- Virginia (Volumnius)
"Virginia" was the daughter of
Aulus Verginius , apatrician . "Verginia" is the usual orthography found in Latin manuscripts.Virginia’s new husband in
296 BCE wasLucius Volumnius Flamma Violens . He became anovus homo the previous year. That same time the patrician "important ladies" insulted her by forbidding her access to the ceremony at the Patrician Pudicitia honoring the female virtuepudicitia , a public religious function. This chapel is inside theForum Boarium up against the round temple of Hercules.The
patrician women did not allow her the sacred rites of pudicitia because she had married outside the patriciate. She was unceremoniously removed from the Temple. This led to an altercation in which many other women were involved including women like Virginia wanting to go to the temple for the same purpose.Virginia protested she had entered the temple of Pudicitia in good faith as a pure woman. She owned many houses at Vicus Longus and separated a group of them to make a modest shrine. She then invited the wives of the
plebian there and told them about the arrogance of thepatrician women,:"I am dedicating this shrine to the Plebeian Pudicitia and invite you each to compete in a wifely modesty as the men in this City. I beg the patrician women to show the same spirit of emulation on the score of chastity that the men display with regard to courage and valor, so that this shrine may, if possible, have the reputation of being honored with a holier observance manner and by purer worshippers than that of the patrician women."
References
Primary sources
* [http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/txt/ah/Livy/Livy10.html#livy.hist.10.23 Livy's History, Book X, 23 "Pudicitia"]
econdary sources
* [http://ancientlibrary.com/smith-bio/3601.html The Ancient Library - Virginia number 2]
*Virginia Brown's translation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Famous Women, pp. 129-130; Harvard University Press 2001; ISBN 0-674-01130-9
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