Vestal Virgins In The Roman Pageants

Why had no one told me that my body would become a battlefield, a sacrifice, a test? Why did I not know that birth is the pinnacle where women discover the courage to become mothers? But of course, there is no way to tell this or to hear it. Until you are the woman on the bricks, you have no idea how death stands in the corner, ready to play his part. Until you are the woman on the bricks, you do not know the power that arises from other women—even strangers speaking an unknown tongue, invoking the names of unfamiliar goddesses. (Diamant 224)

All over the world, societal roles of women are different. This has not changed despite centuries of time passing. Roman and medieval women, though parts of different cultures and separated by distance, were very similar.

This shows that the Earth goddess was a ‘force to be reckoned with the Ibo’s eyes. Most of their life depended on pleasing her. If they didn’t, it had terrible consequences.

Women have beliefs that requires them to engage in acts like: “baking their heads in small ovens for about an hour.” These such activities are a publicized course of work, that like the medicine men requires various knowledge, that can be studied at different temples just for the learning of baking people of the Nacirema tribes head. Miner states that these rites of women are “made up in barbarity,” because his studies of women of this tribe give off the vibe to him that women believe “they lack frequency.”

“It was through this hole that the women of the shtetl took turns viewing my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother. Many were convinced … she was of an evil nature … they had to piece together mental collages of her from each of the fragmented views …” (20).

The title of Sarah B. Pomeroy's book on women in antiquity is a summary of the main categories of females in the literary imagination and the societies of ancient Greece and Rome, over a period of fifteen hundred years. Beginning with goddesses, Pomery retells some Greek myths, outlining the social functions of female Olympians – the goddesses are archetypical images of human females, as envisioned by males. Desirable characteristics among a number of females rather than their concentration in one being are appropriate to a patriarchal society. Demosthenes states in the fourth century B.C. this ideal among mortal men, "We have mistresses for our enjoyment, concubines to serve our person and wives for the bearing of legitimate children (Pomery 1995)." Pomery’s goal in writing this book was to detail and outline the true significance of women in all other their roles in antiquity.

The Everyday Humanities series presents, “Medieval Women and the Story of the European Witch,” featuring Christine Nuefield, PhD. Her talk will explore medieval-era hysteria about witchcraft. Nuefield will also explore why women represented a disproportionate of the convicted and summarily executed.

These three mortal women were the expenses to found Rome, emphasized by Vergil by characterizing all them as obstacles of Aeneas’s fate and giving them the similar outcome of death.

In the realm of ancient western literature, the nature of and relationship among men, women and the divine is often times manifested through the sinfulness of men, the diminishment of women’s value, and the rightfulness of the divine. One such case is Genesis 19 and Judges 19 of the Hebrew Bible, two similar narratives about rape. From a modern biblical point of view, the writers of Judges 19 deliberately situated the characters in similar positions as those in Genesis 19, but included their own telling on women’s destiny to illustrate how women are treated different societies. The two narratives together explain that men are sinful toward women if not for divine intervention. In particular, the narratives’ contrasting endings show that women

The gods sought to call her to the clouds, to cut her existence of flesh and blood short, far shorter than she deserved. She long as she had a say, she would make herself heard. Ida spent many days of looking through the book, reading of the spells and incantations of her ancestors, seeing their poorly drawn portraits sketched into the faded pages of the book. Finally, after much deliberation, she prepared her spell. It involved purposely placed candles and herbs from her garden, and sadly, the sacrifice of the cat that often roamed the grounds. Drawing a circle in the blood of the sacrifice and standing in the edge, she began the chanting. The candles sparked and sizzles and rose up to the ceiling like red vipers, crawling over the ceiling planks before plugging into the center of the circle, only to rise up again to form the figure of a horned man. He was broad of chest and shoulder, lean about his waist and towering in his height, with a thick mane of black hair and eyes the color of Orlseaian sapphires. His skin, like hardened turquoise marble, seemed to cool as the fire went out around them, finally settling to a gentle copper tone. He was like nothing she had ever seen before, and more than she could possibly

In ancient Rome there were two sisters Laurentia, the older one, and Sabina, the younger one. Complete opposites the eldest was tall and had straight fair hair with light blue eyes while the youngest was shorter and had dark curling hair with brown eyes. The sisters were always arguing from dusk till dawn about nothing in particular.

The goddesses were demonstrated as the all-powerful beings that give birth, and were therefore considered to be the “rulers of the valley”. The

Completely unlike the courtesans, the Vestal Virgins made up another small segment of society. There is a little more information available about them. The Vestal Virgins were very highly regarded in Ancient Rome. There were six Vestal Virgins picked from the most noble families in Rome. The Virgins were under the control of the College of Pontiffs. The Vestal Virgins lived in a part of the Roman Forum and could only leave this area on state duties. Their duty was to feed the sacred flame of the temple of the goddess, and to present sacrifices and prayers for the welfare of the state. They were obliged to take a vow of chastity and serve in the temple for thirty years, after which period they could choose to leave if they wished. Although marriage

"On their arrival the souls had to go straight before Lachesis. And an interpreter….took from the lap of Lachesis a number of lots and patterns of life and…proclaimed: "This is the word of Lachesis maiden daughter of Necessity. Souls of a day, here you must begin another round of mortal life whose end is death"…Then (he) set before them….different patterns of life , far more in number than the souls who were to choose them…"

In stanza 9, there is a possible connection to stanza 3 and in this stanza, the women seem to be appearing in front of the speaker, almost in a ghost like form with “a face like a frost fern”. The description here is very dark and aggressive. The “Light twists in a violent retching” and this shows the manner in which the women are manifesting themselves. In contrast to what was said earlier in stanza three, it seems now that these women did have a violent past. The “dusty snakes” which are used to describe the women implies that they are very old and possess a sly character.