The role of vestal virgins in Roman civic religion
Subtitle: a structuralist study of the crimen incesti
By: Lindsay J. Thompson ; with a foreword by James J. O'Donnell
Publisher: Edwin Mellen Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Lewiston, [N.Y.]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 161
ISBN-13: 9780773447653
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Foreword / by James J. O'Donnell; title: Interpreting culture. Historical consciousness and historiography ; Human experience and cultural structures of meaning ; The body as a political site and symbol ; Embodiment and cultural structures of meaning ; Embodiment and cultural identity ; The body as a political paradigm ; Gender and culture ; Sex as category of social differentiation ; Summary; title: Roman civic religion. Roman marriage, family, and gender relations ; The Roman family ; Roman gender relations ; Roman civic identity : Romanitas ; Roman religion; title: Roman myth and ritual. Structural elements of Roman myth and ritual ; Cult symbols and themes ; Roman religious sensibility; title: Roman virginity and the vestal cult. Ancient texts ; Archaeological record ; General features of the vestal cult ; Language of the vestal cult; title: Vestal mythology. Mythic narratives ; Vestal themes and images ; Vestal characters and relationships ; Vestal sexuality and gender; title: The vestal ritual tradition. Rituals of the vestal cult ; The vestal role in Roman civic cult observance ; Ritual patterns of the crimen incesti ; The crimen incesti ritual as sacrificial purification  The crimen incesti ritual as heroic ordeal; title: Interpreting vestal virginity. Virginity in the late antique political imagination ; What happened to the vestals? ; Concluding thoughts.