptionthat the point of the estab- lishmentof the templeis to placeconstraints upon nuptae(brides or married

Critics have long argued about whether pu.ellaeare respectablemarried women or courtesans;this ambiguiry is part of the fun of the genre of Roman love elegy,which plays with ideas about the status of women, as we shall seein Chapter 4. See Lyne rg8o on the provocative use of marriage terminology by Propertius,with referenceto this couplet; rf/yke 1989on scriptaepuellae. i2 On suchpaintings and issuesinvolved in interpretationsee Clarke r99B; on their possiblerelationshic r,r'ithRoman love poerry seeMverowrrrz r99z and Fredrick r99y. tl Seefurther Chapter 4 belou',pp.tg6-i tq SexualMorality in Ancient Rome women). Cultivation of the shrine is relatedto preventingwomen from doing asrhey please,and curtailing the sexuallicence of Rome established by ' actions.taHowever, that connectionseems to haveweakened: the shrine is nor managingto pl"y that role. Moreover,the girls havebeen exposedto a competingmedium, the eroticpictures that aPPearin domestic interiors.ti The next pertinent lines seemto elaborateon this idea and re-establish a connection betweenthe (abandoned)cult and abandonedethics:

sed non immeritol velavit araneafanum et mala desertosoccupat herba deos.

But it is not undeserved!cobweb coversthe shrine, and weedsoccupy the desertedgods (Prop. 2.645-6).

Whether the referenceis to godsand religionin general,or more specifically to pudicitia itself, is uncertain, as is the position of the lines in -the poem, the appropriatepunctuation of the first line of the couplet.t6However, "ri there is a clearlink berweenthe worship of a diviniry through cult and the behaviour,mlres, of Roman wom en.57It is not so much that one caLtses the other, but that the rwo are mutually reinforcing;part of the behaviour inspired by pudicitid rs the tending of the cult of the ;this commirmenr to rhe cult in turn strengthenspudicitit as a force in socieqy and as a divine force guarding over society,further inspiring individuals within sociery. Propertiuslocates the shrinein the distantpast, but he alsolocates sexual licence right at the beginning of Rome's history and the corruption of women far in the past aswell. There is no logicalchronological sense to be found in this poetic evocationof Roman sexualmzres; the opposing forces aretangled up togetherin the past.Propertius is deliberatelyproblematising a simplechronological account ofmoral decline,and his own accountmakes it harder to differentiate berweenwrongftl and rightful sexualbehaviour. Lust is embeddedin Rome'shistory and identiry, and Romulus, the role model and heroic founder of the ciqy,encourages men not to resisttheir libidinous urges.The shrine of pudicitia is associatedwith female sexual ethics,but it is only one of a rangeof competingmedia, and failsto regulate sexualbehaviour authoritatively. Propertiustells a different story from that

ta The married women's behaviour is a verbal echo of the behaviour of the erotic force himself, Amor, a couple of lines earlier,who, asa result of Romulus' abduction of the Sabinewomen, may now dare whatever he likes in Rome: per te nunc Romaequidlibet audetAmor,'becan)se of you li.e. Romulus], Love now dareswhatever he likes in Rome' (z.6.zvz). t6 i5 Seenote iz above. O.r the textual issuessee Camp s 1967 ad loc. 57 On the link in Roman thought berween moral decay and the decay of the fabric of the ciry see E,dwerdsry96. Sexualuirtue on d.isplayI 55 of Livy; there have alwaysexisted lust and sexuallicence in Rome, and it is possibleto think that the shrinehas never, at anypoint in its history, been entirelysuccessful in its moralisingintentions: resistance to its prescriptions hasalways been part of its history too.

Meanwhile,Juvenal's sixth satireembellishes the long-running ancient lit- erarytrope about divinity and virtue leaving the mortal world to which Propertiusalludes.is This lengthy diatribe openswith his claim that pudici- tiaherselfhas long agoabandoned the mortal realm,and that her departure has left moral chaosin its wake, and depicts the sordid consequencesof the goddesspudicitia's abandoning the mortal world: sexualimmorality to a grotesquedegree among married women. The poem is addressedby its satiricnarrator to ,apparendy to warn him againstmarriage, and seemsto be an extensive poetic versionof a rhetoricalset piece on whether or not a man should marr)r.The running joke of the poem, as Susanna Braund hasargued, is the invocation of traditional morals to support a case that appearsto be in fundamentalopposition to thosemorals - i.e. the case againstmarria ge.te Halfway through the poem, referenceis made to the shrine of pudicitia, and Juvenal'ssatirical pen depictsa shrine that has not merely been abandoned,but is even the object of crude and unpleasant abuseby the women of Rome:

i nunc et dubita qua sorbeat aerasanna Maura, Pudicitiae veterem cum praeterit aram, Tullia quid dicat, notae collacteaMaurae. noctibus hic ponunt lecticas,micturiunt hic effigiemque deaelongis siphonibus implent inque vices equitant ac teste moventur, inde domos abeunt: tu calcasluce reversa coniugis urinam magnos visurus amicos.

Norn, go and ask yourself why Maura snorts the air derisively \il/hen she passesby the ancient altar of Pudicitia, \X4rat Tirllia says,the foster sister of notorious Maura. At night here they set down their litters and here they urinate And cover the statue of the goddesswith their long squirts, And they take turns to ride each other and move with the as their witness And then they go home: at dawn )'ou tread in your Wife's urine on your wa). to see)rour patrons (J,t". 6.1o6t3) .

C...L ,','...J.-'s for this topos are Hes. Op. ry7-zor (on aidos)and Aratus Phaenot,tLctia(dika'l: see Braund ry92 for further references. This is the interpretation of Braund r9y-. II

56 SexualMorality in Ancient Rome \7omen urinate againstthe veq/ .ffigy of the goddessand (although the

i texr is unclear)take part in transgressivesexual practices)6o d.-onstrating {i I t their conrempt for the deiry and all that shestands for.6' These are married ct. i t - the shot of this vignette is to suggestthat the addressee t women parting I may end up paddling through his own wife's urine as he setsofr for his ! patron'shouse on the following morning. In Juvenal'sdepicti on, Pudicitia hasleft the mortal realm in disgustat its immoraliry,but her going alsohas a further deleteriouseffect upon the mor- talsthat sheleaves behind; thereis mutual reinforcementberween cult and ethicalbehaviour. Likewise, in order to indicate their extremeimmorality, the women direct their disrespectfor pudicitid agarnstthe goddess'shrine and statue;their behaviourrepresents wilful perversiryand perversionthat wants to get itself noticed, rather than ignoranceand neglectof traditional moraliry. Such barefacedgrotesquery/ is rypical of the way that sourcesof this imperial era (late first and early secondcenturies cE) depict Roman engagementwith the quality of pudicitia and traditional Roman moraliry g.i.i"lly.n' Juvenal',,"tire trump.,, its heavy,moralising framework ftL.rt the start,but spendsits time showcasingan enthrallingseries of tableauxin whichp udicitia is deliberatelydiscarded and vandalised;the very moralising callsatte ntion to the fact that the poem is itself pissingon pudicitia.

The cult of pudicitiawas certainlyfor both Propertiusand Juvenala useful way of talking about sexualvirtue among mortals.Indeed, in both passages the treatment of the cult servesas a reification of the morals of married women. Both sketcha contrastbetween a morally upright pastand a morally corrupt present.Both aresubversive and humorous genres(of which more in Chapter+). In both cases,the ethicsin questionare those of women; it is their behaviourthat the deiry should be guiding, they whose morals are corruptedby looking at the paintingson eroticthe mes. \fomen aredepicted asmoral agentswho should learn correctbehaviour but who insteadfail or deliberatelydisregard moral guidance,or are corruptedand led into sexual immor ahty.6t

6o 'homosexual C".tt"relLa ry87: r57 describesthem aspractising love', although it is not clearwhether it is eachother that they areriding or the statueof the goddessherself; the latter would be particularly shocking. Cf. Adams t98z t65-6 who saysthat they take turns to ride one another. _ 'The b' women's attitude to Pudicitia indicatesgraphically their viewson marriageand fideliry', Braund 1992:75. 6' S.. further Chapters 4 and 7 below. 6; For more on the nature of these texts and how they mieht contribute to Roman ethical discourses seeChapter 4 below. Sexualuirtue on d'ispla1I t7

All the sourcesd.iscussed so far describethe cult in termsof its being over, and take this asa sign of moral decline,participating (in their own ways)in a wid,espread.Roman discourseof the degeneratepresent which permeates rexts fro* the earliesttimes.6a \fhe re pudicitia is concerned,however, this claim is alsotelling us somethingabout the precariousnessof the quality of pudicitia, whrcn iJalwaysat risk, whether from pollution, oblivion, neglect or abuse.As far asthe consequencesof the cult's failure to survive go, Livy doesnor elaborate,Propertius focalises the faithlessnessof women through the eyesof a jealou, 1o,r.r,and Juvenalthrough the eyesof an angrysatirist'

Let us now return to the theme of public display of virtue and women's honour. In Livy's myth of the founding of the cult of plebeianpudicitia, national crisisleads to competition berweenwomen for honour in pudici' tia, and thence to cultic innovarion. This pattern is repeatedin a variety of ancient sourceswith referenceto other cults and religiousinnovations; in fact k.y moments of emergencyin Roman history are often marked by incidents involving the intersecrionof female sexualiryand statereligious practice.Livy tells",rs(B.r8.r-rr) that rnJir BcEthere was a scandalinvolv- irrg th. poisoningof severalleading men of the communiry by their wives, *f,i.h may, to one scholar,have been the stimulus for the found- "..old.ing ing of the cult p,)d;citia for patrician wo-.n;6t the establishmentof a "f t.irpl. to Venu, Cibr.quens tnigt BcE(the )rearafter the dedicationof our shrine to pudicitia Plebeia)is describedas a responseto an adultery scandal the building from the finesof the of that )lear,with FabiusGyges financing immoral women; the dedication of a statue to Venus Verticordia rn zzo BCEand the introduction into Rome of the goddessCybele in zo5-4 BcE are both the resultsof demandsassociated with the regulation of female sexualirymade by the in responseto national crises.The 'crisis/female ancientsources, by retellingversions of this sexualiry/religious innovation story,are re-e.r".ting such responsesin order to underline the importanceof maintaining control over femalesexualiry. This next section wiil look more closely rvio suchversions - thoseofVenus Verticordiaand ", of - both ofwhich pertain to sexualethics and which areinterpreted by the ancient sourcesthrough the sameinterlocking themesof women's pudicitia, natronalcrisis and .o-p.tition that we have identified in Livy's account of the iounding of the cult of pudicitia.

6q SeeEdinards i996 for an analysisof this discourse' 6; is represented Seepalme r r9711tzz forthis suggestionand the commenr that the women'sbehaviour Struggieof the as anaiogousro an uprising ofit. plebs.locating this tale too in the context of the Orders. tB SexualMorality in Ancient Ronte Venus Verticordia was a particular manifestation or aspect of the Olympian goddessVenus, whose role was to turn the hearts of women 'Heart-Turn awalrfro- J.*tr"l vice - henceher epithetVerticordia or er'.66 The consecrationto her of a statue (dated to zzo ecn) was said to have beenin responseto the prescriptionsof the Sibyllinebookt.6z Ottce again the conrextis state-organisedreligious practice designed to inculcatesexual virtue among Roman females(not just matronaethts time, but virgin girls too), which i.r ,r.rrnwill contribute to the wellbeingand Protection of the Roman srate.The consecrationof the statueto the divinity was preceded by another competition amongstRoman matrrnn€for the title of the most sexuallypure. The accountsof the introduction into Roman civic life of Cybele(also known asthe GreatMother, the Mother of the Gods), rn zor-4 BCE,contain similar elementr.68Public acknowledgementof outstanding sexualpuriry in a woman (also in relation to ritual puriry) is likewise a k.y feature of the tradition and the context is again formal cult practice organised by the senate, involving incorporationof a cult from abroadinto the Roman cultic nerwork. pairs the two storiesin his encyclopaedia:

pudicissima femina semel matronarum sententia iudicata est Sulpicia Paterculi fi|i", uxor Fulvi Flacci, electa ex centurn praeceptis quae simulacrum Veneris ex Sibyllinis libris dedicaret, iterum religionis experimento Claudia inducta Romam deum matre.

Once upon a time Sulpicia, daughter of Paterculusand wife of Fulvius Flaccus, was judged in the opinion of the mAtronaethemost pudicawoman, chosen from a selectio" of a hundred asthe one who would dedicatethe statueofVenus according to the Sibylline books; again, in a trial of religion, Claudia [was judged rnostPudica] when the Mother of the Gods was brought into Rome (lVat. 7.tzo-r).

Note that his brief accountfocuses on the rwo namedwomen who emerge from the processof selectionas the best of their cohort, Sulpicia and Claudia. The word iterum (again) draws a strong comparison berween

Although for a different account of the erymoiogy seeOv. Fast.4.t5o, discussedbelow, p. 66. On this seealso Fantham zoo z: 36 n. 42,for the very plausible suggestionthat Ovid's is a deliberately unconventional reinterpretation of the epithet. 67 can A coin from 46 rcnwith a depiction of the goddesscarrying scalesand accompaniedby be found at CrawfordryT4:iel^. Cf. Ov. Pont.3.r.rr5-r8,4.r).29 (), discussedat the end of Chapter 7 below. The sourceswhich deal with introduction of the cult of Cybele or the Great Mother into Roman civic life (someofwhich arediscussed below) havebeen the focus of considerablescholarly attention. Seee.g. Viseman 1979,Viseman r98t, Stehle 1989,Fantham r99B: ri)-4, Beard,North and Price 1998,vol. Ii: 43-9. Sexualuirtue on displayI ,9 the rwo storiesand Pliny dwellson the Assessmentof the women'svirtue - by their peerscr through a test- astheir k.y asPect. Valerius Maximus relatesthe story of the consecrationof a statue to 'individuals Venus Verticordia as part of a chapter about who won glory for themselves'(quae cuique magnrtca contingerunr), and the focus of the tale is again Sulpicia,chosen to consecratethe statue of the goddessby " selectboard of Roman women on the grounds of her outstanding castitds (which we can understandhere asboth sexualand ritual purity):ue

merito virorum commemorationiSulpicia Ser. Paterculi filia, a Fulvi Flacci uxor,adicitur. quae, cum senaruslibris Sybillinisper decemvirosinspectis cen- suissetut VenerisVerticordiae simulacrum consecraretur, quo faciliusvirginum mulierumquemens a libidinead pudicitiam converteretur, et exomnibus matron- ibus centtr.m, eX cenrum autem decem sorte de sanctissima femina iudicium facerent, cunctis castitatepraelata est.

To the commemoration of men deservesto be added the tale of Sulpicia (daughter of Servius Paterculus and wife of Q. Fulvius Flaccus).When the senatehad decreed, after the Sibylline books had been consulted by the , that a statue of VenusVerticordia should be consecratedso that the minds ofvirgins and ofwomen should more easilybe turned away from lust tow ardspudicitia, from all the women a hundred were chosen,and from the hundred ten picked by lot to make a judgement about who was the most morally pure (sanctissima)of women; she outshone all in chastiqy(castita) (Val. Max. 8.r5.rz).

Once againthe passageporrrays the senateas instrumental in the establish- ment of the cult, and emphasisesthe importan ce of pudicitia to the state as a whole. Valeriusinterprets the role of the goddessamong the R.oman peopleas influencing the ethical core (mens)of eachfemale citrzen'whether virgin or wife ,7o andas turning her away from libido (or lust) and towards pudicitia. The passageelucidates the ethical function particularly clearly: cult helps to direct the minds of citrzensaway from vice and towardsvirtue. \7e may note that when, ashere , pud.icitiats directly contrastedwith libido, it must be interpretedas a moral forcerather than purely asa physicalstate. It is explicitly the mens(mind) of the women on which the goddessmust work, and this Latin term describesthe moral coreof an individual'sbeing - the subjectiveexperience, moral disposition,active intellectual engagement, and moral source.The epithet Verticordiaimplicitly derivesfrom the idea that the heart (cor)is the seatof subjectiveexperience and wisdom. Once again,women areportrayed as moral agentswhose moral dispositionmust be shaped(separately from men) by the formal structuresof societl'.

('c1 See abor.e (Introduction, p. 3o) for the term castitrts. On Lheinrponan ce of pudiiitin for unmarried virqins seebelou-Chapter 1. pp. 98-roz. cf. :o8-q. ' 6o SexualMoiality in Ancient Rome to the gloriesof This exemplumappears in a chapterdevoted otherwise is implied to be the men, asthe irrtrod,rliory link rrrgg.rrs,so that puclicitia men' and her rcle fcmaleequivalent of the civi. q.iJities manifeited in the honours bestowed in the consecrationof the ,,"*. the equivalentof the is rewardsthat on the men of the chapter.T'The them. of the chapt:r $e - introduces virtue can reap- publi. horrour and distinction and Valerius storieswhere the chapter by ,"ggesting how pleasurableto read are such of drawing attention good d..d, ^i, j;rfy ,.*I.rded. The didactic purpose and recognition io ,,r.h a phenomenonis clear:the anticipation of honour by the .ol-'.rnity is a spur ro the pursuit of moral excellence. introduction Earlier in the satrne.ir"p..r we find the story of the "lro within the of Cybele to Rome, with the element of competition "g"in of the tale the communiqFfor mord J".ellence. However, in this version (asit was in personchosen as the best to representthe ciry is not claudia i'li.ry't version),but a man: Scipio Nasica' eiusnam manibus rarum specimenhonoris Scipione quoque yri:i. oboritur: monitu Pessinunte er penarib,.r,nond.um qrr".r.ori ,.n"rrm Pythii Apollinis erat ut haecmin- accersitamd.eam excipi voluit, quia eodem oraculo praeceptum totos fastos,constitue isteriaMatri deum a sanctirsi*o viro praestarentur.explica speciosiusreperies' omnescurrus triumphales, nihil ,"-.n morum principaru when he was not yet A rarespecimen of honour appearsin ScipioNasica too; for, from Pessinusby quaesror,th. senatewanted ah. g"ddess*ho had beensummoned from the pythi"n or"Jle to be receivedby his handsand by hishousehold "'*"rrrirg towardsthe Mother gods,because the sameoracle had laid down thar this service (sanctissimu)man' of the Gods should be d"ischargedby the most morally Pure - will find nothing Unroll all the almanacs,consid; a[ th. triumphal chariots you (YaL Max' 8'tl'l)' more splendidthan moral pre-eminence(*oiu* principatu) towards the The similarities between this exemplum and that of Sulpicia community end of the chapter are evid.ent:th.y are both members of their of sanctitas (d'e who are judged by others to b. pi.-eminent in the qu"l]qr uiro), and chosen therefore to perform an sanctissimafi*n), d sAnctissiwto

(by senateor people) involves 7, In many of the precedingeleven exemplqin the chapter the recognition (sectionsi, 8); sometimesthe protagonist the bestowJ ofpo[,i.a1"offi.e such th. .orrrrrlrhip 4, i, ", location (r and z), an honorific name earnssome l"rti.rg memorial - a srarueor porrrait in a central (6); at others the reward is merely (i), a senatoriali..r.. setting up the man as a model governor celebratedare those manifestedin the amomenr of acclaim (7,9,ro). In most casesthe virtues However, Scaevolais described as exclusivelymale roles of military command-eror magistrate. Q. - 'with and such strength' - where the governing Asiatam sancteet tam fortlte,r ,,r.li moral gu_riry (8-15.6,and compare the virtues of bravery stand pro,rdly side by side with those of abstinence and gold at 8.r5.9).These exemplaalso people,sappreciation of cato's resistanceto the lure of silver for resistanceto the temptations look back'- Book,l of the samework- seefurther Chapter 3 below of sex and wealth. Sexualuirtue on d,isp@tI 6t important religiousrole on behalfof that communiry.z' SulPicia'svirtue and th. honout th"t it accruesare not poftrayed hereas exclusively or specifically associatedwith wom en.73However, although her statusand glory minutely , parallelthose of ScipioNasica, only in her storyis the religiousphenomenon ih.r.by inauguratedsaid to have explicit moral implications for others in scciery.7a

TRADITIONAL HONOURS

\fe havenow readavariety ofversions of traditional narrativesin which the assessmentof matronalpudicitia is relatedto the founding of cults. There arealso sources that referin other contextsto the ideaof public comPetition berweenwomen in the field of sexualvirtue. For instance,Valerius Maximus writes oi an ancestralcustom of bestowingpublic honours upon women who are judged oursrandingon the basis of sexualvirtue. Just like the conresrsof ,rlrrrr. of Verginia or Sulpicia,these honours explicitly parallel the civic and military honours traditionally accordedto men.

quae uno contentae matrimonio fuerant corona pudicitiae honorabantur; existima- b,"rr,enim praecipuematronae sincerafide incorruptum esseanimum qui depositae virginit"tir cubill egredi nesciret, multorum matrimoniorum experientiam quasi legitimae cuiusdam intemperantiae signum essecredentes.

Those women who had been conrent with one marriage used to be honoured with a crown of pudicitia; for our ancesrorsconsidered that the mind of a matronawas particul ^rlyuncorrupted, with the bond of fideliqyunbroken, when it did not know iro* to leave the bedon which her virginiry had been laid down, believing that the experienceof multiple marriageswas a sign of more or lesslegalised intempe rance (Val. Max. zt3). This honour, in the visible form of a crown of pud.icitia gven to women who marry only once,once again associates pudicitiawith a singlema_rriage. It suggest;,more explicitlythan the proscriptionson participantsin the cult

7z For the term sanctitassee Introduction, p. 30 above. 73 In the Greek historian Diodorus Siculustaccount of Cybele'sinducti on (14135.34) the role is taken by the best of men and the best of women together: the woman in this caseis named as Valeria' There is no mention in this account of sexualvirtue in particular. See also Cic. Har. resp.z7:'lJrged by this same prophetess [the Sibyl], once uPon a time, when was worn o.-rtby the Punic \(/ar and harassedby Hannibal, our ancestorsreceived these rites from phrygia and brought them to Rome. The man r.vhowelcomed them, P. Scipio, u'as judged thought the most the best l'$timrsl of all ih. Ro*"n people, and the woman, , was most LlrdSLgalrr ora I nn.+)."i"-.-1J ornn sister is held to have imitated her ancient austeriqr ILUJLtJJLtttU of the rr-rarrons;)rour admirabll,.' The passageis addressedto Ciodius, and ends u'ith a sarcasticreference to his sister Clodia. Fo.,rror. o.r.-hi, family's associarionu,ithptdicitin and itnpttrlicitia seefurti-rer Chapter 6 belolr,,pp. z98-3o5. 6z SexttalMorality in Ancient Rome of pudicitia itself, that it is the stateof being uniuira - once-rnarried- that providesevidence of a woman'spossession of the qualiry of pudicitia. What is more, Valerius does expand upon the reasonsfor this honour and the value of being an uniuira, as he lays out in his long coda his version of antique attitudes. \7e must read this passagecautiously (the implications of this will be more fully explored in Chapter ). Firstly, in this secondvolume of his work, Valeriusis playing the ,the moral archaeologist,turning up for readersof his own day the traditions and moral outlook of old. As in the caseof cult, we must not make the mistake of assumingthat this is a straightforwarddescription of Roman practice.Indeed a plausible suggestionhas bee n madethat this passagein Valeriusrepresents a confusion on his part, wherehe hasmistaken the traditional crowning of the cult statue with an honorific ritual in which crowns are bestowedon wom en.75In addition we may note that Valeriusfeels a needto explainthe custom to his readers,as though its significancewould not be immediately transparent in the first century cE either. The passagerepresents the depiction and interpretationof a pastthat maynever have existed, but is felt to be in some way significant in Valerius' present.It is no straightforwarddescription either of the mzresof Valerius'own d^y or of the ancestralmzres; rather, the passageis a creativeinteraction berweenconceptions of both, that invokes the familiar notions of competition and public honour and the superior virtuesof the past. Just asin Liry's account of the founding of the plebeiancult of pudicitia Verginia appealsto the fact that shecame to her husband'sbed asa virgin, so ValeriusMaximus representsthe lossof virginity asa k.y concernof the ancients in determining pudicitia. The sign of a woman's puclicitia rs her commitment to the bed itself in which her virginity waslost and her sexual life first developed,even rvhen that bed can no longer provide her rvith sex (after her husband is dead). The marital bed as a physical representation of the marriageitself is a notion deeplyengrained in ancient cultures.The best-known and paradigmaticdepiction of this in literature is the bed of Penelopeand Odysseusin Homer's Odyssey,which is fashioned from a living tree and eventually providesthe k.y to their reconciliation.76 Valerius' passagesuggests that a girl's first sexualexperience, through .,vhicha changeis effectedin her that can never be undone or repeated, should bind her in a particularlystrong and admirablebond with her sexual

z; Boeis-Janssenry96: ir. On ValeriusMaximus see firrther Chapter 3 below. 76 Od. 4.t77-232. For the marriagebed as symbol of the eroticexperience within marriagesee Kaimio zooz. Sexualuirtue on disPlaYI 61 he elsewhere parrner and the bed where it took place.TiThe admiration Drusus,who i"pr.rres for the conduct of the mairied coupleAntonia and th. protagonistsof anotherparadigmatic Roman moral tale, underlines "ri Drusus this. Th. firrlp"rt of the story repeatsthe tradition that the glorious '.onfirred. (constititusum his sexlife to his wife'sembrace alone' is repaid uenerisintra coniugiscaritatem clausum tenuisse);his constancy to remain when after his ."iy death his eligible young widow chooses faithful to his memory and never to remarryr suPergressa, Antonia quoque,femina laudibus virilem familiaesuae claritatem forma et aetate amorem -"riii egregia fide pensavit; qule post eius excessum, toro.alterius adules- florens, convictum socr,r, pro coniugio habuit, in eodemque centiaevigor exstinct.r, .ri alterius viduitatis experientia consenuit. of the male members of Antonia roo, a woman who surpassed^h.t in praise the fame commitment to her family, baianced"the love of husband with her exceptional and beauty, she him. After his death, though she was in the flower of her youth a new husband' In the continued to live with her i"roth.r-in-law rather than with Drusus' adolescence, very same marriage bed.where was extinguished the vigour of grew old, the triali of widowhood (Val' Max' $'l.)' here as Antonia's refusalto countenancea secondhusband is described his exceptional- as is the fact that Drusus has sex with no one except to wife. The implication is that most young widows would be expected to remarr/; Antlrri"'r, then, is an extrememanifestation of commitment one'sspouse (indeed in contrastTiberius, to whom this work is addressed, she had alieady been conceivedby his mother's previottshusband when remarried). \X/hetherher story roo is intended to stand as an exemplum chapter, of sexual continence is unclear. That is the theme of Valerius' we certainly (it will be discussedin more detail in Chapter 3 below)' and of are clearly meanr to read Drusus' behaviouras embodying the strength mind to resistother sexualtemptations to which most men would succumb' - an Antonia,s response.,,ay be r.ad rarher as a digressigr perhapseven indication of the rewardsthat such behaviour on the part of a husband a might reap in terms of wifely fideliry. However,rhere musr be more than of suggestionthat in refrainingfrom remarriageAntonia is deprivingherself life, that shetoo tirigh, be tempr.a by the promise of (legitimate) ",r"Jroric sexualactiviry, but hasthe strengrhof mind to passit by. 'I virginir" to her lover: cannot ;r Cornpare Fannr.Hiil's sadnessat learringthe inn rvhereshe had lost her pcssessionof my Charles sa' but I left u.ith regret. as it u,as infinitelv endearedro lne b). th. first lost'' (John Cleland, and the circumstancesof losine t6ere that jervelu,hich can never be nvice \World Classicsedition of r9B;: Faru4,Ilill or A1entoir.sof a \Yronianof Pleas.tie (t7q8). in the oxford in'bv a rnadam and is destinedto become a 7o). Althoueh she has been sexualiv'broken "1.."d., and is designedto re'rind us of u.hore a*d a courtesan,this passage."por., Fannr.'sinnate 'irtue allorved' ihe faithful *.ife to Charle, .t". sh"emight have beerrhad circumstances 64 SexualMoralitry in Ancient Rome

A passagefrom ' Germaniawhere he discussesthe effectseflectsof the German custom of virgin marriagemay offer us further insight into the importance of the first sexualexperience of a girl: melius quidem adhuc eae civitates, in quibus tantum virgines nubunt et cum sPe voroque uxoris semel transigitur. sic Lrnum accipiunt maritum quo modo unum corpus unamque vitam, ne ulla cogitatio ultra, ne longior cupiditas, ne tamquam maritum sed tamquam matrimonium ament.

It is even better in those stateswhere all brides are virgins, and the wife's hopes and prayers are dispatched with once and for all. Then they accept o1. husband j_us1as think of nothingbeyond ,6.y accept o.t. body and one life, so that they may this, have no further desire, and may love not so much their husband as marriage "rd itself (T".. Germ. 19.z).78

As an inexperiencedvirgin, a new wife has no comparativeexperience of othe, -.r, that might be brought to bear on her expectationsof this marriage,no ambitions for herselfbeyond this one relationship.\fhe n no are conceivedof, the bond to her husbandand to the marriage "lt.rn"iives is the surer. All this - the preservarionof the marital bond, the restriction to the marital bed even after death - makes perfect senseas a sign of pudicitia governinga married woman. Yet it is troubling that in thesecircumstances th. ,rirt,r. ."n only everbe made manifestwhen its importanceis no longer paramounr: after the actual living marriagehas been ended by the death tf ,h. husband.7e After he has died, a wife's refusalto leaveher husband's bed or ro conremplateembarking on a relationshipwith a new man may certainly be read as a tesramentto her commitment to her only marriage (especiallywhen sheis young and beautifuland in demand),but this is only poisible in retrospect.So how can a man tell whether his wife is committed to their relationshipwhile he is still alive? None of our texts suggeststhat a woman may only be counted among the uniuirae once she is a widow, nor that she cannor be consideredpudica until after her husband'sdeath- There must therefore(and inevitably) be other ways of judgrngpudicitia, and perhapsother reasonsfor labellinga married woman uniuira. 'manifest', \fe r..d then to apply more pressureto this ideaof pud.icitiaas as enshrinedin the cult's requirementthat thosewho tend it should be of spectatdpudicitia.

to Roman 78 See Chapter 7 below (pp. ltt_.9) for a full discussionof this passageand its relevance sexualmores. 7e Inaddition, in a culture with such a high death rate among both spousesand children, the decision of a still fertiie widow nor ro remarry comes at a considerabledemographic cost. For the argument that despitethe idealisationof the uniuira state remarriagewas the norm seeBradley ry9r ry6-76- Sexualuirtue on displayI o)

APPEARANCE AND REALITY

A strand in the story of Cybele'sintroduction to Rome that emergesonly in the late first century BCE(notably in the works of Lity, Propertiusand Ovid)8ohighlights the difficulties involved in reading the signs of pudicitia. This is the versionof the tale that has Claudia Quinta acquirean unjustly sullied reputation in the eyesof the community and eventuallyprove her pudicitia throtsh her role in welcoming the goddessinto Rome (Pliny's 'trial of religion' is an allusion to this feature of the tradition).8' Into the story are introduced the notions of the importance of fama and the idea of deceptiveappearances that complicate matters considerably,and raise some of the issuesat the heart of Roman pudicitia.t' Li,.y's account does not dwell on this aspectof the narrative,but he doesmention it briefly: matronae primores civitatis, inter quas unius Claudiae Quintae insigne est nomen, accepere; cui dubia, ut traditur, antea fama clariorem ad posteros tam religioso ministerio pudicitiam fecit.

The foremost matronAe of the community received the goddess; among them Claudia Quinta is the only one whose name is famous. It is said that her reputation had been until then dubious, but through such a pleasing service to the gods it renderedher pudicitia more illusmious among generationsto come (Liuy z9.r4tz) . Livy's manner of referencealerts us to the complexities of an evolving tradition.8lThis is howeverportrayed as a k.y moment in Rome'shistory,sa and one that is once agarnassociated with a woman's publicly acknowledged excellencein pudicitia, which wins her a lasting and illustrious reputation. In thisversion, Claudia Quinta beginsthe storywith a dubiafo*o- dubious replrtation- and it is the role she plays in the cult's receptionthat proves

8o Livy 29.r4. Prop. 4.rr.jr-l, Ov. Fast.+.1o5-+8. 8r Earlier referencesto the tale can also be found in Cic. Har. resp.z7; Cael. y; Fin. 5.6q. Later imperial and Christian sourcesare Sen. fr. Bo (de matrimonio); Plin. IVat. 7.tzo; Stat. Silu. t.z.z45-6; Sil. r7.I-4t; Suet. Tib. z.l; De uir. ill. ++.+6;August. De ciu.D. t.j.See Fantham I99B and \Tiseman 1979194-9 on possiblefamily politics in shaping the tale. 8z Like so many Roman foundation tales, this story about the vindication of her sexual puriry v,.as visibly inscribed on the face of the Roman ciry in the form of a statue of Claudia Quinta set up in the entrance to the temple of , to which Valerius Maximus makes reference(Val. Max. r.8.rr). The statue is said to have survived rwo outbreaks of fire that destroyed the building that housed it. The fires are dated by Valerius to rrr scE and 3 cE, the latter sufficiently closeto his own time (perhapsfwenqr-edd yearsprior to publication of his work) ro suggestthat the temple and statue were still then a significant part of the material of the city',and the narrative part of the city's memory. \Tiseman zooo suggeststhat the Storyrformed the plot of a play u1a- For instance,the mention of Claudia Quinta's role in the reception of the sratue here sounds sorneu'hat grudging, as if the names of the other tnAtronAeinvolved would have been worthy of remembranceroo. S,r- r ' Levene tgg3:7o. J-I

66 SexunlMornlity in Ancient Rome to the communiry sheis after all utterlv pure. This generaldoubt and then public proof of pudicitia, a recurrentnarrative theme of the Roman sources fro* the late first century BCE,underlines the precariousness of pudicitia,, and also, as we shall see)serves to enact certain issuescentral to Roman ethics: anxietiesabout how pudicitit canbe recognised,how we can know anything about the secretsexual morals of another human being. The descriptionsof the cults both of VenusVerticordia and of Cybelein Ovid's Fastidevelop these themes of reputation,misreading and" visualiry in a complex portrayal of the relationshipsbetwee n pudicitia and fo*o (t.p- utarion or rumour).81As Fanthamcomments, these women's cults provide good elegiacmaterial for the poet.86The cults aretreated in Book 4 of the ,which is devoted to the month of April and dominated by the figure of the goddessVenus to whom the month is sacred.The first referenceis to the establishmentof the cult of VenusVerticordia: supplicibusverbis illam placate:sub illa et forma et moreset bona fama manet. pudicitia proavorum temporelapsa est: Cumaeam,veteres, consuluistis anum. templa iubet fieri Veneri: quibus ordine factis inde Venusverso nomina cordetenet. semperad Aeneadasplacido, pulcherrima, vultu respice,totque tuas,diva, tuerenurus. Placateher with suppliantwords: beneath her power Beauqyand morals and good reputation are all preserved. At Rome in the times of our ancestors, pudicitia slipped: You ancientsconsulted the agedSibyl of Curnae. Sheordered that thereshould be templesfor Venus:when thesehad beenmade appropriately Then Venus,having turned her heart,took on her epithet.oT Most beautiful goddess,always look upon the descendantsof with a gentleexpression, And guard over your many daughters-in-law(O". Fast.4155-62). As we have seen, tlre consecration of the temples to the goddessVenus and the new incarnation of her as Verticordia was a national response to a moral crisis when pudicitia farled to hold sway over the Roman people.

di For more onfama, seeChapter 4 below, pp. rg8-q. On Fasti Book 4 seeFantham 1998,and on this 'The passagePorte g84; on interpretative issuessee Herbert-Brown zooz, Feeney t998 rz3-7 on realiry of Ovid's Fasti'; also Scheid r99za, Beard ry87 and Phillips 1992. Fantham zooz: z+. On Ovidt Fasti as a sourcefor Roman religion seealso Beard, North and Price 1998vol. I: 6-7. 8z In other words, in Ovid's account, it is Venus' changeof heart that the epithet Verticordia signals, rather than that of Roman women; cf. n. 66 above. Sexualuirtue on disPlaYI 67

Like ValeriusMaximus,s8 Ovid presenrsher role aswatching and guarding, specificallyover newly married women.8eThe three aspectsof women's li,r., that she prorecrs are cataloguedin line ry6 as their appearanceor beauty(forma), their conduct or moraliry (more) and their good reputatio_n these three elementsis highly (bonafo*oy.r. The relationship berween probl.matic, as the following accountof Claudia Quinta's story indicates, we shallsee both in the iorr.lr'tsionto this chapterand throughout the ".rd resr of this book that there are rensionsberween the elementsof beauty, sexual artraction, moraliry and standing in the eyesof the communiry that convergehere in the fig,rr. and remit of this goddess.Meanwhile the aetiologyof"this cult, with its mention of the lapsetn pwdicitia,is a warning of the easewith which the qualiry can slip away. r5o lines later beginsth. ir."rment of the cult of Cybele,in which Ovid givesa long of how the cult cameto be imported into Rome, with "..o,r*I extensivereference ro the role of Claudia Quinta (Ovid Fast.4.3ot-48). This Claudia is a woman of beaury and high birth and her morals are impeccable- but in terms of the third categoryof VenusVerticordia's role, has been damagedby evil fo*o, she is not so fortunate: her reputation rumour:

claudia Quinta genusclauso referebat ab alto necfacies imPar nobilitate fuit, castaquidem, sednon et creditaest: rumor iniquus laeserat,et falsi criminis actarea est' cultuset ornatisvarie prodissecapillis obfuit ad rigidosPromPtaque lingua senes' consciamens recti famaemendacia risit, sednos in vitium credulaturba sumus'

Claudia Quinta camefrom the greatClausus family, And shewas asbeautiful asshe was noble, And pure (casta)too, but this lastwas not believed:an evil rumour Had i"*"g"d her, and shehad to defend herselfagainst false accusation. Her -r.rnJ, of dress,the way shervent about with her hair all done up in variousways, A"i her readytongue prejudicedstern old men againsther. Her mind, conscio,rrof right, laughedat the liesof her reputation; But we ^fe a crowd who b.li.,r. easilyin vice (Fast' 4;o5-rz) '

88 \rd. Ma.x.6.r.praef.; see pp. 39-+r above. tu married Th. primai-v-.".,ing oi)rui"u,is'daughter-in-law'though it can be usedto denote ner'r'l1' Venus' women. As u,i'es of the descendan,,oFA..reas all Roman brides are the daughters-in-1au'of seeFantham eo It is not entireh' ciearfrom the context to which manifestation of Venus this line refers, r99g ad.Ioc.. and Fantham zoazu,hereshe sugeests that confusion is part of OviC's eleqiac'qame' rI

68 SexualMoraliU in Ancient Rome

Scholarshave seenpoignancy in this theme of the damagethat can be wrought by falseaccusation and rumour; thereare parallels both with Ovid's own exile and with the banishrnentfor adultery of Augustus' daughter Julia.e'The emphasisis on the harmful potential of an overvigilanrcom- muniqy that misreadsthe personalsigns of one of its members.In Claudia Quinta's casethere is a discrepancybetween what is generallybelieved and the truth about this woman, who looksas if sheis nor cdsta,because of the way shedresses and doesher hair and makesconversation, even though she is and knows rt.ezSuch a discrepancyopens up a disturbing gap berween seeming and being that throws the Roman insistenceon ourward visual display of pudiciria into a predicament.She may laugh in the face of it, but Claudiis impassionedplea to Cybele suggestssomething other than amusement.She is fortunate; history providesher with the opportunity to slice through the misapprehensionof her fcllow citizenswith divine and unanswerableproof of her virtue. \7hen the cornbined efforts of the lead- ing citizensprove insufficient to shift the ship carrying the goddess'image from the sandsof the Tiber where it is grounded, she stepsforward and supplicatesCybele, asking that the goddessconfirm her averredvirtue by allowing her statueto follow only Claudia: 'supplicis, alma, tuae, genetrix fecunda deorum, accipe sub certa condicione preces. castanegor: si tu damnas, meruissefatebor; morte luam poenas iudice victa dea; sed si crimen abest,ru nostrae pignora vitae re dabis, et castascasta sequere manus.' dixit et exiguo funem conamine traxir . . .

Accept the prayers of your suppliant, gentle, fccund begetter of the gods, on certain condition. It is claimed that I am not chaste: if you condemn me, I shall admit that this was deserved; Defeated, with the goddess as judge, I shall expiate the pen^\ry with my death. But if there is no crime, you shall grant the pledge of my life In your action, and chasteyou will follow chastehands.' She spoke and drew the boat with the slightest effort . . . (Fast. 4.jr9-z). The castitdsthat was not visible in the person of Claudia herselfis made manifcst in the miracle of the goddessallowing Claudia to lead her image e' SeeFantham ry98: rjj_.6. e' At line 316 the onlookers believe that she has lost her mind (mens),whereas we have been told at line 3rr that she has a mensconscious of its own righteousness. Sexualuirtue on disPlaYI 69 and into Rome. After the celebrationsthat follow, we return to Claudia, has been although throughout the passageso far the qualiry in question castitai,in the .Lr.l'.rding iirr., pudicitin is mentione d specifically: claudiapraecedit laeto celeberrima vultu, creditavix tandem testepudica dea; claud.iawent forth with a happy face,highly celebrated Finally believedto bepudicat" th. testimonyof a goddess (Fast.4.J4j-0. come to the Claud.ia'smisleading appearance invites other Romans to to set them wrong conclusions h.r, and it takes a dir-ine miracle "bl"i have had ,tr"igf,t. claudia is finally believed.,but what hope would. she admonish- without the intervention or cyuele?The story might be readas impec- ing women to maintain their outward appearanceso as to convey - offcrs a ."61. pud.iciria _no laughing, no fancy hairrryl..r although it also ,rror. .omforting illurtr""tion of virtue eventuallyrewarded and recognised' to jump However, it ad,monishesreaders, as spectatorsof others,not "lro roo easilyto conclusionsabout their moraliry,and therebyreflects problems raisedby Roman culture'sdemand that pudicitia must be displayed'

SPE CTATA PTJDICITIA whole A Roman woman should,wear her pud.icitir on her sleevefor the a tale communiqFto see.Indeed a satiric"lro,r.l from the first centuryrelates in which plople literally come from milesaround to witnessfor themselves have the exc.p,ion"l pudicitia of a widow.et But what would such people does describeto us come to see? \fh", doespudicitia look like? Liuy 1o, to the visual markersor the behaviour or actions that might have served cult; distinguisha woman asworthy ro participatein the celebrationof the be p.rh"[s even to explicatewhat might .o,rn, as signs of pudicitia would tourists io prof"ne it. Neither doesPetronius gi re us any hint_of what the Ep[. catchesmore frequently *ight have seenin the widow of 9t. glii.pses of how the absenceof pudicitia might be recognised. and Later representations of pudlclt;aon imp.lid coinageof the second wearing a smla and with third ..rrt,,.ries cE rypically sho* a femal. fig.tr. hand raisedan{ frozenin the act of drawing a veil acrossthe face.e4 A first

will be discussedmore 93 I.e. the taie of the wid.ou,of Ephesustold in Petr. Sat. no-ry, a text which genres' fuily in Chapter^gesture 4 in the context of subversive seeMver:*'it' t?,9_t: 91 the 'eil in ancient Roman relationship u'ith pudicitia on "r, ".rJi.s 2ooi: t7z; cf' Paus' assoclatrnqvelllng esp. rri n. 42, Norrh ry66:3o8, Llervelil'n-Jones 3'20'Io-II u,rth aidos. /\) SexualMornlity in Ancient Rome century cs altar from Rome depicts Claudia Quinta pulling in the boat wearing the matron's stola and with her hair covered,though her face is not veiled.etHowever, depictions of Claudia Quinta inevitably pose the familiar problem: how do you depict visually a woman who is a paragon of puclicitia,when part of the point of her story is that shedidn't look asif shewas? In Ovid's version of her tale, the signs by which the community of Rome judged Claudia Quinta to be unchasteare her dress,her stylish hair arrangementand her easymanner of talking (Fast.4.jo9-3ro). One might compareCicero's description of his contemporaryClodia in his courrroom speechin defenceof Caelius.According to 'sgraphic argumenrarion, the married Clodia showsherself to be a courtesanand not thereforeliable to the protection of pudicitia, through many physical signals in which appearanceand gestureshade into actualinappropriate behaviour: si quae non nupta mulier denique ita sesegerat non incessu solum, sed ornatu atque comitatu, non flagrantia oculorum, non libertate sermonrrm) sed etiam complexu, osculatione, actis, navigatione, conviviis, ut non solum meretrix, sed etiam proterva meretrix procaxque videatur . . .v6

If finally some woman with no husband conducted herself in such a way that, not only through the way she walked, but in her dressand in the company she kept, not only in the flash of her eyes,or in the freedom of her conversation,but everin her kissing and her exploits and her boat rides and dinner parties, she seemed to be not only a courtesan but a wanton and depraved courtesan . . . (Cic . Cael. 49).

An early imperial declamation offers us a description of the way that a model wife should manifest her pudicitia so as to ward off the possible advancesof a predator: matrona, quaeesse adversus sollicitatorum lasciviasvole t, prodeat in tantum ornata, quantum ne immunda sit; habeat comites eius aeratis,qua impudici. si nihil aliud, in verecundiam annorum movendi sint. ferat iacentis in terram oculos. adversus officiosum salutatorem inhumana potius quam inverecunda sit, etiam in neces- saria resalutandi vice multo rubore confusa. sic se in verecundiam pigneret, ur neget longe ante impudicitiam suam ore quam verbo. in has servandaeintegritatis custodiasnulla libido inrumpet.

e5 SeeBeard, North and Price 1998,vol. II: 46. e5 Seefurther Chapter 6 below on Cicerot speeches.Cf. supporting evidenceof a very different kind of source,the inscription on the tombstone of a wife (from Rome and from the period of the ) 'with where both her conversation and her posture are praised: CE 5z charming conversarion and with comely gait' (sermonelepido, tum autem incessucommodo); this descriptio^ .o-., in the conrext of her love for her husband and sons,see Lattim ore196z: z7t. Sexualuirtue on disPlaYI 7r

comeout of the house Amatronawhowanrsro opposethe lustof a seducer,let her friendsof suchan dressedup only just..rongh to avoidbeing r...r"f$.Let her have years'Let her ,h", .h. ,h"*eless, if nlthing else,rhoJd be madeto resPecttheir "g. prefer to seem k"..p her eyesdown; when peop"leinsist on greetingher she should p,r.n eeting of relatives rude rather than immod.ri. when rh. is returning the gr to uerecundia,so she should be blushing greatl/; rhus she should pledge herself lust should break tlrat her faceshould d;i irnpud.icitiasooner than he. word. No through thesedefence, g,r"riing her integriry (Sen.Contr' z'7'J)'e7 of dangerous This picture is immed,iately conrrastedwith that of the kind (in argument and behaviour that is likely ro encourage a porential seducer vocabulary an echo of ciceroos artack on clodia above):

prodite mihi fronte in omne lenocinium composita,paulo obscuriusgy"l.posita ultro blandientes, vestenudae, exquisito in omnesfacetias sermone, tanturR non cum tot argumentis ut quisquisvideii, ,ron metuat accedere;deinde miramini, si, rePertusest, impudiiiri"rn praesumpserit,cultu,. incessu, sermone, facie, aliquis q,ri irr.,rrrenti id,tlt.t"e se non subduceretl scarcelymore Come forward with an expressioncomposed for every allurement, conversation coveredup than if you *.r.rr', wearing^anyclothes at all, with your so that anyone carefullytr"ir.d in everywitricis*, orriy j"l, this side of flirtation' be amazedthat, who sawyou would be unafraid to you: ttren, arewe to "ppio".h - dresses,the way when shehas indicate d, impudicitiai" ro many signs the way she - who would shewalks, the wayshet"lks, her appearance someoneis to be found not hide away*(.., the adulr.r.ri rppro"ched him? (Sen.contr. L.7-4).eg p' rr In an anecdote related by Valerius Maximus (see Introduction, that she has above), a husband repudiates his wife becausehe finds out To display been our of the ho,rr. with her head uncovered and unveiled. shot, her beauqF before the eyes of other men, he tells her, as a parting man is to invite suspicion and accusations. In the same chapter another with an divorces his wife because she has been seen in public speaking the public unsuitable woman, and another becauseshe has gone to watch of the same gameswithout his permission.eeThese are extreme statements women dress and behave in public is irinciple: that the way that married A woman gro,mds for making valid decisions about their mord standing. musr nor look as iishe has beautified herself, or is in any way attempting any of;[ers to artracr atrention to herself.'oo She must go so far as to rebuff of social interacrion, and musr certainly not be forward in conversation'

e7 For more on declamationand this text in particular,see ChaPter i belou'' (Sal.Cy' z;) ' t* C"-pare too 'sdepiction of 'sassociate Sempronia seeCl-rapter ee Val. N{oi. G.i.ro_.tz.Fori-urther discussion of thesetales in ValeriusMaximus l' Mveror'r'itzr99i, Sebesta1998' ,oo On the..,isualcodes of femaleadornment seefurtherV/t'ke 1991, 72 SexttalMorality in Ancient Rome An imporrant way that pudicitia can make itself manifest on her face is through blushirg - the Senecapassage almost suggeststhat this is within the woman's control.rorThe way that a woman presentsherself to be seen is naturally important. However,the way that shepresents herself as seeing is equallyso; a woman who hopesto averta bad reputation must keep her eyesdown and refrain from meeting the gazeof others - her look should not be seen.'o' , appearingas a shining paragon of pudicitia in 'her Silius ltalicus' underworld, is describedas having eyesfixed upon the 'blazingeyes' ground'.ro3Clodia on the other hand has ffiagrantiaoculorum), accordingto Cicero'sdescription, that dareto stareright back at men, and theseare seenas an invitation for sexualapproach. The visibility of pudicitia relies,then, primarily on externalappearance and public social behaviour, and the virtue will turn out to be as much about these as about the sexualbehaviour itself. The moral force itself that guidessexual behaviour is elusiveand secret.As a meansof regulating the behaviour of those into whose soulsthey cannot see,Roman society has drawn a closeconceptual link berweenthe virtue and appearanceof an individual. lJsing a complex visual code to which we no longer have complete access,Romans had ways of readingthe virtues of an individual on the body.ro+ The efficient functioning of this systemand the reliability of the code arevital for the regulationof sexualiry;yet despitethis the ancientsources themselvesraise concerns about the fallibiliqF of this means of control. Many sourceswrite of the worrying inconsistencybenveen the appearance of virtue and the realiry of virtue, and this book arguesthat this is one of the central anxietiesof Roman sexualethics. \7e have alreadyseen how in Ovid's Fasti Claudia Quinta, latterly a paragonof pudicitia, was initially held in suspicionby the Roman community on account of her appearance and manners.The familiar codeof dressand gait and conversationare read by spectatorsof the woman so that they mayknow her moral standing,yet the signsare misreador evendeceptive and their significanceis misunder- stood. This story tells of a gap betweenwhat the viewer is led to believeby the public demeanourof a woman and her true virtuous nature.The truth

rol On blushing seeBarto n L999,zooz and my Introduction, p. 19. tot These constraints are not only for married women, aswe shall see,especially in Chapters y and 6 below. In Val. Max. 6.t.7 the virtue of the (young, male) intended victim and thus the magnitude of the would-be stuprator'scrime is brought home to the spectatorsby the former's demeanour in the courtroom: he saysnothing and staresat the fi.oor,thereby demonstrating to all hrs uerentndia. 'or Sil. ry. Bzz;see Chapter z below,p.78. 'o4 SeeCorbeill zoo4 and Chapters t and 6 below, which discussthe way that masculine sexualvirtue is written on the bodv. Sexualuirtue on disPlajtI 73 of Claudia'spudicitid canonly be revealedby its divine acknorvledgment;it is not oth.r*ise availableto mortals., too, writes in his rhetorical handbookabout rhe problematicsof readingthe apparentsigns of adultery; addressirgprecisely ih. passagefrom thepro Caelioabove, it arguesthat a woman is nor proved io b. merely becauseshe dines with ".t "d,tlteress men and all the rest.'otFor the Romans,pudicitia remainsan elusivequal- (even ity, which can sometimesbe pinned down only by extraordinary superhuman)means. The d,ifficulty of seeingand knowing sexualvirtue and integriqFis also demonstratedby the ,roly of the V.rLl Virgin Tuccia and her sieve.'o6 Although everyonebelieves her to be lacking cdstitas,Tuccia callson Vesta, th. goJdessshe serves,to enableher, if she is truly chaste,to bring water from the Tiber ro the temple in a sieve,and so,when the miracle hasbeen achieved,her reputarionis cleared,and the chargeis dismissedfrom court. The ritual and ry-bolic associationsof the sieveare relevanthere,'o7 yet Valeriustells this story nor as of a chapter on miracles,but as one of a seriesof courrroom trials th"t produced out-of-the-ordinary acquittals, ernphasisingthe legal aspectsof the case,which suggeststhat this story is in part a comment on the fallibility of mortal legislationand courtroom pro..dure.ro8\7hen a woman is called upon to disprove accusationsof ,."rr"l impuriqF not by producing witnessesto attestto her character'not by eloq1r..rtlypersuading the court of herp udicitia,but by carryingwater in a'sieve^-then i. ,.. plainly the elusivenessof sexualvirtue for the ancient Romans,and we understandhow far one must go beyond inquiring about sexualpractice itself to be sure of having witnessedit. In these sources, ho*.,r.r, rhewomen are alwaysproved to be in realiq,pudicde; for the even more worrying phenomenon of women seemingpudicae, but in fact not being so,we *"i, wait until the literatureof the empire . . . (see Chapter 4 below).

THEDANGERSoFDISPLAYINGPUDICITIA

I have argued.that pudicitia demandsto be seenand displayed in public. Yet Sulpili.rr G"lus' wife was divorced for no other reasonthan that she display.d h.rrelf in public in a way that was displeasingto her husband.'oq

Ioi ro6y1. Per' zo' Quint. Inst. 5.9.t4. Max. B.i.absol.i,Liu,t, I07 SeeStapl es 1997; Carson 1989; fuchlin 1997c:it7. ro8 svstem Co-p"r. th..,r. of iegalterminology in Ovid's Fasti.For more on the fallibilin'of the legal ,.. b.lo*' Chapter L, p. 97, Chapter 4, p. zo4, and Chaprer 7, PP. Iit-2. 109 rather than Gallus. As above,Val. Max. e3.to.I follou,Briicoe 1998in calling him Gaius 74 SexualMoralitlt in Ancient Rome Vomen musr call artentionto thet pudicitiabut without attractingthe sort of attentionfrom other men that might incur censure.These constraints are eminently comprehensible,yet there is a thin line betweenthese dif ferent kinds of display;many ancientsources, as this book will show,draw attenrion to this fact, whether to dwell on its ironies or to expressanxieties about the possibiliryof its breach In the secondpoem of his collection, Propertiustells hrspuel/a not to spoil her looks with artifice, and that a girl is most attractivewhen she is unmade-upand unadorned:

Q,rid iuvat ornato procedere,vita, capillo et tenuisCoa vestemovere sinus, aut quid Orontea crinis perfunderemurra, tequeperegrinis vendere muneribus, naturaequedecus mercato perderecultu, necsinere in propriis membra nitere bonis? credemihi, non ulla estmedicina figurae : nudus amor formaenon amat artificem. What is the point, darling, of going aroundwith your hair all done up, And swingingyour soft curvesin a Coan dress, Or pouring Oronteanmyrrh on your locks, And sellingyourself with foreign gifts, And destroyingthe ornamentsof nature with elegancethat you have purchased, And not allowingyour body to shineforth with its own attributes? Believeme, thereis no potion for good looks: Naked love doesnot love the counterfeiterof beaury(Prop. r.z.r-8).

This plea on behalf of natural beauty is a conventional poetic trope."o Here Propertius follows it with a description of the profusion of beauty in nature, and then alludes to the naive attractions of female figures from Greek myth, whose fate was to be carried off by gods. He comments of these girls,

non illis studium vulgo conquirereamantis; illis amplasatis forma pudicitia. They werenot eagerto conquerlovers at random; for them puclicitiawas arnplebeaury enough (Prop. r.z.z1-4).

In other words, these girls who are abducted by lustful divinities are held up as the moral paradigms for Propertius' addressee.On one level the poem looks like an admonition to the poet's girlfriend or even wifc, with

"o Seee.g. Tib. r.8.9-16 or Plaut. Most. zB8-92;see Baker r99o ad loc. Sexualuirtue on d,isplayI 7t a traditional moral messageabout the regulation of the appearanceand its associationwith sexualmoraliqy within a (marital) relationship.There is no doubt that the poern makesreference to such ideologicalaspects. Yet it forms part of a collection and a genrewhere we are invited to find ironies and pl"y."' There is considerableirony in this little phrase-'pudicitia (was or is) beauqyenough', which in the Latin (wherethere is no verb to fix the tense)resounds like a maxim - somewhatsimilar to the phrasewe found 'pudicitia in Seneca: is the greatestornament'.ttt Propertius' phrase can be read as a universalisingstatement: the appearanceof the virtue itself is enoughto makea girl beautiful,and the qualiry ofpudicitiacan be a turn-on. And so,paradoxically, whe n pudicitia tsseen as a visual qualiqythat decorates or beautifiesits possessor,it alsobecomes a dangerousattribute that renders sexualintegrity insecure."sIn the context of the lines in Propertius'poem immediatelyprecedirg, pudicitiabecomes a tool for attractingmen ro rape Iou, rather than the traditional prorection againstthis."a Meanwhile,to add to the confusion,in line 5 of the poem Propertiususes the Latin term d.ecus(a term which has a wide rangeof meaningsin Latin, from honour to visual decoration)rtrfor the natural physicalbeauty of the unspoilt girl. If we juxtaposethis mischievousverse with the philosopher Seneca'sdemure praiseof his mother (cited at the head of this chapter), we seethe Roman dilemma nicely summarised.Seneca describ es pudicitia 'the as the maximum d.ecus,which we might translate as greatest orna- ment/decoration/glory'.The context is a moralising barragein which he compareshis mother to other women who arecharacterised by the grearest evil of the day: impudicitia.

non te maximumsaeculi malum, impudicitia, in numerumplurium adduxit.non gemmae te, non margaritae flexerunt; non tibi divitiae velut maximum generis humani bonum refulserunt; non te, bene in antiqua et severainstitutam domo, periculosa etiam probis peiorum detorsit imitatio. nlrmquam te fecunditatis ruae, quasi exprobraret aetatem, puduit, numquam more aliarum, quibus omnis com- mendatio ex forma petitur, tllmescentem uterum abscondisti quasi indecens onus, nec intra viscera tua conceptas liberorum elisisti; non faciem coloribus ac lenociniis poliuisti; numquam tibi vestis placuit quae nihil amplius nudaret cum

rII For more on this seeChapter 4 below. Elegv points up the ambiguities of all aspectsof beaury and 'confidence aPpearance.Cf. Prop. 1.24.r: in l/our beaury \/oman) is misplaced' (faka est ista tuae, nzuli er", dorci a rm ae). ttt f fo Seep. j7 above. tti For the dangerousand corrupting consequencesof being beautiful seee.q. Val. Max. 4.i.exr.r on the Etruscanbo,v Spurinna, u,ho disfigr-rreshimself to avoid the suspicionsattached to his allure,or Jur'.ro.z93-8. t'4 For more on traditional ideasabout pudiciti.a as prorecrion for unmarried girls seeChapters l and 3 belor,,,. rrt Seeabove rL. r. There is a similarambieuin. in the Greekrerm ko-;rnos. l--

76 SexualMoraliry in AncientRome ponererur:unicum tibi ornamentum,pulcherrima et nulli obnoxia aetatiforma, maximum decusvisa est pudicitia.

The greatesrevil of our day, impudicitia, has not welcomed you into the masses. No jewels,no pearlshave swayed your purpose;for you richeshave not shoneout as if they were the greatestgood of humankind. Brought up as you were in an old-fashionedand strict household,you havenot beenrwisted by the dangerous imitation of peopleworse than yourself,which is dangerouseven to the morally upright. You werenever ashamed of your fecundirybecause it betraysyour age,,nor, unlike others who value aboveall things being appreciatedfor their appearance, did you hide your burgeoningwomb as if it were an unsightly burden, or cut our from your insidesthe child-to-beifou did not pollute your appearancewith meretriciousmake-upi you neverliked clothing which is little betterthan nudiry. In you is to be seenthe only form of ornamentation,the most lovely kind of beauqywhich is damaging to no uge,the greatestadornment ldecus)- pudicitia (Dial. o.t6.z-4).

Just like Propertius, Seneca is making a contrast beween the woman in whom one seespudicitia and the woman who adorns herself with jewels and make-up and expensive clothes in the hope of drawing the admiring glances of men. The passageconfirms the moral implications of dressing up that we saw outlined above. In contrast, decuscan also mean honour or glory, or decoration in the senseof a public recognition of glory, and so once again we seehere pudiciiiaas the parallel of masculine virtue and glory won on the battlefield. The woinan who decoratesherselfwith pudicitid rs a woman of the utmost virtue, markedly different from the rest of the female sex. And yet . . . in Seneca's phrase pudicitia ts figured in itself as a form of decoration in the senseof beaury and ornament, and when it is visible in her person it will lend the virtuous woman a particularly compelling form of beaury. This dangerousparadox - of pudicitia as a form of beauty that attracts its own destruction - is written into the most famous of all Roman nar- rativesabout pudicitia: the story of the wicked Tarquinius who forces the virtuous Lucretia to have sexwith him, and of her subsequentsuicide. In the following chapter I shall analysethis paradigmatic narrative and show how amongstother things Livy's accountis one of thosesources that dwell on rwo of the k.y issuessparked by the concept of pudicitia: the anxiery about how to recogniseor displaypudicitia, and the paradoxicaldangers of display.

I started this chapter by making bold claims about the cult of pudicitia in Roman culture. In the processof analysingthe sourcesclosely I have Sexualuirtue on displayI 77 shown that what the sourcescan provide us with is something far less certain.\7e cannot know how Romans celebratedthe cult of pudicitia or what role it played in the fabric of Roman sociery.\7e can accessonly a seriesof reflectionsupon the cult from writers who make explicit claims that they areliving in timeswhen the cult is losing or haslost its grip upon sociery.The textswe haveencountered in the courseof this chapterdo not so much tell us about the cult of pudicitia as useLt to talk about moral, socialand political issues.In doing so they revealwhat the idea of the cult meansto them, or meansin the specificcontext in which they werewriting. Sometimesthis significanceis revealedself-consciously and deliberately,at othersit may be found in underlying structuresor assumptionsof the text owing to the personal,cultural or historicalbackground in which the author writes, of which he is not himself necessarilyaware."6 The variouspreoccupations of the textsthat I havehere usedas sources will emergein the courseof the following chapters,where a rangeofworks are examined in turn with referenceto the literary and historical con- texts that shapedthem. However,we can alreadysee in thesetexts certain themesthat emergeregardi ng pudicitia. Display is undoubtedly important to pudicitia, despitethe complexiry of the relationship berweenthe rwo. The sourcesportray the cult ashaving significance in mediatingberween the individual and the moralsof the communiry.They aisomake assumptions about the relationshipberween instances of wrongful sexualbehaviour of individualsand the welfareof the whole statethat serveto heightenthe sense that it is vital to regulateone's behaviour. The themesof women's ethics, national stabiliqy,visibiliry, public display,reputation, and competition all appearagain and againin variousrelations to one anotherthroughout these sources.

tt5 Compare Umberto Eco'sreflection on the contemporary interpretersof his own work in Eco 1992.