Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons Quotes

“It seems that all the festivals in July were held in groves outside the city and began in times so ancient that their origins and purposes were unknown even to Varro.”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“In Rome’s social construct, dead family members informed the present and the future. Ancestors’ memorable actions translated into glory, dignity, and authority (gloria, dignitas, auctoritas), and they functioned as examples for family members and citizens.”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“At the same time as historical narratives and ancient rhetoric have us imagine Roman women of highest morality sitting at home and taking care of their families, the reality was that they were actively involved in religious ceremonies throughout the year.”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“The triad of Matres/Matronae, who generated and guaranteed well-being, abundance, and fertility, eventually changed into “Three Maries.”31 These Celtic pagan goddesses, made visible when Romanized folk remembered their local ancestral deities in dedicatory inscriptions, continued to exist in a new religious context, that of Christianity.”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“In the province of Africa, the flaminate was a nuclear family affair.12 It seems that the provincial council (the concilium) chose the provincial flaminica. Roman Africa provides the greatest number of these municipal priestesses. Most of these African flaminicae fulfilled their religious duties on behalf of a city rather than on behalf of the province. The flaminicae belong to the equestrian order, and only in a few cases did they come from senatorial families. This very much reflects Augustan policies that targeted the equestrian class for more involvement in religious activities.”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“They were, as their names (matres or matronae) suggest, originally ancestral mothers who had turned into goddesses.21 It is the connection with iuno, the female equivalent of the male genius, that reveals the ancestral aspect of the Matres/ Matronae.22 Mercury accompanied the Matronae, if they were depicted with a male figure. Behind this god was a Celtic god, who had received a Roman interpretation that rendered him as Mercury. Matres/Matronae represented not only families or clans, but whole ethnic groups. Original location as well as family connection played an important role in the attachment of goddesses to groups. Both aspects, location and family, however, have an inherent dynamic; they can change. Settlers, such as veterans of the Roman army, were integrated into already existing groups who worshiped these deities, while those leaving such groups could take their ancestral goddesses with them.”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“If we look for equality, it can be found among the poor, where married couples worked day in and out, side by side, to survive. Wealthy women, proponents of their families and their class, involved themselves in public life as benefactors and were rewarded with honorific titles and priesthoods. These women had more independence; nonetheless, they did not threaten male power, for their philanthropic work did not translate into political power or social equality”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“The noun flamen was originally linked to a neuter noun meaning “cultic actions.”4 A flamen then was an agent performing cultic actions specific to a deity such as Jupiter, Mars, or Quirinus. In short, flamines celebrated rituals, whereas pontiffs supervised and augures interpreted”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“The Matres (Mothers) or Matronae (Married Women) had a similar function, although the original periphery-center connection started not in Rome but in the provinces, which was different from the origin of the flaminicae. The Matres/Matronae were a unique phenomenon of ancestral mothers of Celtic clans that had turned into deities. Formerly linked to extended families, these mother-deities were dislodged from their original geographical and ideological context and received a Roman interpretation. They took on anthropomorphic form as Roman matrons with broad-rimmed hats and most often were depicted in a group of three. Even when Christianity became the sole religion of the Empire, the Matres/Matronae, who, like other female deities brought about and secured fecundity, and consequently well-being, continued to exist.”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“A white marble piece found on the Caelian behind the military hospital, now lost, had two snakes moving from left to right toward an altar underneath the inscription. The snakes, besides being connected with healing via the imagery related to Asclepius, can also be connected to a family genius. Scholars think of genius in this context because the snakes are moving toward an altar, an image found in family shrines (lararia).50 This then would speak of Bona Dea the female force connected to the household, which is to prosper.”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“The epigraphic record, in form of dedicatory inscriptions from Rome, shows that men outnumber women in this votive action. While the cult is understood as a women’s cult, and men were not allowed to enter the sanctuary of the goddess ad saxum, men still could consult the goddess and doctors, some of whom were women, who had chosen Bona Dea as their guardian deity. There may also have been sanctuaries of Bona Dea that were open to men. There are thirty-one dedications to Bona Dea from Rome and only nine of them are by women.”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“Macrobius relates that a pharmacy was connected with the temple and that there were snakes.28 Like Asclepius, Bona Dea ad saxum was a healing deity in whose sanctuary snakes were kept, and the iconography of the goddess included a snake as well as a cornucopia. There are inscriptions that give emphasis to the goddess’ curative quality. For example, an inscription found in Rome close to the third milestone on the Via Ostiense tells of a man named Felix Asinianus, who recovered his eyesight with the help of the goddess.”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“The Vestals, whose chastity kept them forever in the potential of giving birth and at the brink of actual womanhood, tended the fire that in their care was a life giver. One could not function without the other; there was a synthesis between the fire and the caretakers.”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“Vestals had religious powers that ordinarily belonged to men. A lictor, an attendant of praetors and consuls, accompanied them.15 The priestesses sat with senators at games, another aspect that moved them into the male social sphere and gendered them male. Their priesthood was part of the college of pontiffs. In compensation for holding such powers, however, the priestesses had to remain in a virginal state or, rather, in a perpetual state of being between unmarried and married.16 “There was something queer about the Virgines Vestales,”17 and they defied clear-cut categorization. Vesta’s priestesses remained in a perpetual “rite of passage” loop, between status (unmarried and married) and a gendered (female and male) sphere.”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“Augustus’ house on the Palatine had decorations in the private chambers that included Egyptian landscapes. The house connected to a temple of Apollo, the guardian god of Actium. The connection itself was a portico of the Danaids, daughters of Danaus. The myth of the Danaids integrated Egypt into the Greek cultural system, which Romans embraced and had made their own. The Danaids, like the Romans, were culturally ambiguous; they were Egyptian-born Greeks who, in flight, returned home to Argos. The portico made a cultural albeit vague statement: Egypt was and yet was not introduced into Rome’s own mythological center. Augustus had the Sibylline Books deposited in the new temple of Apollo.”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“Merchants were instrumental in bringing the Hellenized Isis and Sarapis to the Italian peninsula and the western Mediterranean. In this propagation of the deities and their cult, the island of Delos played a key role. When the island fell into the hands of Mithridates VI of Pontus in 88 BCE, Italian merchants returned home, and the integration of Isis and Sarapis into the Roman pantheon accelerated.”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“Support of the argument for an initial division between the celebrations of the two deities comes from the fact that the guardians of the Sibylline Books (the quindecimviri sacris faciundis) selected the priest of the Mother of Gods (sacerdos matris deum). The Roman state was directly involved in the cult of the Great Mother but not in the cult of Cybele with its castrated priests.”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“There is, however, another possibility, namely, the ritual around the Great Idaean Mother of Gods differed at first from that of Cybele, whose cult featured eunuch-attendants. In Greece, the transplanted mother goddess lost her various Phrygian names related to locations and mountains. Even her name, Cybele, was substituted by the title Great Mother (Mētēr Megalē). This reflected the Hellenization of Cybele, whose cult was thoroughly “de-orientalized.”67 Despite this, the galli of Cybele did not disappear. Cultic rituals scarcely changed, since a change meant a tampering with what had proved to be effective and thus invited a breach in the mankind-deities alignment.”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“As always in the midst of crises, Romans reshaped their religion along the lines of their newly found identity. They were in part the descendants of Trojan Aeneas; their intellectual heritage was Greek. Pious Aeneas suited the Romans well. This wandering Trojan prince existed in the context of Greek myth, a framework the Romans had adopted and were propagating. Aeneas and the Romans shared the same mythological “Greekness.” Thus, the militarily successful Romans, armed with an acquired respectable and tangible past, began more intensively to encourage the literary arts, whose major proponent had been the Hellenistic world and whose guardian deity was Olympian Apollo.”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“After Nero, the sources are silent until the short reign of Julian the Apostate (361–363 CE). He put it to the college to find out whether the auspices were in favor of a campaign against Persia. The answer was negative, but Julian was already on his way. While Julian invaded Persia in the spring of 363 and was killed, the temple of Apollo on the Palatine burned down. The Sibylline Books were saved, only to be destroyed a generation later by Stilicho, the Christian general in charge of the West. The omen of 363 CE had come to pass, and even Julian’s attempted pagan reforms could not prevent Christianity’s triumph. Prudentius, known as the Christian Vergil, noted that the Sibylline Books would no longer prophesy.33 The pagan Sibyl fell silent as the Judeo-Christian one began to speak. Like her pagan sister, she spoke Greek.”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“During the reign of Augustus’ successor Tiberius, a quindecimvir tried to revitalize the practice of consultation after the Tiber had flooded,29 but to no avail. During the Republican period, the Books had been consulted over fifty times,30 in contrast to imperial times, when the books were rarely consulted.”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“In 18 BCE, when Augustus wanted to move the Sibylline Books into Rome’s newest temple of Apollo, which was opportunely situated next to his home on the Palatine, the books were deemed “damaged by age.”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“Samos, like Ephesos, did have a Sibyl but not a cult of Apollo. An interesting fact insofar as prophesying women goes, be they the Delphic Pythia or a Sibyl, was that they were thought to be the mouthpieces of Apollo. The myth has Apollo slay the dragon Python, a monstrous son of Gē (Earth) and guardian of her oracle at Delphi. From that moment on, Apollo controlled the oracle.”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“Even the most skeptical Roman knew and acted within the understanding that religious discipline (disciplina) was crucial for the well-being of the state (salus publica) and that accurate religious practice (religio) provided it. The underlying mythological, albeit actual, belief was that Rome was founded by auspicio augurioque (by auspice and augury), which generated a contract between Rome and the gods, above all Jupiter, and that binary reciprocal mechanisms were at work. Thus, the relationship between the divine and the human sphere, the Roman Senate and the Roman people (senatus populusque Romanus), was defined.”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“Using Homeric metaphors, Marcius prophesied the battle of Cannae in 216 BCE, a catastrophic moment for the Romans. He predicted Roman success if annual games in honor of Apollo were held and a sacrifice was given. When the Senate asked the men in charge of the Sibylline Books to consult the collection regarding this prediction, the books ordered the same.”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“The reported Sibylline instructions could be horrific (bury a Greek and a Gaul alive to avert a foreign invasion),18 but most often they prompted the introduction of a foreign god and the building of a temple. The introduction of new cults, those performed according to Greek rite (Graeco ritu),19 depended on the college’s interpretation of the Sibylline Books. The most dramatic introduction of a cult at the behest of the Sibylline Books was that of the Great Mother from Ida (Mater Magna Idaea) in the Troad, Aeneas’ home region, at the end of the Second Punic War. The Romans were urged to fetch this goddess, for her presence in Rome would bring an end to the struggle with Carthage.”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“Carmenta was, like the Camenae, a water nymph. Ancient sources stressed the chthonic nature of water, and because of this, it had mantic powers.10 There was also a perceived linguistic link between the name Carmenta and carmen, which we translate most often as “poem.” Its primary meaning, however, is “ritual utterance” or “magic spell.”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“The second one was the Libyan (Euripides), the third the Delphian (Chrysippus), the fourth the Cimmerian (Naevius and Piso), the fifth the Erythraean (Apollodorus of Erythrae), the sixth the Samian (Eratosthenes), the seventh the Cumaean (Varro), the eighth the Hellespontine (Heraclides), and the ninth the Phrygian.”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“Varro counted ten Sibyls. The first and oldest was the Persian; the youngest, the Sibyl at Tibur.”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion

“Augustus connected his villa on the Palatine hill to the temple of Apollo with a portico representing the mythological Danaids, Egyptian-born Greeks. The Greeks had integrated Egypt into their ideological landscape through the gadfly-tormented Io, thought to be Isis, who shed her bovine shape in Egypt when she married the pharaoh. Hellenized Egypt, through Alexandria, found its way to Rome, where it was integrated into the fabric of Rome’s founding location.”
― Sarolta A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion