Sexual virtue on display I: the cults of pudicitia and honours for women
Rebecca Langlands
Sexual Morality in Ancient Rome: (Chapter 1), Cambridge University Press (2006)
Abstract
This book begins with a chapter about pudicitia as publicly celebrated and rewarded in Roman society. A striking aspect of pudicitia was its association with public and visual display by married women to rhe community, both through their appearance and demeanour and through their cultivation of pudicitia as a goddess. This first chapter explores the manifestation of pudicitia as personified abstract virtue, a goddess described as playing an active role in the lives of ancient Romans, with her own shrines, cult statues and cult. It introduces key themes such as pudicitia’s association with married women, public display, and the negotiation of the boundaries of social status. The chapter also exposes some of the tensions that lend this ideal of displaying pudicitia its frisson: its elusiveness; its dangerous proximity to, and strained relationship with, beauty; its fragility in the face of suspicion and gossip.
Pudicitia was a personal qualiry that needed to be displayed to .and seenby others. Roman society demanded that a married woman (and particularly one involved in celebrating the cult of pudicitia) must strive to display the qualiry of pudicitia to the restof the communiry in her person. Ideally pudicitia would shine forth from a married woman; it would turn heads when she walked down the street. As the philosopher Seneca writes to his mother Helvia, the most befitting ornamenr for a woman is pudicitia: ‘In you is seen the unique ornament, the most lovely kind of beauty, the greatest glory’ – pudicitia’ .
Rebecca Langlands
Sexual Morality in Ancient Rome: (Chapter 1), Cambridge University Press (2006)
Abstract
This book begins with a chapter about pudicitia as publicly celebrated and rewarded in Roman society. A striking aspect of pudicitia was its association with public and visual display by married women to rhe community, both through their appearance and demeanour and through their cultivation of pudicitia as a goddess. This first chapter explores the manifestation of pudicitia as personified abstract virtue, a goddess described as playing an active role in the lives of ancient Romans, with her own shrines, cult statues and cult. It introduces key themes such as pudicitia’s association with married women, public display, and the negotiation of the boundaries of social status. The chapter also exposes some of the tensions that lend this ideal of displaying pudicitia its frisson: its elusiveness; its dangerous proximity to, and strained relationship with, beauty; its fragility in the face of suspicion and gossip.
Pudicitia was a personal qualiry that needed to be displayed to .and seenby others. Roman society demanded that a married woman (and particularly one involved in celebrating the cult of pudicitia) must strive to display the qualiry of pudicitia to the restof the communiry in her person. Ideally pudicitia would shine forth from a married woman; it would turn heads when she walked down the street. As the philosopher Seneca writes to his mother Helvia, the most befitting ornamenr for a woman is pudicitia: ‘In you is seen the unique ornament, the most lovely kind of beauty, the greatest glory’ – pudicitia’ .
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