My dear, I truly desire to see you as soon as possible, and to die in your arms, since neither the gods whom you have piously worshiped nor the men whom I have always served have shown us any thanks.
—Cicero to his wife, Terentia,
Brundisium, April 29, 58 B.C.1
THIS DIVISION of labor—the cultivation of the heavenly powers by the woman and the care of the mundane by the man—would not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with Italian customs even today. But it is necessary to point out at once that Cicero has simplified the facts for rhetorical effect, and that the dichotomy is more ideal than real, for the life of a Roman man was also fraught with religious duties, while a woman like Terentia was primarily concerned with the management of her family and finances. For Terentia, participation in religion could be both an obligation and a pleasure.
Roman religion was basically of two kinds: there were the native cults that supported and were supported by the state; and there were the imported Oriental cults—including that of Isis, the most intriguing of all Roman deities. Religion afforded an outlet for those whose lives were circumscribed in other ways: some cults—evidently the more popular—offered opportunities for joy and release. The Romans had festivals confined to women, analogous to the Thesmophoria of the Athenians, at which drunkenness, obscene jests, and lewd behavior were appropriate. They also had Mystery religions like those at Eleusis, which held out the comfort of a blessed resurrection. On the other hand, many cults that offered no particular pleasure to the worshiper had to be maintained in order to avert the wrath of a spurned deity. Often these cults had their own peculiar constellations of prescriptions for the devotee: abstinence from certain foods or from sex, and the punctilious performance of ritualized—but frequently inexplicable—ceremonies at designated times.
Among the numerous cults developed by the Romans to enlist divine aid for practical purposes were those designed to uphold ideals of female conduct. The Roman genius for organization is reflected in the categorizing of women and their desirable qualities, and in the creation of cults appropriate to the categories. Women were ranked according to the class distinction between plebeians and patricians, by a moral standard segregating respectable women from those who followed disreputable professions, by age, and by whether they were slave or free. Marital status was also a fundamental subdivision by which women were ranked, including the following distinctions: young virgin, celibate adult, wife, wife married only once (univira), and widow.
The several cults of Fortuna (Luck or Fortune) that emerged from that goddess’ patronage of women’s lives show the Romans’ use of religious sanctions to promote socially desirable behavior.2 Identifiable in the Roman pantheon by her rudder, globe, and cornucopia, Fortuna’s significance for women centered on the last of her symbols, for she was the guarantor not only of the fruits of the earth but also of women’s physical maturation and sexual fulfillment.
Fortuna Virginalis, or Virgo (Virgin), was the patroness of young girls as they came of age. Adolescent girls dedicated to this goddess the little togas they had worn in girlhood.3 After the dedication, a girl donned the stola, the dress by which a respectable matron was distinguished from a toga-clad prostitute. Analogous ceremonies for boys, including the donning of the dress of men (toga virilis) and the dedication of the first beard, were clearly puberty rites and not concerned directly with marriage. But since puberty and marriage often came at about the same time in a girl’s life, the dedication of her girlhood clothing may have marked both occasions.
Upon her marriage a bride passed to the protection of Fortuna Primigenia (firstborn, primordial, or first-to-sire) of Praeneste, who was a patroness of mothers and childbirth and an oracular deity as well. The cult of Fortuna of Praeneste, however, was not confined to women, for men were interested in her promise of virility, material success, and economic prosperity. She had several temples: her temple on the Quirinal, which was vowed in 204 B.C., before a battle against Hannibal, was actually dedicated in 194 B.C., along with a number of temples to various deities. This was the year following women’s agitation for the repeal of the Oppian Law (see this page); the building of the temple served to confirm and advertise the traditional expectations the Romans continued to hold for their women, despite the repeal of the law.
Some Fortuna cults were linked to other exclusively female cults, and many of these were confined to univirae. A temple of Fortuna Virgo was built near a temple of the Good Mother (Mater Matuta) in the cattle market (Forum Boarium).4 The foundation of both temples was considered to be in the hoary past, since it was ascribed by tradition to Servius Tullius, the sixth king of Rome; being closely located, both temples suffered the same history of burning and restorations. That the two cults were linked is shown by their location and by the facts that they shared the dedication day of June 11 and that univirae were concerned with both. The feast of the Mater Matuta—the Matralia—could be celebrated only by respectable matrons. In one rite they brought in a slave woman, whom they then expelled with physical abuse; a literal interpretation of this expulsion is that it was a demonstration that the worship of the Mater Matuta was confined to matrons. In another rite, the familial role of aunt was emphasized, for the women commended their brothers’ and sisters’ pubescent children to the care of the goddess. The temple of Fortuna in the cattle market was also confused or connected with a cult of Patrician Chastity (Pudicitia Patricia). The temple contained a veiled statue which could be touched only by univirae. There was some doubt about what the statue represented. Some believed that it was a figure of Servius Tullius, the founder of the cult; others supposed that it represented the goddess Fortuna; still others thought that the statue represented Chastity (Pudicitia). According to a story in Livy, Verginia, a patrician woman, was excluded from worshiping Pudicitia Patricia because other women considered that she had demeaned herself by marrying a plebeian.5 In 296 B.C., in response to this insult, she dedicated a shrine and altar to Plebeian Chastity. This cult, confined to univirae of the plebeian class, asserted that plebeian matrons upheld the same conjugal ideals as patricians. But the next year. 295 B.C., was vexed with prodigies, including the discovery that a number of matrons were guilty of adultery. They were fined, and the money used to erect a temple of Venus the Compliant (Obsequens), which was to serve as a permanent admonition to women.6
The glorious deeds of the mother and wife of the infamous Coriolanus occasioned the founding of a cult of Womanly Fortune (Fortuna Muliebris). In 491 B.C. Coriolanus, a traitor, was threatening to lead the Volsci against Rome, when a deputation of women led by his mother and wife met him at his camp and dissuaded him.7 The place where the meeting occurred, approximately four miles outside Rome, was the site of the founding of the cult; the cult of Fortuna Muliebris was also confined to univirae.
Virile Fortune (Fortuna Virilis) was a cult concerned with the sexual fortune of women. On April 1, crowds of women gathered in the public baths of men for ceremonies honoring Virile Fortune. Thus the goddess was probably identical with Fortune of the Baths (Balnearis). According to the traditional explanation, the baths were the appropriate location for a cult of sexual fortune, for there men exposed that part of the body with which the cult was concerned. It is not known whether men were banished from the baths during the ceremony, nor whether the worship of the goddess was always assigned to all “baseborn” (meaning plebeian) women or was confined to courtesans and prostitutes (humiliores). But it seems likely that respectable women did not participate, at least after the cult of Venus, Changer of Hearts [toward virtue] (Verticordia), was instituted during the war against Hannibal, as a public admonition to adultresses.8 Venus, Changer of Hearts, was honored for the sake of domestic harmony and a life of marital fidelity, and was worshiped by respectable women on April 1, the day sacred also to Virile Fortune. Thus the dichotomy between respectable women and whores was dramatized: the former worshiping an apotheosis of conjugal ideals, the latter worshiping sexual relationships having nothing to do with wedlock.
Even pagan sources for the history of the early cults are not objective. For example, Livy’s report on religion, like his legends about the high-principled women of the early Republic, are colored by his view that Roman society had suffered moral degeneration. Livy noted, for example, that the altar of Plebeian Chastity was degraded by polluted women—not only matrons, but women of all classes—and thus at last fell into oblivion.9 In the area of social history, Livy’s purpose was not merely to record the events of the past, but to present them creatively as propaganda for the Augustan marital legislation. Augustus openly used religion to promote his social ideals. He restored many temples and, as far as women were concerned, he emphasized cults centered on childbearing, chastity, and familial bonds. Some women, especially members of the imperial household, went through the motions required by the religious ceremonies. But the religious restorations, like the marital legislation, do not appear to have had a discernible influence upon public morality. Augustus’ lack of success in achieving any permanent change may be judged from the report of the satirist Juvenal at the end of the first century A.D. about the homoerotic relations of Tullia and Maura at the altar of Chastity itself, keeping in mind that Juvenal painted a distorted picture of the practices he wished to condemn:
Did you ever wonder why some women make crude remarks and lewd gestures as they pass the Temple of Chastity? That’s where they stop every night to relieve themselves—and piss on the goddess. Then they strap a phallus on the statue and take turns riding it. Next morning, some husband on his way to work slips in the puddle.
My god! the sacred mysteries of the special Goddess of Women [Bona Dea] are no longer secret! Women get all stirred up with wine and wild music; they drive themselves crazy; they shriek and writhe—worshipers of Phallus. And sex. They moan, they quiver with lust; there’s a steady stream running down their legs. The aristocratic matrons challenge the professional whores—and win. These aren’t just games—it’s a serious business. They could get a rise out of any old man, even Priam or Nestor. Now their lust can’t wait; they drop their pretenses; the temple rings with the cry “Bring on the men.” Soon they need replacements; when they run out, they jump the servants; if there aren’t any servants, they’ll drag in any old beggar. If they can’t find any men, they raid the stables and rape the donkeys.
If only the ancient rituals of our public rites could be conducted free from such debaucheries; but the whole world knows how they were defiled when Clodius disguised himself as a woman and entered the sacred ceremony from which even male mice had fled, where even pictures of men used to be covered as part of the ritual. In the old days, who would dare defile sacred rites and ritual objects and scorn the gods? Now there’s a Clodius for every temple. We can’t even lock the women up to keep them in check. Who’d guard the guards? 10
Juvenal points out that women had ceased paying honor to the old-fashioned cults designed for women as early as 63 B.C. by alluding to the time when a man, Publius Clodius, was present at the rites of the Bona Dea, a goddess whose worship was supposed to be celebrated exclusively by women. Caesar divorced his wife Pompeia after this scandal, for there were rumors that she had encouraged Clodius’ profanation of the rites. Juvenal, in his encyclopaedic catalogue of vicious women, did not hesitate to include an empress, but he dared not criticize the Vestal Virgins. In their case, if the charge of unchastity were true, the consequences for the state would be profound.
Vesta (Greek Hestia) was the goddess of the hearth, both public and domestic. The hearth with its undying flame symbolized the continuity of both family and community, and extinction of the fire was a grave matter. Tending the family hearth was the responsibility of the daughter of the household. (Freud suggested that women guard the hearth because their anatomy, unlike that of males, removes the temptation to extinguish the fire by urinating on it.) 11
Since a virgin belongs to no man, she can incarnate the collective, the city: she can belong to everyone. Thus the young daughters of kings of early Rome tended the royal hearth from which the state cult of Vesta probably evolved. At some point in the remote past, the service of the state cult of Vesta was assumed by virgin priestesses known as Vestals. Their principal duty was to tend the fire in the temple of Vesta, and any Vestal who let the fire go out incurred the penalty of scourging. In addition to the service of Vesta, the Vestals were active in other areas of Roman religion. Most paradoxical, perhaps, was their involvement in agricultural and fertility rites. It appears that virginity is not synonymous with sterility, and not incompatible with fertility. Purity and intactness can be viewed as stored-up fertility, although it cannot be assumed that the Romans had this idea clearly formulated when they assigned multifarious tasks to the Vestals.
In early Rome there probably had been only one Vestal serving at a time, for potential childbearers could not be reserved for the service of religion.12 But in historical times there was a college of six Vestals who varied in age. All had been enrolled between the ages of six and ten, and were obliged to remain virgins throughout the thirty years of their service, after which they were given dowries and were free to marry, although most remained unwed.
The Romans were punctilious about religious matters; there was no latitude for mistakes. But chastity was difficult to maintain throughout the approximately one thousand years of the history of the Vestals until the order was dissolved in A.D. 394.13 Even in the legends about early Rome, a Vestal became the mother of Romulus, the revered founder, and of his twin brother Remus.14 Later, Vestals judged guilty of violating their chastity were condemned to be buried alive. The theory was that if the Vestal were innocent, Vesta herself would rescue her entombed priestess, but actually none was ever saved. Fewer than ten Vestals are known to have undergone this execution, both because the severity of the punishment was a deterrent and because during some periods of Roman history, when there was little enthusiasm for the archaic religion, the deportment of the Vestals was overlooked. However, attitudes fluctuated, and Vestals who entered the college in a period of laxity might find themselves, in the course of their service, confronted by a government interested in imposing moral restraints. At such times, the merit of the Vestals was imputed to the state whose hearth they tended. When calamities such as the Roman defeat at Cannae occurred (216 B.C.), Vestals came under suspicion, for it was conceivable that their misconduct had contributed to the disaster.15
The prosecution of the Vestals is a specific example of the firmly established principle of Greek and Roman thought connecting the virtue of women and the welfare of the state. Aristotle, we have noted, blamed Spartan women for the deterioration of Sparta; Theopompus and Livy stressed the luxuriousness of Etruscan women as a factor aggravating the degeneracy of Etruria; Juvenal harped on the rottenness of Roman women as symptomatic of a sick society; and finally Tacitus, who is outspoken in his criticisms of the members of the Roman ruling class, also condemned them implicitly by praising the vigor of the Germans16:
[The German women] live with their chastity protected, not corrupted in theaters with seductions, nor at dinner parties with enticements. Men and women both know nothing of secret letters.
Adultery is very rare among this large population. Punishment is swift, and is the prerogative of the husband: in the presence of relatives, the husband expels the wife from the house nude, with her hair cut, and drives her through the whole village with a whip. There is no pardon for prostituted chastity; neither beauty nor youth nor wealth will find a husband for her. There, no one laughs at vice, nor calls seduction or being seduced the “trend of the times.”
Even better are those tribes where only virgins marry and make one lasting agreement, with the intentions and vows of a wife. Thus, they take only one husband, just as they have only one body and one life, so that there will be no further thought, no late-blooming desire; and so that they may love their husbands not so much as the condition of marriage itself.
It is a disgrace to limit the number of children, or to kill any children born after the father has made his will. There, good habits prevail more than good laws elsewhere.… Children are nourished at their mother’s breasts, and are not handed over to maids and wetnurses.
The Emperor Domitian (reigned A.D. 81–96), a contemporary of Tacitus and Juvenal, also perceived a connection between popular morality and female degeneracy. Domitian’s campaign for virtue included the enforcement of the Augustan marriage legislation and the restoration of the shrine of Plebeian Chastity. He also made public examples of the Vestals by holding capital trials of Vestals and their lovers.17
The trials under Domitian give evidence of the role played by politics and the personal prejudices of judges in the prosecution of Vestals and their paramours. In the first trial, the Vestals were allowed to commit suicide, and their paramours to go into exile. The second trial shows increased severity on the part of the emperor, for the guilty Vestal was buried alive, and a lover of equestrian rank was scourged to death according to the ancient practice. On the other hand, one of her lovers who was a senator and had been a praetor was preferentially permitted to choose exile.18 Political rivalry among men surely was responsible for many accusations against Vestals—for example, the prosecutions of 73 B.C. linking two Vestals to Catiline and Crassus.19 In earlier periods as well, factional rivalry provoked attacks, and thus in 114 B.C. three Vestals were accused (but only one condemned) by the chief pontiff. A tribune—a plebeian magistrate—demanded a secular re-trial, and the next year the other two were condemned in turn.20 The cult of Venus, Changer of Hearts, was reaffirmed at this time.
The lives of Vestals were severely regulated, but in some respects they were the most emancipated women in Rome. As noted in our discussions of unmarried goddesses, the most liberated females are those who are not bound to males in a permanent relationship. The emancipation of the Vestals was legal, rather than de facto like the emancipation of the upper-class women described in Chapter VIII. As early as the laws of the XII Tables (451–450 B.C.) it was stated that a Vestal was to be freed from the power of her pater familias.21 Since a Vestal had no family for legal purposes, she could not inherit from an intestate kinsman, nor could anyone inherit from her if she died intestate. She did, on the other hand, have the right to make a will. The chief pontiff (pontifex maximus) chose, supervised, and sometimes judged and scourged the Vestals, but he did not exercise legal guardianship (tutela) over them. Vestals could not be bound by oath, nor were they subject to the testamentary limitations of the Voconian Law of 169 B.C.22 This emancipation probably evolved along principles analogous to those governing certain priests. The word lex (“law”) is derived from ligare (“to bind”). Romans in the service of religion were subject to restrictions, but not the same ones that bound ordinary people.
Further evidence of the freedom from the restrictions of ordinary women is to be found in the privileges enjoyed by Vestals. They were the only women permitted to drive through the city of Rome in a carpentum, a two-wheeled wagon, which conferred high status on its occupant. Like magistrates, priests, and men of certain distinctions, they were preceded in the streets by a lictor (attendant) who cleared the way before them. When other women were relegated by Augustus to the top tiers of seats at theatrical performances and games, the Vestals retained places on the imperial podium.23 These privileges had such implications of status that the “rights of Vestals” were often conferred upon female members of the imperial family, who were frequently portrayed as Vestals on coins.
Despite the privileges, candidates for the priestesshood became increasingly difficult to find. Vestals were traditionally recruited from the upper classes, though they were not necessarily patricians. Members of this group were relatively liberated, and probably did not wish to impose thirty years of chastity and monotonous tasks on their daughters. The penalties of scourging or death for the erring Vestal were also a deterrent. Moreover, upper-class families were small, and a daughter might make the difference between the survival or extinction of a family line. Fathers were so reluctant to offer their daughters that Augustus cleverly and paradoxically, as an incentive to increase the birthrate, exempted the father of three children from this obligation.24 He also reduced the requirements for eligibility so that the daughters of freedmen could be enrolled,25 although this was never necessary, for during the Empire the chief pontiff, who was in charge of enrolling Vestals, was usually the emperor himself, and few dared oppose him.
The priestesses of Ceres were the only women besides Vestals who had the prestigious duty of administering a state cult.
Ceres was an agricultural divinity whose name shows the same root as the Latin verbs creare and cresco, meaning “to produce” and “to grow.” Thus Ceres was an important goddess in earliest Rome, when the principal occupation was farming and religion was devoted to agrarian prosperity. The goddess Tellus (Mother Earth) was closely associated with Ceres in the realm of agriculture, and both goddesses were especially concerned with the production of grain.
Ceres and Tellus were concerned with human fecundity as well as the productivity of the fields. Both were goddesses of marriage, for it is clear that the chief objective of marriage was procreation. Thus brides, who would be thought at fault if the marriage proved sterile, customarily honored Ceres and Tellus. There was also a tradition that Ceres protected wives, since the laws attributed to Romulus by Plutarch state that if a husband divorces his wife for any reason other than poisoning his children, counterfeiting his keys, or adultery, half his property will belong to his wife and the other half be consecrated to Ceres, and that whoever puts away his wife must make a sacrifice to the infernal deities.
The passage in Plutarch shows that Ceres was even more protective of wives than has been thought hitherto. The husband who “puts away his wife” is to be interpreted as one who not merely repudiates but actually sells her, and capital punishment was his penalty. The husband who sold his wife was himself consecrated to the infernal deities, and this consecration, it is to be understood, was normally followed by execution. That husbands might well have sold wives may only be inferred from the fact that they did sell their children into slavery in the days of the XII Tables.26 A wife, of course, when she had entered into the kind of marriage that put her in the legal position of “daughter” to her husband, could theoretically be sold.
Ceres was associated with death as well as fertility, for the dead are returned to the earth. On the human level, as noted above in Chapters III and V, the female is particularly concerned with preparing and mourning the corpse; one is born of woman and on dying returns to woman. Following a death in a Roman family a sow was sacrificed to Ceres. Moreover, in public cult, Ceres was the guardian of the dead. Sacred to the goddess was the pit in the earth (mundus Cereris) considered to be the passageway to the underworld. This pit was uncovered three times annually to permit the spirits of the dead to visit the living. The pit was divided into two sections, and may have been used also for storing seed-grain.27
In 496 B.C. Rome had suffered a famine, and after consultation with prophecies collected in the Sibylline books, it was agreed to try to win the favor of the goddess of the growth of grain by building a temple for her. The temple was dedicated on the lower slopes of the Aventine in 493 B.C. In this temple, Ceres was associated with Liber and Libera, who were male and female spirits of fecundity, alluding to the sexual aspect of fertility. From earliest times the cult of Ceres had been administered by a priest (flamen Cerialis), and owing to the conservatism of Roman religion, the flamen’s ministration continued. But with the founding of the temple on the Aventine, plebeian magistrates known as aediles also became important in supervising the cult. The temple proclaimed a victory of the plebeians, for the sphere of the aediles was political as well as religious, and the temple became a center of plebeian political activity. Ceres of the Aventine thus remained a goddess of grain, but her primary concern was with the seasonal yield of the earth (annona) for the feeding of all social classes in an urban population. The aediles supervised the provision and distribution of grain. Not only aediles but other politicians as well recognized that attention to the supply and free distributions of grain was a means of winning popular support, and the portrait of Ceres on their coins proclaimed their allegiance to the popular cause.
Rome’s expansion brought her into contact with other religions, and in the case of Ceres, the Italian goddess was assimilated to the Greek Demeter. The old cult of Ceres was not eradicated; the flamen and aediles continued to function, and time-honored rituals such as tying lighted torches to the tails of foxes that were let loose in the Circus Maximus continued long after any observer understood their meaning. But in the second half of the third century B.C., Greek accretions were adopted with the endorsement of the state. The earliest mention of the enactment of these rites occurs in the description of events following the disastrous battle at Cannae, when it was questionable whether the annual rites of Ceres could be celebrated, for those polluted by death could not participate, and every Roman matron had been bereaved (see this page).
The eult of the Hellenized Ceres was exclusively in the hands of women. Greek priestesses were brought from Naples or Veleia (Elea) to supervise the new cult. These priestesses were granted Roman citizenship and held positions of prestige. Myths and rites surrounding Demeter were attributed to Ceres. Liber and Libera, who had been associated with Ceres in the earlier cult, were supplanted by Proserpina, the Romans’ name for Persephone, daughter of Demeter. The central myth was the rape and marriage of Proserpina, the mourning of Ceres, and the joyous reunion of mother and daughter. The Roman rites, consisting of an annual celebration (sacrum anniversarium Cereris) and Mysteries (initia Cereris). were reminiscent of the Thesmophoria and the Eleusinian Mysteries at Athens, discussed in Chapter IV. Like other all-female celebrations, they were not much described in literature, and in any case Mysteries were not to be divulged; therefore the details are far from clear. However, we do know that there were preliminary rites of purification and abstinence. Matrons and virgins participated in reenacting the myth; perhaps the matrons played the part of Ceres, and the virgins represented Proserpina. The sow, a prolific animal, was sacred to both Ceres and Demeter, and thus formed part of a ritual sacrifice. The ceremonies also included offering shoots of grain woven into wreaths and garlands.
Unlike the Eleusinian Mysteries, those of Ceres excluded men and people of low birth. The cult of the Greek god Bacchus at Rome had also once been exclusively female; when men were admitted, debauchery ensued. A national scandal had resulted, requiring the execution of thousands of participants, and a senatorial decree made it virtually impossible for men to attend Bacchanalia thereafter (186 B.C.). With this precedent, the Mysteries of Ceres at Rome remained confined to women, and for this reason they never attained the prominence of those at Eleusis. Moreover, as Cyril Bailey wrote, “[It was not] till the oriental cults came into prominence that the mystery-idea obtained any real hold on the Roman world. Possibly the vague hopes of immortality suggested in the Greek mysteries appealed less to the practical Roman than the surer promise of the oriental cults.28
The cult of Isis was one of the many Oriental mystery religions that stand in dramatic contrast to the traditional cults of Roman religion. The foreign cult of the Greek goddess Demeter had been easily accepted by the Romans, who assimilated her to their own goddess Ceres. The cult of Ceres and some Fortuna cults were controllable, for they were confined to female devotees. Likewise, the cults of Ceres, Fortuna, and the Vestals were entwined with the interests of the state, rather than directed toward the benefit of particular individuals. The cult of Isis is unlike the others we have discussed. Through it the religious and emotional needs of women and men of the Hellenistic and Roman worlds could be expressed and satisfied. Isis met with official resistance from the Romans, but ended by having a larger sphere of influence in religious ideas than any of the cults we have previously considered.29
Isis was a national divinity of ancient Egypt dating back at least to 2500 B.C., but she was a goddess with accretions of myths and rituals of many lands by the time she reached the shores of Italy at the end of the second century B.C. The cult of Isis had spread throughout the Mediterranean world, and easily adapted itself wherever it was carried. Unlike Roman cults, in which the details of worship and the categories of worshipers were rigidly prescribed, that of Isis was capable of unlimited flexibility. The goddess readily encompassed inconsistencies and mutually contradictory qualities. Thus she was identified with many other Mediterranean goddesses ranging from Astarte of Phoenicia, to Fortuna, Athena, Aphrodite, Hestia, Hera, Demeter, and Artemis. She was endowed with magical capabilities, could heal the sick, and promised blessed resurrection to her devotees after death.
Even more remarkable than her assimilation of the powers of female deities is Isis’ acquisition of powers associated in the classical world with male divinities. She has the attributes traditionally assigned to the Indo-European sky god: dominion over lightning, thunder, and the winds. She is the creator, for she divided earth from heaven, assigned languages to nations, and invented alphabets and astronomy. Aretalogies surviving from antiquity give long lists of the attributes of the goddess; her epithets are innumerable, her powers limitless.
Owing to the influence of her worshipers in port cities such as Alexandria, Isis became a patroness of navigation and commerce. Her cult lent itself as well to philosophical interpretations. Plutarch explains the creativity of Isis with citations from Plato’s Timaeus, and writes that the power of Isis “is concerned with matter which becomes and receives everything: light and dark, day and night, fire and water, life and death, beginning and end.” 30 Thus Isis could be all things to all people, a quality that greatly enhanced her popularity. She was a single supreme goddess behind many manifestations; the prerogatives of other goddesses accrued to her, and she was worshiped in varying ways, but she remained Isis. In this sense her religion was henotheistic, but her worshipers were pagan and polytheistic, for they did not deny the existence of other divinities. An inscription found in Capua erected by a Roman senator described Isis succinctly as “you who are one and all” (“te tibi una quae es omnia dea Isis”).31 But in her omnipotence she was not threatening, for she was loving and merciful.
The impressive history of the expansion of the cult both before and after it migrated to Italy has been traced in detail by the meticulous study of archaeological and inscriptional evidence. However, examining the cult from the viewpoint of women’s history allows new questions to be posed relating to women’s role in the religion, the emotional appeal of a supreme female divinity, and the ascendancy of a mother goddess at a particular point of Roman history.
The worshipers of Isis were everywhere, of all ages and both sexes. The only segment of society where Isis did not attract devotees was the Roman army, for whom the masculine god Mithras held more appeal. By contrast, the cult of Isis was especially attractive to women. Isis was a wife and mother, but she had also been a whore. Respectable women as well as prostitutes could identify with her. Isis also elevated the status of women. Male deities were sometimes worshiped in her temples, but in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds Isis was supreme among the Egyptian gods. Diodorus Siculus reported that because of the example of Isis, the Egyptian queens had more honor than the kings, and that among commoners the wives ruled the husbands.32 No doubt the example of the domination of Cleopatra over Antony was fresh in the mind of Diodorus, who wrote in the time of Caesar and Augustus. Equality rather than domination is mentioned in a long hymn to Isis dating from the second century A.D. found in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, which includes in its praises of the goddess that “she made the power of women equal to that of men.” 33
However, the worship of Isis was by no means confined to women. Like the Mysteries of Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis, those of Isis appealed to men as well. There were also Mysteries of male gods; in paganism it was possible to have one’s choice. It may be suggested that one specific avenue of appeal that a loving maternal divinity held within a rigid patriarchal society was that she was accessible to entreaty—she could be yielding and merciful.
The intimate nature of the relationship between goddess and devotee is palpably expressed by Isidorus of the Fayum in one of his hymns written in the early first century B.C. He asks, “Share your gifts with me … your suppliant: fortune, and especially the blessing of children.” Below his signature as author, Isidorus ingenuously adds a postscript: “The gods, hearing my prayers and hymns, have granted me the blessing of great happiness.” Doubtless his prayer for a child had been answered. Like other aretalogies of Isis, the four hymns of Isidorus show the personal relationship of the poet to the goddess. Besides listing the repetitive motifs and conventionalized epithets of Greek hymns, the worshiper simply defines those qualities of the goddess that have special meaning to him.34
The story of the spiritual conversion of Lucius, told by Apuleius in the novel The Golden Ass, or Metamorphoses, in the second century A.D., illustrates on a larger scale the tenderness and closeness of Isis, and the love Lucius gave her in return. Lucius, a young man of a good family, meddled with the magic of Thessalian witches and was changed accidentally into an ass. He retained his human perceptions, and suffered vicissitudes, many of which included lewd and humiliating incidents, until, at last, by the agency of Isis, he was restored to human form. Isis visited him personally in dreams and invited him to be initiated into her Mysteries and to vow his life to her service. It is clear that the devotee had a private relationship with the goddess, and the worship of Isis suited the individualism of the Hellenistic and Roman worlds. Individuals were responsible for their own acts; they could be initiated, rewarded, forgiven, and granted eternal salvation. In contrast, traditional Roman religion was based on a communal responsibility, in which the unchastity of one Vestal jeopardized the entire population, while the expiation of her transgression would restore the favor of the gods to all.
The central myth of the Isis cult combines peculiarly Egyptian antecedents with Greco-Roman elements. According to one version, Isis and her brother Osiris had loved one another even within their mother’s womb. Their marriage provided the paradigm for the brother-sister marriages common among Egyptian rulers. But Osiris, commonly identified with the sun, was killed and dismembered by his brother Set, god of darkness. Isis mourned and searched for the fragments of Osiris’ body, and through her agency he was restored to life. But before his resuscitation Isis bore a child, and thus she is often depicted in visual representations nursing a baby. These portraits have led to comparisons between Isis with her infant Horus and the Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus. However, while Christian theologians held up Mary as a model of virginal maternity, the child Horus was clearly seen in the cult of Isis as being the offspring of his parents’ union. The Isis myth also relates that when she searched for the pieces of Osiris’ body, she failed to recover his phallus. Perhaps to compensate for that critical loss, Osiris is often represented as a phallus.
The emotional appeal of a divinity who has herself suffered such inestimable loss is undeniable. Worshipers could feel sympathy for and closeness to Isis, while they experienced only awe and fear in their distant relationships with most of the Olympian deities. Moreover, the worshiper could readily identify with Osiris—as Osiris suffered death and was born again, so the devotee of Isis could anticipate his own renewal after death. This appeal must have been especially potent among the most wretched members of society. Women were attracted, too, to the promises of exotic religions, as Juvenal disparagingly pointed out in his diatribe on women:
And watch out for a woman who’s a religious fanatic: in the summer, she’ll fill the house with a coven of worshipers of strange oriental deities. Their minister will be a weird apparition, an enormous obscene eunuch, revered because he castrated himself with a jagged hunk of glass. He’ll use his prophetic powers and solemnly intone the usual warning:
“Beware the Ides of September!
Beware the arrival of December!
Protect yourself! pledge me one
hundred eggs and a warm woolen cloak.”
He claims that whatever dangers threaten will be absorbed by the cloak and promises protection for the coming year.
In the middle of winter, at dawn, she’ll go down to the Tiber, break through the ice, and piously immerse herself three times to purify her body, and then she’ll crawl on her bleeding knees halfway across Rome—to atone for having slept with her husband the night before: this is the ritual prescribed by the deity in favor this month. If some Egyptian goddess instructs her to make a pilgrimage to the Nile, she’ll leave at once, follow the river to its source, and return with a phial of sacred water to sprinkle on the temple (which, as you can see, desecrates one of our oldest historical landmarks). She actually believes that Isis speaks to her! As if any god would bother to talk with such a fool.
Women like this revere any Egyptian priest who cons his followers with elaborate rituals and meaningless taboos. He has them convinced that he has the power to obtain forgiveness for their sins. If they fail to abstain from marital relations on holy days, or if they owe a penance for violating the goddess’ prohibitions, the goddess will reveal her displeasure by shaking her head; the priest, in tears, mumbling an empty litany, will intercede with the gods so that Osiris, bribed by a fat goose and a piece of cake, will forgive them.35
Eroticism and asceticism were mingled in the cult. Isis herself was said to have been a prostitute in Tyre for ten years, and the phallic representation of Osiris has already been noted. Her temples were located near brothels and marketplaces, and they had a reputation for being meeting places for prostitutes. There is a long history of official suspicion of sexual license in secret societies and mystery religions. Among the Romans, the scandals of the Bacchanalia provide the obvious example. Among the Greeks, the behavior of Pentheus, king of Thebes, at the coming of Dionysus can be cited. As Euripides dramatized the myth in the Bacchae, the women of Thebes followed Dionysus into the countryside, and Pentheus suspected that the new religion provided an excuse for sexual misconduct. The suspicion of the Romans was well founded; Pentheus’ was not, at least in the Euripidean play. Nevertheless, the association of Dionysus with sexual license is clear from the vase paintings, from the god’s entourage of satyrs and nymphs, and from the literary evidence of Euripides in the Ion and Phoenician Women. But the mystery cults also offered ample opportunity for abstinence, both from certain foods and from sexual intercourse, forever or for a limited period. A woman could devote herself to perpetual virginity in the service of Isis, and the elegiac poet Propertius complained of loneliness when his beloved Cynthia spent ten nights in the goddess’ ceremonials.36
Social pleasure and sensual gratification were among the rewards of the devotees of Isis. Magnificent processions of worshipers and professional priests garbed in white linen proceeded to the edge of the sea to launch a sacred boat, accompanied by the rattle of the sistrum and the music of the flute. This ceremony was called the Navigium Isidis, and took place on March 5 to inaugurate the season of navigation. The rite was more purposeful to the businessman than the agrarian-based rituals of Roman religion, while to an urban population it assured the protection of ships laden with grain from the provinces of the Empire, in particular from Egypt. Also of major importance were the Mysteries at which the worshipers reenacted the lamentation of Isis and her subsequent joy when she found the body of Osiris. Here the rite of Isis is directly parallel to the Eleusinian Mysteries at Athens: empathy with the woman who lost what was dear to her and found it again. At this time the devotees of Isis exchanged embraces, danced in the streets, and invited strangers to dinner parties.37
For slaves and freedmen and anyone who lacked a family, the conviviality of the cult was attractive. The social order was precious to Romans, but disregarded by Isis; her cult was open to all. There was a professional body of male priests, but others, both men and women, could hold high office within the cult. Of twenty-six functionaries termed minister (sacerdos) in extant inscriptions of Italy, six are women, including one woman of senatorial rank and one daughter of a freedman.38 Frescoes of Herculaneum and Pompeii portray women participating fully in the ceremonies. In contrast, the state religion of Rome traditionally excluded slaves, freedmen, and of course women—with the exception of a few, including the six Vestals and two priestesses of Ceres—from its hierarchy, while those who did participate were carefully organized into separate categories.
Those Romans who idealized their traditional way of life nursed a hostility against foreigners and secret societies, fearing that their activities might erupt in antisocial behavior. No wonder that congregations such as those worshiping Isis could be considered potentially revolutionary, especially since so many votaries were those who had little stake in the perpetuation or revival of Roman traditions; worshipers were not viewed as part of a societal or governmental whole and, as we have noted, the cult was oriented to the well-being of the individual.
The worship of Isis can be traced in Italy during the late second and early first centuries B.C. in Pompeii, Herculaneum, and the Greek cities of Campania, and a college of the priests of Isis was founded at Rome in the time of Sulla.39 Women as well were strong influences in the establishment of the cult. Nearly one-third of the devotees named in inscriptions in Italy are female.40 It is likely that the establishment of the cult was promoted by the agency of Oriental slaves and freedmen, a number of whom were prosperous businessmen. Some slaves converted their owners, but even after it spread to the upper classes the Isis cult never abandoned its associations with the lowly members of society.
Egypt and her deities were anathema to Rome. Five times during the late Republic the shrines of Isis were ordered torn down. In 50 B.C., when no workmen could be found to carry out the order, the consul himself took an ax and began the destruction.41 In 43 B.C. there was a temporary respite when the triumvirs, in a bid for popular support, ordered that a temple be built for Isis, but whether this temple was erected is not known.42
The hostility to Egypt was intensified by the confrontation between Cleopatra and Antony on the one hand, and Octavian on the other. Cleopatra was Isis incarnate. Octavian had seen Cleopatra, and had viewed Egypt. He recognized the lure that had turned Antony into a “slave of withered eunuchs.” 43 In 28 B.C. the triumphant Octavian, who became Augustus, forbade the building of temples to Isis within the boundaries of the city (the pomerium), and seven years later the prohibited territory was extended to the area close to the city of Rome. He intended thus to deprive the goddess of her worshipers, of whom the urban population constituted a large part. It is well known that in his settlement of Egypt, Augustus, for political and economic reasons, kept the country as a private possession, not to be administered like the other provinces of the Empire. There were moral reasons as well: Isis, like Cleopatra, was seductive. The gods of Egypt threatened to undermine the new moral foundations of society which Augustus hoped to establish by legislation. From this vantage point, it may be suggested that Augustus might have been more successful if instead of requesting sophisticated women to worship archaic abstractions of female virtues, he had co-opted the cult of Isis and exploited her as an example of a faithful wife and loving mother.
The antagonism of Augustus was continued by Tiberius, under whose reign the priests of Isis were persecuted. The ostensible cause was a scandal arising from an assignation between Paulina, an upper-class matron, and an equestrian, Decius Mundus. The priests of Isis arranged for the couple to meet in their temple, telling the woman that the Egyptian god Anubis wished to have intercourse with her. For this deceit they were paid handsomely by Decius Mundus, who impersonated the god. This incident suggests that the popularity of the goddess among the upper classes was increasing, since it was not unusual for a woman of high station to visit a temple of Isis. Mundus was exiled under the adultery laws, but the persecution of the cult of Isis was far out of proportion to the crime. The priests were crucified, the rites expelled, and thousands of worshipers deported from the city of Rome. There is little doubt that Tiberius intended to totally purge Rome of the foreign goddess.44
The cult of Isis, like other Oriental religions, competed too successfully with the imperial revival of traditional Roman religion. Isis was too popular to suppress. Instead, Romans and then Christians adopted elements of her cult, choosing to subordinate her power to the traditional abstract ideals of virginity, marriage, and motherhood. Perhaps it was Caligula who first decided to take advantage of the popularity that might accrue to an emperor who favored Isis. A temple was erected in the Campus Martius, and most of the successive Roman emperors continued to support the goddess.45 By the second century A.D., magistrates and other functionaries of high status were establishing honorific monuments to Isis.46
The worship of Isis apparently developed among those who had little stake in the rewards of a religion based either on male dominance or on class stratification. Egypt, where the cult was born, was a land in which women are known to have enjoyed high status. The cult then migrated in the Hellenistic period through the Mediterranean world settled by the Greeks. There are strong indications that there were fewer restraints on Greek women in this Hellenistic world than there had been during the Classical period. The two most influential Greek women of the Hellenistic period—Arsinoë II and Cleopatra—interestingly enough considered themselves to be incarnations of the goddess. Further, some conclusion must be drawn from the fact that the establishment of the cult of Isis in Italy in the late Republic coincided with the growing emancipation of women. The cult continued to blossom among the Romans, especially those women and men who did as they pleased despite official prohibitions.
But Isis was not universally popular. One of her strongest rivals was Mithras, a male god whose worship was confined exclusively to men. The cult of Mithras stressed militant and masculine qualities and, as has been noted, became a favorite among the soldiers and officers of the Roman army. In some ways the existence of Mithras fostered the femaleness of the cult of Isis: those who might have diluted or changed the cult of Isis were actually siphoned off and diverted to their own god. Thus, in Isis-worship there remained latitude for uninhibited women, such as the mistresses of elegiac poets and others who are less well known now, to become both official magistrates and common devotees.
What can be said about a world in which two vastly different godheads—Mithras and Isis—were simultaneously popular, and in which the Mysteries of both this god and goddess and many competing cults, including Judaism and Christianity, could offer comparable promises of blessed immortality?
We must return to the speculations raised at the close of the first chapter of this book on the role of mother goddesses as a determinant of women’s status in society. There is little information for prehistory—in fact, some deny that mother goddesses ever existed or were prevalent—but much more is known about the societies in which the historical Isis was worshiped. Certainly neither Greece nor Rome in historical times was a matriarchy; yet the growth of the cult was apparently greatest where some women, at least, attained a measure of emancipation. However, the strength of Isis in historical times could scarcely have any implications for prehistory, whether in support or denial of a theory of matriarchy. The external differences between the early culture and the sophisticated worlds of the Greeks and Romans were so vast as to militate against drawing parallels. That religious and social history repeated itself would be a remarkable coincidence, and it is not profitable to speculate on it. The most that can be proposed in this vein is that the human female has consistently evoked—at least among some elements of given societies—a psychological response with religious implications that transcend the varying statuses of mortal women at particular eras of history.
What is of more interest in a way is the adherence of men to the cult. The hymns of Isidorus and the conclusion of The Golden Ass show that the relationship of the male to the mother figure is very pronounced. In psychological terms, the appeal of Isis is comprehensible: in an age of unrest the yearning for total maternal protection is indeed a basic impulse. It is uncertain whether any true idea of equality for women would inevitably emerge in such circumstances, for the adoration of female divinities has not improved the circumstances of the women who worship them, nor has it raised mortal women in the eyes of the men who cultivate them.
In this respect Isis was different from other mother goddesses. She did stand for the equality of women, and one cannot help wondering about the nature of the subsequent history of Western women if the religion of Isis had been triumphant.