Venus Verticordia

Venus Verticordia ("the changer of hearts") was an epithet of the Roman goddess
Venus, alluding to the goddess' ability to change hearts fromlust to chastity.

In the year 114 BC, three Vestal Virgins were condemned to death for transgressing
with Roman knights the rigid law against sexual intercourse. To atone for their
misdeeds, a shrine was dedicated to Venus Verticordia in the hope that she would
turn the hearts of women and girls against licentiousness and towards chastity.
Hence her name Verticordia, which means 'turner of hearts'. Under this title she was
especially worshipped by married women, and on 1 April the Veneralia festival was
celebrated in her honor.[1]

According to Valerius Maximus, a Roman woman named Sulpicia was chosen by

the vote of ten drawn by lot from a pool of one hundred who had been chosen by the
women of Rome as a body to dedicate a statue of Venus Verticordia. Sulpicia was
deemed the chastest woman in Rome, and the method of selection was prescribed by Venus Verticordia by Dante Gabriel
the Sibylline Books.[2] Rossetti (1868), Russell-Cotes Art
Gallery & Museum

References
1. Otto Kiefer (1934). Sexual Life in Ancient Rome(https://books.google.com/books?id=o4FnssntpwkC&dq)
. Translated
by Gilbert and Helen Highet. Routledge. p. 125.
2. L. Richardson, jr (1992).A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (https://books.google.com/books?id=K_qj
o30tjHAC&dq). Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 411.

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This page was last edited on 15 June 2016, at 14:29.

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