Research Catalog

Title

The role of vestal virgins in Roman civic religion : a structuralist study of the crimen incesti / Lindsay J. Thompson ; with a foreword by James J. O'Donnell.

Author

Thompson, Lindsay J.

Publication

Lewiston, [N.Y.] : Edwin Mellen Press, c2010.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

ii, 161 p. : ill.; 24 cm.

Subject

• Rome > Religion
• Vestal virgins

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Foreword / by James J. O'Donnell -- 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 -- Roman civic religion. Roman marriage, family, and gender relations ; The Roman family ; Roman gender relations ; Roman civic identity : Romanitas ; Roman religion -- Roman myth and ritual. Structural elements of Roman myth and ritual ; Cult symbols and themes ; Roman religious sensibility -- Roman virginity and the vestal cult. Ancient texts ; Archaeological record ; General features of the vestal cult ; Language of the vestal cult -- Vestal mythology. Mythic narratives ; Vestal themes and images ; Vestal characters and relationships ; Vestal sexuality and gender -- 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 -- Interpreting vestal virginity. Virginity in the late antique political imagination ; What happened to the vestals? ; Concluding thoughts.

ISBN

• 9780773447653
• 0773447652

LCCN

^^2009046878

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library