Permanences IIIb. Sex and the City (of Rome)
As we have said in the first post regarding Sex and the city of Rome (Permanences IIIa) the ancient Greeks & Romans had a totally different attitude towards sex and enjoyed a sensuality which was open to possibilities whose variety can confuse contemporary masses (in spite of what we Westerners think about our sexual liberation) to the extent that the facts we are about to narrate could offend people’s feelings. This is why we do ask for pardon but we also make known to minors and prudish people to pls do themselves the favour not to read any further.
Open sensuality? Yes, since for example the sacred poet Virgil probably sighed for Alexis, a beautiful boy; Horace celebrated incest, adultery and sex with female slaves; Ovid, Petronius and Catullus went much much further (we might see later); not to mention Roman phallic festivals like Liberalia, held on the 17th of March, “where a monstrous phallus was carried in procession in a car… and the most respectable of the matrons ceremoniously crowned the head of the phallus with a garland”, or festivals like Bacchanalia where similarly a huge phallus was carried and “as in the Liberalia, the festivities being carried on into the night, as the celebrators became heated with wine, they degenerated into the extreme of licentiousness, in which people indulged without a blush in the most infamous vices.” This is of course Victorian Thomas Wright’s opinion (1810-1877, English antiquarian and writer), not ManofRoma’s (see Wright’s original text).
Before trying to understand what is left today of these distant views (the post title actually referring to permanences of ancient behaviours in today’s world, we’ll see how), we are going to provide a few detailed illustrations of this freer attitude (or in any case diverse) .
Let us then start by mentioning a Roman goddess, Dea Bona (’Good Goddess’) and a scandal occurred at the time of great Julius Caesar.
Roman Dea Bona
In Roman religion Dea Bona (Latin for ‘Good Goddess’) was a “deity of fruitfulness, both in the earth and in women … The dedication day of her temple on the Aventine was celebrated May 1. Her temple was cared for and attended by women only, and the same was the case at a second celebration, at the beginning of December, in the house of the Pontifex Maximus [the chief Roman Priest, today's Pope being still Pontifex Maximus of Rome], where the Pontifex’s wife and the Vestal Virgins ran the ceremony.” (Bona Dea. 2007. In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved December 9, 2007, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online).
I do not know if online Britannica is exact here, since the December celebration was conducted “by the wife of the senior magistrate present in Rome in his home” (any senior magistrate then: Pontifex, consul etc.). In fact, according to Plutarch (2nd cent. A.D., Life of Cicero 19.3, 20.1-2) when Cicero was consul, the day he made the famous speech which is known as his third Catiline Oration, in the night he was “escorted to the house of a friend and neighbour; his own was occupied by women who were celebrating the secret rites of the goddess whom the Romans call Bona.”
The December festival was more interesting than the May one since “it was not held in the goddess’ temple … it was an invitation-only affair and pretty exclusive”. The wife of the magistrate managed the whole thing during the night, all was secret, exclusive and occurred in a context of high-class luxury (quote from here).
What was happening during these secret-sacred rites from which men were strictly excluded? Surely it was something like a mystery cult, thence little we know about it (maybe you can find something in Macrobius’ Saturnalia). According to Latin poet Juvenal, who wrote his satires many generations later, the Bona rites included drunken orgies among women (Juvenalis Sat. vi, l. 314):
“Well known to all are the mysteries
of the Good Goddess,
when the flute stirs the loins
and the Maenads of Priapus sweep along,
frenzied alike by the horn-blowing and the wine,
whirling their locks and howling.
What foul longings burn within their breasts!
What cries they utter as the passion palpitates within!
How drenched their limbs in torrents of old wine!
Saufeia challenges the slave-girls to a contest….”
See a complete version in English prose of Juvenal Satire 6, plus the same passage in Latin verses.
Sacrilege in Julius Caesar’s house
- Julius Caesar.
- His mother Aurelia.
- Caesar’s very beautiful wife Pompeia.
- Publius Clodius Pulcher, a crazy scoundrel and troublemaking politician.
- Pompeia’s slave Abra, trying to help her mistress to meet Clodius.
- Cicero, the great lawyer and one of Rome’s greatest orators.
The scandal happened during the Dea Bona December ceremonies in 62 BC, when Julius Caesar was Pontifex Maximus. This is why the celebration took place in his house. Caesar of course was absent, being a man. The way it all happened seems to confirm Juvenal’s view. Let us listen to Plutarch, our great source of the Ancient World (from the Diotima web site).
Says Plutarch (Life of Caesar 9-10): “(9.1) Publius Clodius was a man of noble birth and notable for his wealth and reputation, but not even the most notorious scoundrels came close to him in insolence and audacity. Clodius was in love with Caesar’s wife Pompeia, and she was not unwilling. But a close watch was kept on the women’s apartment, and Caesar’s mother Aurelia followed the young wife around and made it difficult and dangerous for the lovers to meet.”"(9.3) The Romans have a goddess whom they call Good… It is unlawful for a man to approach or to be in the house when the rites are celebrated. The women, alone by themselves, are said to perform rites that conform to Orphic ritual during the sacred ceremony. (10.1) At the time [that the incident occurred] Pompeia was celebrating this ritual; Clodius did not yet have a beard and for this reason thought that he would escape detection if he were dressed up as [woman] lyre-player, and went into the house looking like a young woman. He found the doors open and was led in without difficulty by a slave-woman who was in on the plot; this woman went to Pompeia and told her, and some time passed, but Clodius could not bear to wait, and as he was wandering around the large house and trying to avoid the lights, one of Aurelia’s [woman] attendants got hold of him, and asked him to play with her, as one woman might with another, and when he refused, she dragged him before the others and asked who he was and where he came from.”
“(10.3) Clodius said that he was waiting for Pompeia’s slave Abra (which happened to be the woman’s name), and gave himself away by his voice. The [woman] attendant dashed away from him towards the lights and the crowd, shouting that she had caught a man. The women were terrified, and Aurelia called a halt to the rites of the goddess and hid the sacred objects; she ordered the doors to be shut and went around the house with torches, looking for Clodius. He was found in the room that belonged to the girl where he had gone in an attempt to escape. When he was discovered, he was taken through the doors by the women and thrown out of the house. That night the women went right off and told their husbands about the affair, and during the day the story spread through the city that Clodius had been involved in sacrilege and had committed injustice against not only those he had insulted, but the city and the gods.“
“(10.5) Clodius was indicted for sacrilege by one of the tribunes, and the most influential senators joined forces against him and testified about other dreadful outrages he had committed and his incest with his sister [her name was Clodia - prob. the slutty Lesbia loved by Catullus - a perpetual scandal like her brother Clodius: we'll talk about her, it is important in our view of Roman sex. In the painting below you can see Catullus visiting aristocratic Lesbia's... a nice work by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema - 1836, Dronrijp, the Netherlands / 1912 Wiesbaden, Germany - one of the most renowned painters of late nineteenth century Britain] ….”
[Online Britannica: “In December 62, when the winter ceremony of the Bona Dea (from which men were excluded) was celebrated in the house of Julius Caesar, a man believed to be Clodius was discovered disguised as a female harpist among the participants. Charged with incestum he was tried before the Senate...Caesar divorced his wife in suspicion that she had admitted Clodius to the ceremony....Clodius maintained he had been at Interamna, 90 miles (145 km) from Rome, on the day in question, but Cicero, who abused the defendant intemperately, presented evidence to the contrary. Clodius was acquitted, perhaps because the jury had been bribed, but immediately began to devise ways to revenge himself on Cicero.” (Clodius Pulcher, Publius. Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 9 Dec. 2007) ]
Plutarch (10.6): “Caesar immediately divorced Pompeia, but when he was summoned as a witness in the trial said that he knew nothing about the accusations against Clodius. The prosecutor asked him about the apparent contradiction: ‘why then did you divorce your wife?’ He answered, ‘because I thought my wife should be above suspicion’….Clodius was acquitted because most of the jurors handed in their opinions in illegible writing, so that they would not endanger themselves with the common people by voting against him, or disgrace themselves with the nobility by letting him off.”
I think the reason why Caesar supported Clodius is because they belonged to the same common-people (democratic) party and Clodius was too popular and influential.
(to be continued….)
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