Portraits of the Vestal Virgins, Priestesses of Ancient Rome PDF Download

Author: Molly Lindner
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472118951
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
Examines portraits of Rome's Vestal Virgins as artistic documents and political vehicles

Author: Robin Lorsch Wildfang
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134151659
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Comprehensive and thoroughly up-to-date, this volume offers a brand new analysis of the Vestal Virgins’ ritual function in Roman religion. Undertaking a detailed and careful analysis of ancient literary sources, Wildfang argues that the Vestals’ virginity must be understood on a variety of different levels and provides a solution to the problem of the Vestals’ peculiar legal status in ancient Rome. Addressing the one official state priesthood open to women at Rome, this volume explores and analyzes a range of topics including: the rituals enacted by priestesses (both the public rituals performed in connection with official state rites and festivals and the private rites associated only with the order itself) the division and interface between religion, state and family structure the Vestals’ participation in rights that were outside the sphere of traditional female activity. New and insightful, this investigation of one of the most important state cults in ancient Rome is an essential addition to the bookshelves of all those interested in Roman religion, history and culture.

Author: Meghan J. DiLuzio
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400883032
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
A Place at the Altar illuminates a previously underappreciated dimension of religion in ancient Rome: the role of priestesses in civic cult. Demonstrating that priestesses had a central place in public rituals and institutions, Meghan DiLuzio emphasizes the complex, gender-inclusive nature of Roman priesthood. In ancient Rome, priestly service was a cooperative endeavor, requiring men and women, husbands and wives, and elite Romans and slaves to work together to manage the community's relationship with its gods. Like their male colleagues, priestesses offered sacrifices on behalf of the Roman people, and prayed for the community’s well-being. As they carried out their ritual obligations, they were assisted by female cult personnel, many of them slave women. DiLuzio explores the central role of the Vestal Virgins and shows that they occupied just one type of priestly office open to women. Some priestesses, including the flaminica Dialis, the regina sacrorum, and the wives of the curial priests, served as part of priestly couples. Others, such as the priestesses of Ceres and Fortuna Muliebris, were largely autonomous. A Place at the Altar offers a fresh understanding of how the women of ancient Rome played a leading role in public cult.

Author: Robin Lorsch Wildfang
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9780415397957
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
This is an exploration of the function of the Vestal Virgins in the changing Roman world, exposed to new and different cultures through the expansion of the Roman Empire, provides a new and penetrating investigation of a cult which was at the very centre of ancient Roman religion.

Author: Ariadne Staples
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113478788X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
The role of women in Roman culture and society was a paradoxical one. On the one hand they enjoyed social, material and financial independence and on the other hand they were denied basic constitutional rights. Roman history is not short of powerful female figures, such as Agrippina and Livia, yet their power stemmed from their associations with great men and was not officially recognised. Ariadne Staples' book examines how women in Rome were perceived both by themselves and by men through women's participation in Roman religion, as Roman religious ritual provided the single public arena where women played a significant formal role. From Good Goddess to Vestal Virgins argues that the ritual roles played out by women were vital in defining them sexually and that these sexually defined categories spilled over into other aspects of Roman culture, including political activity. Ariadne Staples provides an arresting and original analysis of the role of women in Roman society, which challenges traditionally held views and provokes further questions.

Author: Sarolta A. Takács
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 029271694X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
Takács offers a sweeping overview of Roman women's roles and functions in religion and, by extension, in Rome's history and culture during both the Republic and the Empire. She begins with the religious calendar and the various festivals in which women were significant and then examines major female deities and cults.

Author: Merchin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781794054257
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
Vestal Virgin Journal With The Cover Of Portrait Of A Woman As A Vestal Virgin by Angelica Kauffmann, Journal Paper, 200 Pages, 6" x 9" Number of pages: 200 Size: 6 x 9 inches (~15.24 x 22.86 cm) Perfect choice for those who love the culture and art of ancient Rome - as they stated: "The purity of women represents and safeguards the purity of the state; thus the consecrated virginity of the Vestal Virgins upheld the integrity of ancient Rome."

Author: Lindsay J. Thompson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
This study introduces a question, somewhat disregarded or discounted in recent years, regarding the link between the Vestals and early Christian consecrated virgins. In a political interpretation of the ancient Roman virginity cult, this work demonstrates that female virginity was understood by both Christian and non-Christian Romans as a symbolic analogue of the securely intact body politic.

Author: Celia E. Schultz
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807830186
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Expanding the discussion of religious participation of women in ancient Rome, Celia E. Schultz demonstrates that in addition to observances of marriage, fertility, and childbirth, there were more--and more important--religious opportunities available to R

Author: Molly Morrow McGlannan Lindner
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Dissertations, Academic
Languages : en
Pages : 1034

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Book Description