Talk:Bona Dea

message: Given that Clodius entered an all-female ceremony, disguised as a woman, I would think that he desecrated, rather than consecrated, the ceremony. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 199.73.1.1 (talk) 16:03, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "desecration", surely, not "consecration"? 

message: While the article mentions the rites on December 4, it does not explains the festival of the Bona Dea taken place on May 1. Could someone expand that topic? Thanks in advance. Pichote (talk) 20:40, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Festival of the Bona Dea 

message: Seriously? Why should a virginal goddess be represented with phallic symbols?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.178.156.125 (talk) 09:04, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Snakes indicate her "phallic nature"?

message: One of Ulrich's lovers in the modernist masterpiece The Man Without Qualities (by Robert Musil), is called Bonadea....  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alordslums (talk • contribs) 11:07, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cultural References 

message: Davey, I see you're still at active work on this. You didn't ask for opinions, unless that TMI? in your last edit summary can be taken as such, but I think the introductory section is too long and detailed in proportion to the article; intros need to be a "quick read," in my view. So here are my suggestions:
* I'd just say "her festivals were held in May and December and were open only to women"; this would reduce paragraphs two and three to approximately one sentence, and you already have a section on festivals and rituals.
* Definitely no "Italic antecedents" in the intro. This belongs to the "Background and origins" section, which is about the same length. (And currently is melded with iconography? Why? There may be a reason my ignorance of the topic keeps me from seeing.)
* As an interesting hook, I'd keep one sentence in the intro on the Clodius affair, something along the lines of: "Her rites attracted unwanted attention in 62 BC, when Clodius Pulcher intruded on them supposedly for the sake of seducing Julius Caesar's wife, occasioning the famous declaration "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion." This reduces the fourth paragraph to one or two sentences; later developments can be discussed in due course, though Livia casting herself as the Bona Dea might also be worth keeping for its "hookiness." Clodius's intrusion in this revision would thus immediately follow "her festivals were held in May and December and were open only to women."
* Fifth paragraph could probably be reduced to a couple of sentences. "Her primary attributes are … " and "Her cult is widely attested in the provinces."
Anyway, I just feel that if the intro provides TMI the article can start to feel redundant or repetitive. Or maybe I feel this way because in working on Pluto (mythology) it started to seem recursive and so far I've lacked the will to fix it. Cynwolfe (talk) 15:19, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh yes, recursive is as recursive does; just one of the problems that arise when writing articles backasswards - starting with the lead, that is, just to get an overall grasp on the topic (see somewhere above). The lede's a mini-article, and I've been playing catch-up beneath it. At the moment, it's better than the article. In fact it should be the article, because it's more robustly structured than the article itself; I can add to it. If you'd like to dash off a precis thereof, and call it... um, a lede, I'd be perfectly happy. Not that I expect it; your Pluto is truly splendid, by the way. Also btw, Brouwer arrived, and in four days flat. Haploidavey (talk) 16:07, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I was just coming back to say that of course all the info belongs in the article, just organized under the headers. I did have that sense it was a "mini-article," which is not a bad thing to keep, then, if you feel the rest is still under construction. I tend to overlook the obvious, which is to recognize first all the good stuff you've provided, so forgive me. Cynwolfe (talk) 16:11, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Nothing to forgive, Dea. Everything you've said is helpful, and I hadn't even noticed that awful misplacement in the subheading. Why, in the name of all that's bona, did I do that? Haploidavey (talk) 16:20, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  lede 

message: Fauna (goddess) redirects to this article, as of... I can't figure out when, but fairly recently.  Fauna now has no article of her own. Poor Fauna. We can't imply that she is Bona Dea (or vice versa). They should not be synthesised. I don't know how to undo the redirect and restore the original article, stub or whatever it was, 'cuz I'm inept. Can anyone oblige? Haploidavey (talk) 22:04, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, am in the process of fixing this and adding a bit of info to make your point clear within the article space of Fauna (goddess). Give me a hour or so. Cynwolfe (talk) 23:09, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Bless you. She seems to be dealt with only in the context of Bona Dea scholarship. Hope I'm wrong there. I'll see if Brouwer has any leads or suggestions. Haploidavey (talk) 23:15, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Mostly, yes; but see Varro's quote now in the article. At any rate, it seems to me to lighten the load here at Bona Dea if Fauna is dealt with independently; otherwise, there'd be a long digression and sputtering about whether she is or is not the Bona Dea (also, you should review the brief description of the B.D. at Fauna's article, which is as it was before I did anything). "Fauna" is hard to research, for obvious reasons. Passing remark in Lipka and Roman and European Mythologies (the latter rather amusing), but I didn't take time to try to add them. Arnobius may be the source for Fauna Fatua as a single deity. Cynwolfe (talk) 00:51, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Bona Dea and Fauna

message: I'm sure matters remain outstanding in the posts above but I'm here to explain my deletion of a passage (cited to a minor museum guidebook) that linked an Umbrian goddess, Capra/Cupra (sv) to Bona Dea. Our unreferenced article on Cupra has an external link to the Thalia.com website; this makes the same connection. A reading of Antonaccio and Neils, 1995, p. 270  suggests that this stems from the late 19th cent. scholar Roscher, who perhaps made overmuch of Varro's derivation of Cyprius/Ciprius from Ciprus, which he (Varro) explains as bonus (in Lingua Latina, 5.159). A few (a very few) modern scholarly sources at least mention the argument, but I can find none to confirm its conclusions. The case for any connection seems vanishingly slight, thus the deletion. Haploidavey (talk) 20:03, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Lazily, I shall ask a question without looking anything up. So this identification just boiled down to Varro throwing bonus around? Cynwolfe (talk) 20:17, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Your Capra link is a dab, did you know? Cynwolfe (talk) 20:19, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh bugger; 'twas Cupra after all. Anyhow, on Varro's casual flinging; yes, so it would seem. How cool is that, huh? (eeew... sorry, I've just had fun in a short-lived Marvel-world, over at Apollo, an' it rubbed off on me). Haploidavey (talk) 20:23, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cupra 

message: Now the article attributes to Macrobius the series of epithets which connects Maia and Bona Dea. It should be stated clearly that the epithets were indigitamenta from the books of the pontiffs, divulged by the noted scholar Cornelius Labeo ("auctor est C. L. ....").Aldrasto11 (talk) 14:38, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it comes via Macrobius, who credits Labeo as his source. I think this is an issue for footnotes rather than the main body of text, the relevant epithets being Bona, Fauna and Fatua as indigitamenta of Terra in the Libri Pontificum. Haploidavey (talk) 16:31, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Macrobius, Cornelius Labeo and the pontifical books

message: Brouwer's 1989 book apparently overlooks some essential matters. The French publication whose author points this out is linked overleaf & gives details of cult around the Adriatic, especially in Aquillea. Haploidavey (talk) 10:01, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Needs updating