Venus Obsequens

Venus Obsequens ("Compliant Venus") was the first Venus for whom a shrine ''(aedes)'' was built in ancient Rome. Little is known of her cult beyond the circumstances of her temple founding and a likely connection to the Vinalia Rustica, an August wine festival.

On the calendar

The anniversary ''( dies natalis)'' of the Temple of Venus Obsequens is thought to have been celebrated August 19, the day of the Vinalia Rustica, the second wine festival of the year on the Roman calendar. The Vinalia appears on the oldest calendars without a connection to Venus, but Varro's reference to an ''aedes'' dedicated to her on August 19 has been taken as this temple. The other Vinalia was celebrated in April, the month over which Venus held guardianship ''(tutela)'', on the 23rd, which after 215 BC was also the feast day of Venus Erycina. Both wine festivals were held originally in honor of Jupiter with the complex associations of Venus incorporated. The Romans attributed the uninhibited behaviors induced by wine-drinking to Venus exercising her powers through Liber.

Gardens were dedicated to Venus on August 19 as well. The Temple of Venus Libitina, a goddess of death, celebrated its ''dies natalis'' on the same day, in a part of Rome on the Esquiline Hill where funerary services were concentrated. Plutarch saw this Venus as encompassing the regenerative cycle of birth and death, but Varro distinguished between Libitina and Libentina, the latter inspiring "sensual pleasure".

The epithet ''obsequens''

Although Venus had an archaic origin in Rome and Latium, the cult of Venus Obsequens was the earliest established in the Greek manner to Venus equated with Aphrodite as a goddess of sexuality. The adjective ''obsequens'', often translated as "deferential" (hence English "obsequious"), as a divine epithet expresses favor or active support – a "propitious" Venus.

The association of Venus and Fortuna in Roman religion is of long standing; Servius Tullius, semilegendary sixth king of Rome, is supposed to have set up an altar to Fortuna within a precinct of Venus, along with his many other dedications to Fortuna. A Fortuna Obsequens is known from inscriptions, a mention in an early comedy by Plautus, and Plutarch.

The cultivation of "Venus the Obedient" overtly expresses "an attempt to control the goddess", though counterbalanced over time by other instantiations such as Venus Erycina, originally a goddess of prostitution celebrated with sexual license. The establishment of state cult for Venus Erycina mirrors that for Obsequens in several particulars, including the authority of the Sibylline Books and a '' dies natalis'' on the second Vinalia (April 23); Erycina's temple was vowed in 217 BC by Quintus Fabius Maximus Cunctator, the grandson of the founder of the Temple of Venus Obsequens.

Temple founding

Sited near the southeast end of the Circus Maximus at the edge of the Forum Boarium and facing the foot of the Aventine, the Temple of Venus Obsequens was built in 295 BC by the curule aedile Quintus Fabius Maximus Gurges during the Third Samnite War. The timing of the construction suggests that Fabius Gurges built it in thanks for his father's victory the previous year at the Battle of Sentinum. The foundation legend for Gurges' temple indicates that from an early date, the favor of Venus was felt as contributing both to success in war and sexuality. Her power was the force of desire or intention; the Vergil commentator Servius explains that Gurges had built the temple to Venus Obsequens "because she had gone along with him".

In the year 295 BC, Rome had been subject to pestilence, and prodigies had prompted the consultation of the ''libri'', the Sibylline books. The Obsequens cult was founded following a perceived outbreak of sexual misconduct ''(stuprum)'' among ''matronae'' (ordinarily a term for respectable married women), which was supposedly so widespread that Gurges could fund the project from the fines he collected.

The line of thought that led from the victory at Sentinum to funding the temple with fines for ''stuprum'' is not recorded, but it was one in a series of foundings based on regulating female behavior as a religious response to social disorder particularly in time of war or crisis for the Roman state. In 331 BC Rome's first trial for poisoning had resulted in the conviction of 170 matrons, and the involvement of patrician women may suggest that the founding of the scantly attested Temple of Pudicitia Patricia was a consequence. ''Pudicitia'' was the virtue by which women were to demonstrate their excellence, often invoked in settings when married women were competing for social standing, encompassing sexual integrity and self-discipline equivalent to ''virtus'', "manly" virtue. In 296 BC, a corresponding cult for Pudicitia Plebeia was established so that plebeians could compete as ''pudicae''. Participation in both cults was limited to ''univirae'', women who had married only once. The Temple of Venus Obsequens is one of the proposed locations of the first statue, dedicated in 220 BC, to Venus Verticordia ("Heart-Turner"), whose sphere of influence was diverting sexual desire into marital expression.

The matrons' ''stuprum''

The historian Livy says that the matrons were convicted of ''stuprum'', an all-purpose word for sexual misconduct, originally meaning any disgraceful act, which by his own time had become a matter of public law owing to Augustan moral legislation. The view of Mario Torelli and Richard Bauman that these upper-class women had literally prostituted themselves, based in part on the intervention of an aedile, is not widely held. However, Livy's insistence that many women were involved may indicate a widespread societal issue in which wives were left socially and financially adrift during wartime and sought companionship and material support. A comparable incident occurred in 213 BC, when Italy was invaded during the Punic Wars and large numbers of men were called into military service: two plebeian aediles convicted a number of women of ''stuprum'' and sent them into exile.

Adultery might be more plausible in the case that resulted in the Obsequens cult; the temple may have served as a public warning against infidelity. The matrons were brought before an aedile as a matter of public rather than private law, and yet their offenses seem to have been regarded as less serious than sex crimes that could result in capital penalties. That fines were deemed a sufficient penalty may suggest "something less than adultery". Jane F. Gardner conjectured that the matrons were guilty of "nothing more than disorderly and uninhibited behaviour 'under the influence'" at festivals where women drank wine, such as the feast of Anna Perenna and the two Vinalia in honor of Venus – "debauched picnics" that allowed them to cast off their usual propriety in the guise of religion. They may not have been "guilty" of anything; but since a conviction for ''stuprum'' could result in exile, property forfeiture as a consequence might explain the source of temple funding more fully than mere fines.

See also

* Dea Viriplaca

Notes

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Venus (mythology)