by León, Vicki
She was bright and rebellious, an unabashed woman who liked mixing it up politically, socially, and erotically, preferably at the same time. Very much a free spirit—which was part of her attraction—Clodia refused to be confined to one husband, one lover, or even her own social rank. She insistently scandalized Rome, openly choosing cosy intimacy with her brother at times. Her husband Quintus wasn’t the compliant sort, either; they had sordid screaming matches in public. Clodia abused wine and got addicted to gambling to ease her sorrows. In short, a real handful.
Although Catullus fell hopelessly in love with her, she may not have felt as deeply. At times, Clodia preferred to be his muse, or his intellectual sparring partner.
In 59 B.C. her husband died in what were described as odd circumstances. There were nasty rumors she’d poisoned him, but Clodia was never formally accused. Once she became a new widow, she promoted Catullus to full-time lover! But his joy quickly vanished. She put him through the wringer by aardvarking his best friend Marcus Caelius Rufus at the same time. Fidelity? It clearly did not suit her. She wasn’t adverse to dallying with lower-ranking men, either. It was rumored that even slaves had known her intimately.
Catullus channeled his grief about his faithless woman into his poetry. His verse 70, for instance, says: “The woman I love says that there is no one whom she would rather marry than me, not if Jupiter himself were to woo her. Says; but what a woman says to her ardent lover should be written in wind and running water.”
Doomed love aside, the bittersweet fact remains that Catullus himself took other lovers, including a boy of tender years named Juventius, to whom he also wrote passionate, anguished poems: “I stole a kiss from you, honey-sweet Juventius, while you were playing, a kiss sweeter than sweet ambrosia.” Today he’d be likely to be hit with a child abuse charge.
In addition to his short poems, Catullus wrote a long, very loving epic to his dead brother Manius, and some traditional hymenaios marriage verses. He insulted Julius Caesar in another verse—and had to apologize. He admired Sappho, who by her era was out of fashion, immensely. In three of his poems he emulated her, perhaps translating directly from her (now-lost) works. In one poem to his Lesbia, he attempted to rewrite in Latin one of Sappho’s most famous Greek poems. In this, he may have come away the victor. Red-Letter Days &
But the unsavory fact remains that Catullus lamented his loss of love as thievery, as something valuable stolen from him. His invective or sexual verses are extremely coarse. Like the god Priapus, whose giant phallus guarded the grounds and gardens of Rome, he threatens thieves of love with rape, or worse. His morose opinion of women, including Lesbia, swung between two extremes: beloved creature or sluttish pig.
As befits a poet of what was then the modern school, Catullus died tragically young, around the age of thirty.
Clodius Pulcher:
Rome’s lovable, unspeakable rogue
Mutinous army officer, political turncoat, gang leader, cross-dresser, pirate hostage, and zestful incest aficionado: Publius Clodius Pulcher jammed all that and much more into his forty-one-year lifespan. And the Roman public loved that bad boy for it.
From one of Rome’s most ancient and aristocratic families, the Claudii, he, his mom, and his three sisters (all named Clodia) were left nearly destitute at their father’s death.
As the Third Mithradatic War in Asia Minor heated up, the twenty-five-year-old joined the military, becoming minor brass under his brother-in-law, General Lucullus. He immediately got into a jam by inciting mutiny among the legionaries. Tossed out of the army, Clodius wheedled another brother-in-law into letting him take command of his fleet.
On this outing, Clodius was captured by pirates. The brigands demanded a ransom from the ruler of a nearby island, who sent a miserly sum. That tickled the pirates so much, they let Clodius go.
Back in Rome, Clodius faced an army treason charge brought by Lucullus. Making things even stickier, Clodius had also been doing the wild thing with his own little sister, Lucullus’s wife Clodia. When Lucullus discovered the adultery, he divorced her at the speed of light.
Expecting a death threat at any moment, Clodius hastily took shelter by marrying Fulvia, a ferociously active member of the influential Tuditani clan. They promptly set about making babies. By 62 B.C., bored with respectability, Clodius sought extracurricular diversion, hoping to find it with Pompeia, at that time the wife of Julius Caesar.
Things seemed to jell in December, when the all-nighter mystery rites of the Bona Dea goddess took place at Caesar’s home. Bona Dea, goddess of chastity and fertility, had superstrict rules. Absolutely no men allowed; even tomcats and baby boys were removed from the premises.
Clodius enjoyed complicated romances and a bit of transvestite fun as well; this seemed like a perfect time to try them out. The women at Caesar’s house had just sacrificed a sow and were having cocktails with the vestal virgins who ran the ceremonies when a commotion broke out. An alert servant heard a strangely deep voice coming from a person wearing female robes—and cross-dressing Clodius was busted. The Bona Dea ceremony was ruined, called off due to male sacrilege.
In the tumultuous aftermath, Caesar quickly divorced Pompeia, saying, “The wife of Caesar must be above suspicion.” Now that Pompeia was free of marital complications, Clodius lost interest.
Clodius thought it best to go hide out at his middle sister’s place. Sisterly incest was such a comfort, especially with the drop-dead-beautiful Clodia. His brother-in-law Lucullus was still peeved about his incest with little sister Clodia, and now brought him up on three counts of sexual immorality.
At his trial, the evidence was solidly stacked against Clodius. At the eleventh hour, however, his rich buddy Crassus bribed all the jurors and got Clodius acquitted. His wife Fulvia even stood by him.
As Clodius reveled in his reversals, up popped Cicero, his worst political foe. Not only was the man a social climber, he’d become a boorish neighbor over a property dispute. As if that weren’t hubris enough, Cicero had gone after the Cataline conspirators who’d plotted the overthrow of the government, and got some of them executed. Without due process, either.
Well, he, Clodius, was now the newly elected tribune and head of the plebeian party. And he (backed by the muscle of his own personal gang of thugs) wasn’t going to stand for it. He immediately used his shiny new legislative powers to push through a law that ordered exile for anyone who’d executed a Roman citizen without a trial—which meant Cicero, his sworn enemy. In 58 B.C. he waved a smirking goodbye to Cicero, headed to exile in northern Greece. He and Fulvia had a good laugh about it. Quick as lightning, he passed another law, prohibiting Cicero to approach within four hundred miles of Italy. More fun!
Sadly, it was downhill from there for Rome’s most popular rogue politico. Within two years, Clodius and his gang would be battling the rival gangs of another thuggish political aspirant named Milo.
In December of 53 B.C. Clodius’ string of lucky breaks ran out. He was murdered by Milo’s gang. Even after death, Clodius had maniacally devoted fans. To mourn him, the mob built his funeral pyre inside the Roman Senate house, then burned it to the ground!
If this tale of Clodius et al sounds like a novel of the American wild west, it should. This century of Roman history was plagued by lawlessness, civil war, the shift from a nominal republic to a de facto monarchy, and the protracted power struggles between the likes of Caesar, Pompey, Mark Antony, Octavian, and many others. Colorful Clodius, a better lover than a fighter, was a mere bit player in the grander scheme of things.
Menstruation:
A flower, a curse, a bitumen remover
Until the later centuries B.C., many cultures around the Mediterranean used a lunar year, as women’s bodies do, roughly correlating to the phases of the moon. The Romans had a special name for calculating time: they called it mensuration, which meant “knowledge of the female menses.”
Women of that era probably welcomed their period, since it meant they had mad
e it through another month without getting pregnant. Childbirth, while often longed for, was a high-risk, high-mortality activity.
Males usually respected and often feared female menses. From a feminine point of view in ancient times, “the curse” could have been a blessing. It might have represented a face-saving, welcome way to ward off unwanted sexual advances from husbands and lovers. If you were a slave, menstruating would have been especially useful to discourage your owner.
Occasionally women lost their periods for reasons other than pregnancy. Just as today’s endurance-sport athletes (and anorexics) sometimes stop menstruating, so too did long-ago females. Then, however, it was largely due to the lack of high-quality food rather than to dieting. The cycle of menstrual fertility needs a certain level of stored body fat to function. Low-status girls and women in cultures from Egypt to Greece to Rome to Assyria got less to eat.
In Leviticus, the Bible referred to menstrual blood as the flower that comes before the fruit of the womb, meaning a child. But in Genesis 31, Rachel was able to steal the figurines of her father’s household gods by putting them under a camel saddle, then sitting on it while telling Dad, “I really feel crappy, it’s that time of the month.” In the Talmud, men were warned not to approach menstruating women; if one walked between two males, one of the men would die.
Persians also joined the “avoid them like poison” club; Persian women were ordered not to speak to men or even sit in water during menstruation. The Greeks had a similar phobia. The sixth-century poet Hesiod warned that men should never wash in water that women had already used—just in case a drop of menstrual blood had somehow found its way there. Greeks altogether avoided discussing the mechanics of monthly periods. The earliest known mention of the menstrual cycle was in a play by the out-to-shock Aristophanes, who called the cloth that women used as pads “a pigpen.”
Roman encyclopedist Pliny the Elder produced a whole laundry list of menstrual myths and taboos: gals on the rag could turn wine sour, dull knives, and chase bees away from the hive. Aristotle had this to add: “If a women who is menstruating looks into a mirror, the mirror’s surface becomes bloody-dark, like a cloud.” Another firmly held belief of the day: Romans with a death wish were encouraged to have sex with a menstruating woman during an eclipse. Sickness and death would inevitably follow.
Roman and Jewish men were terrified of menstrual periods. They did recognize one practical use for that monthly flow, however—its supposed ability to extract bitumen from the Dead Sea.
There was, however, one invaluable service that the monthly effluvia from females could provide. In the Dead Sea, which in the first century A.D. was known as Asphalt Lake, large chunks of the solidified petroleum product called bitumen routinely floated to the surface. The tarry substance was used to waterproof wood, caulk boats, and even embalm bodies, but extricating it from the lake was a chore.
In one of his books, the Jewish-Roman author known to us as Josephus revealed the secret. “When they have filled the boats with bitumen, it is no easy task to detach their cargo, which owing to its tenacious and glutinous character, clings to the boat—until it is loosened by the monthly secretions of women, to which it alone yields.”
Besides its practical application as a bitumen remover, menstrual flow had another purpose, according to a widely held notion of the time. When on occasion menstruation stopped, the blood appeared to remain in a woman’s womb and, over a matter of months, “coagulate” into a baby!
Lupercalia Festival:
Whip it to me, wolfie!
Lupercalia, a purification festival from Rome’s past, was perennially popular among females, from luscious young things bursting with hormones to marriage-ready young women and anxious-to-get-preggers matrons.
Why? Because Lupercalia, held on February 15 since only Venus knew when, was all about becoming pure: not to abstain from sex but to get ready for sex.
Even the Romans didn’t agree on the top dog deity being celebrated. Although candidates for the honor included Lupercus, Pan, and Faunus, the frontrunner appeared to be a god we haven’t heard much of but who would fit right into the twenty-first century. His name? Inuus, the god of sexual intercourse.
As February 15 approached, the estrogen level climbed in Rome. Women got up early to nab the best street corners. From there, they could ogle a number of spectacular young men, their skin glistening with oil and not much else, race barefoot through the streets. Unlike Greek men, who got naked in public at the drop of a loincloth, Roman males, especially highranking ones, usually kept their gravitas under wraps.
The Lupercalia, which began as a shepherds’ festival, also honored legendary twins Romulus and Remus, who were shepherds as well as the city’s first kings. For its first five centuries, only patrician males could join the cult of the Lupercii, a word that may mean wolf or possibly goat. (In later Christian times, the bar was lowered, allowing young men of humbler origins to take part, which caused a great deal of sneering and sighs about “back in the good old days …”)
During the Lupercalia Festival, seminaked men ran through Rome, lashing women with goatskins to ensure their fertility. One celebrant was Mark Antony, who tried to “crown” Julius Caesar during the festivities.
For the event, the boys gathered on the outskirts of Rome at the dingy cave of the Lupercal, where they began by sacrificing a goat and a dog to the deity. Two lads then had their foreheads dabbed with animal blood, wiped with wool and milk, followed by mandatory laughter. Ritual accomplished, they all dug in to a feast, well splashed with wine.
As if things weren’t messy enough, the guys then peeled off the goat’s hide and sliced it into ribbons, draping the bloody pieces around their body parts. Each gathered enough goatskin to make a nice whip, which would be used to ritually flog any females and random males they came across.
One memorable Lupercalia took place in 44 B.C. At the peak of his powers, Julius Caesar sat on a golden throne on the speakers’ platform in the Roman Forum, watching the antics of the barefoot, bare-buttocked men as they raced into the open space where the public awaited. The leading Lupercus happened to be Mark Antony, who was well oiled in every sense of the word.
Clambering onto the platform, he went up to Caesar and tried to “crown” him with a laurel wreath. This gesture drew mixed boos and cheers, turning to applause when Julius pushed it away. Antony tried again— Caesar refused more strenuously. Was this a clumsy drunken homage from Antony to his commander? Or a trial run to see if Romans would tolerate a king again? The incident ended with someone else putting the crown on one of Caesar’s statues, after which others tore it down, to great cheers.
Elsewhere in the Forum and around Rome, the festival roared on, the goatskin thongs hitting skin with a whistling sound. Married women and girls of marriageable age crowded in, anxious to get a ritual smack. Being whipped on the hands, back, or bottom with goatskin thongs not only chased off evil spirits, it made a gal receptive in the most basic sense to the guy in her life. The Lupercalia ritual also promised easy and uneventful pregnancy and childbirth, the dream of every fertile woman in those medically treacherous days.
As they made a circuit around the boundaries of the city, the Lupercal runners also performed a lustration or cleansing. This magical ritual, thought to repel the powers of evil and liberate the powers of good, promoted the fertility of humans as well as their animals and their crops.
Naughty songs, peeks at male equipment not normally on display, and other merrymaking took place at the Lupercalia, but it wasn’t an orgy scene in the least. Notwithstanding, later Christian leaders fulminated against its “licentious” character.
Thesmophoria Festival:
Sharing secrets with girlfriends
There was nothing Greek women relished more than overnight festivals for gals only. Generally, they were BYOB and LYHD: bring your own bacchante gear and let your hair down. Back then, it was impossible to get a married woman excited over shoes, since sandals were worn 24/7. O
r dinner dates, since there were none. Or husbands, since they were nonresponsive to honey-do lists, and their bedside manners often sucked.
Thesmophoria was the glorious time of year when Greek women let down their hair in friendship and ritual—no males allowed. Their multiday festival honored the harvest goddess, Demeter.
But oh, the glory of the Thesmophoria, a multi-day campout of ritual, revelry, and female-only secrets held each fall throughout Greece. The one in Athens got all the raves, but similar outings took place for centuries in fifty different locales: from Sparta on the mainland to the island of Delos, from Thebes to Ephesus in Asia Minor. Some of them ran four or five days, and the one thrown by the Greek city-state of Syracuse on Sicily rocked on for ten.
In Athens, every married woman got to go—and her husband was obliged to pay expenses so she could attend. Some accounts also say that mothers could bring their daughters, which seems reasonable, since the festival honored Demeter and her daughter Persephone. (See the entry “Mystery Cults” for more on another Demeter festival.)
It was more than a social gathering and a blessed chance to get away from housewifery. Thesmophoria, meaning “the carrier of the laws,” was first and foremost a very emotional religious celebration. During it, the heartbreaking myth of Demeter, mourning the loss of her daughter, who had to live six months of the year in the Underworld, was retold. This poetic myth was the way in which Greeks chose to explain the natural progression of the seasons. As the deity of vegetative growth and harvest, Demeter appeared to abandon human farms and vineyards during the hot, rainless summers of Greece. By holding the Thesmophoria, women honored the goddess and ensured her return come fall.
