Meghan J Diluzio
Biographic Data
| ID | 1704499 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Meghan J Diluzio |
| GIVEN NAMES | Meghan J |
| FAMILY NAME | Diluzio |
| SIGNATURE | DILUZIO M J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Baylor University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Women’s Lives, Women’s Voices
This volume offers a bold and creative approach to recovering the experiences of women in the Roman world. The collection includes thirteen papers that were originally presented at the Third Annual Symposium Campanum at the Villa Vergiliana in October 2018. The authors demolish long-standing assumptions about the limitations of the material record, casting women as active participants in their communities.Following a brief introduction by the edi…
The Women and the Lares
This paper offers a reexamination of a small Augustan lares altar found on the Capitoline Hill and now in the Museo Nazionale Romano at the Terme di Diocleziano. The altar features two women, one on each of its sides, wearing very similar costumes and offering libations, and twin lares on the front. The discussion analyzes the altar's original context, scale, iconography, workmanship, and state of preservation. This altar fits into the well-known…
A Place at the Altar
A Place at the Altar illuminates a previously underappreciated dimension of religion in ancient Rome: the role of priestesses in civic cult. Demonstrating that priestesses had a central place in public rituals and institutions, Meghan DiLuzio emphasizes the complex, gender-inclusive nature of Roman priesthood. In ancient Rome, priestly service was a cooperative endeavor, requiring men and women, husbands and wives, and elite Romans and slaves to …
Gods, Objects, and Ritual Practice
Conversations about materiality have helped forge a common meeting ground for scholars seeking to integrate images, sites, texts, and implements in their approach to religion in the ancient Mediterranean. The fourteen chapters in this volume explore the productivity of these approaches, with case studies from Israel, Athens, Rome, Sicily, and North Africa . The results foreground the capacity of material approaches to cast lighton the cultural cr…
Priestesses in Action Ritual Instruments Employed by Roman Women
The Peace of the Gods
416 PHOENIX In Chapter Four Gladhill reveals how “Vergil constructs his entire epic according to a series of foedera struck by Aeneas, which organizes and motivates the narrative” (118) and culminates in Aeneas’ sacrifice of Turnus at the poem’s end. On a larger scale, the violation of foedera struck between Europe and Asia underlies the poem’s entire poetic landscape. Within this structure, Gladhill shows how certain patterns, such as altar viol…
A Place at the Altar
A Place at the Altar
This book illuminates a previously underappreciated dimension of religion in ancient Rome: the role of priestesses in civic cult. Demonstrating that priestesses had a central place in public rituals and institutions, the book emphasizes the complex, gender-inclusive nature of Roman priesthood. In ancient Rome, priestly service was a cooperative endeavor, requiring men and women, husbands and wives, and elite Romans and slaves to work together to …
Place at the Altar
Place at the Altar
The Vestal Virgins in Roman Politics
This chapter explores the relationship between individual Vestals and their families. Vestals were legally isolated from their birth families and set apart from the traditional structures of Roman society. Their unique legal status ensured that they belonged, above all, to the Roman people, whose hearth they guarded on a daily basis. However, while the order as a whole maintained its reputation as an isolated and apolitical body at the heart of R…
Conclusion
This concluding chapter argues that priestly service offered women opportunities for leadership, prestige, and even, on occasion, authority, all in the name of maintaining the pax deorum —Rome's relationship with her gods. Some priestesses served cults that were restricted to women, but many men and women served the gods together. This principle applied at the level of household, local, and citywide cult. The saliae virgines demonstrate that coop…
Salian Virgins, Sacerdotes, and Ministrae
This chapter looks at sacerdotes (priestesses), particularly those associated with the public cults of Mars, Fortuna Muliebris, Bona Dea, Liber, Magna Mater, and Ceres. It also discusses the female support personnel. Without these women, many of whom were libertae (freedwomen) and servae publicae (public slaves), the ritual system would have ground to a halt. As a group, these priestesses and cultic assistants further complicate traditional accou…
Priestly Couples
This chapter argues that priestly couples had a larger role in the Roman ritual system than modern scholars have realized. The rex sacrorum and the flamen Martialis certainly shared their offices with the regina sacrorum and the flaminica Martialis respectively. It seems very likely that the wives of the thirteen remaining flamines were flaminicae as well. Priestly couples are best understood in relation to the patterns of worship in the househol…
The Ritual Activities of the Vestal Virgins
This chapter analyzes the ritual obligations of the Vestal Virgins. The extensive ritual program assigned to the Vestal order further emphasizes the connection between these priestesses and the wellbeing of the community. They participated in various rites designed to cleanse the city of ritual impurity. At the Fordicidia, the October Horse, and the December rites of Bona Dea, they played a role in guaranteeing the fertility of the fields and flo…
The Costume of the Vestal Virgins
This chapter examines the Vestal costume. Like the dress of a respectable matrona , the costume of a Vestal rendered visible her social status and moral probity. The full Vestal regalia included the seni crines (six-tressed) hairstyle, a headdress composed of the infula and vittae (woolen bands), a veil known as the suffibulum , a palla (mantle), the soft shoes of a priestess, and a long tunica (tunic). Through a detailed analysis of the Vestal c…
The Flamen and Flaminica Dialis
This chapter shows that the flamen and flaminica Dialis served the gods together as priest and priestess of Jupiter. Until fairly recently, however, modern scholars have either denied or heavily qualified the official priestly status of the flaminica Dialis , describing her instead as the Roman equivalent of the pastor's wife. This analogy is inappropriate in light of the ancient evidence for her status and religious activities. The chapter then …
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A Place at the Altar
A Place at the Altar
This book illuminates a previously underappreciated dimension of religion in ancient Rome: the role of priestesses in civic cult. Demonstrating that priestesses had a central place in public rituals and institutions, the book emphasizes the complex, gender-inclusive nature of Roman priesthood. In ancient Rome, priestly service was a cooperative endeavor, requiring men and women, husbands and wives, and elite Romans and slaves to work together to …
Place at the Altar
Place at the Altar
The Vestal Virgins in Roman Politics
This chapter explores the relationship between individual Vestals and their families. Vestals were legally isolated from their birth families and set apart from the traditional structures of Roman society. Their unique legal status ensured that they belonged, above all, to the Roman people, whose hearth they guarded on a daily basis. However, while the order as a whole maintained its reputation as an isolated and apolitical body at the heart of R…
Conclusion
This concluding chapter argues that priestly service offered women opportunities for leadership, prestige, and even, on occasion, authority, all in the name of maintaining the pax deorum —Rome's relationship with her gods. Some priestesses served cults that were restricted to women, but many men and women served the gods together. This principle applied at the level of household, local, and citywide cult. The saliae virgines demonstrate that coop…
Salian Virgins, Sacerdotes, and Ministrae
This chapter looks at sacerdotes (priestesses), particularly those associated with the public cults of Mars, Fortuna Muliebris, Bona Dea, Liber, Magna Mater, and Ceres. It also discusses the female support personnel. Without these women, many of whom were libertae (freedwomen) and servae publicae (public slaves), the ritual system would have ground to a halt. As a group, these priestesses and cultic assistants further complicate traditional accou…
Priestly Couples
This chapter argues that priestly couples had a larger role in the Roman ritual system than modern scholars have realized. The rex sacrorum and the flamen Martialis certainly shared their offices with the regina sacrorum and the flaminica Martialis respectively. It seems very likely that the wives of the thirteen remaining flamines were flaminicae as well. Priestly couples are best understood in relation to the patterns of worship in the househol…
The Ritual Activities of the Vestal Virgins
This chapter analyzes the ritual obligations of the Vestal Virgins. The extensive ritual program assigned to the Vestal order further emphasizes the connection between these priestesses and the wellbeing of the community. They participated in various rites designed to cleanse the city of ritual impurity. At the Fordicidia, the October Horse, and the December rites of Bona Dea, they played a role in guaranteeing the fertility of the fields and flo…
The Costume of the Vestal Virgins
This chapter examines the Vestal costume. Like the dress of a respectable matrona , the costume of a Vestal rendered visible her social status and moral probity. The full Vestal regalia included the seni crines (six-tressed) hairstyle, a headdress composed of the infula and vittae (woolen bands), a veil known as the suffibulum , a palla (mantle), the soft shoes of a priestess, and a long tunica (tunic). Through a detailed analysis of the Vestal c…
The Flamen and Flaminica Dialis
This chapter shows that the flamen and flaminica Dialis served the gods together as priest and priestess of Jupiter. Until fairly recently, however, modern scholars have either denied or heavily qualified the official priestly status of the flaminica Dialis , describing her instead as the Roman equivalent of the pastor's wife. This analogy is inappropriate in light of the ancient evidence for her status and religious activities. The chapter then …
A Place at the Altar
A Place at the Altar illuminates a previously underappreciated dimension of religion in ancient Rome: the role of priestesses in civic cult. Demonstrating that priestesses had a central place in public rituals and institutions, Meghan DiLuzio emphasizes the complex, gender-inclusive nature of Roman priesthood. In ancient Rome, priestly service was a cooperative endeavor, requiring men and women, husbands and wives, and elite Romans and slaves to …
Gods, Objects, and Ritual Practice
Conversations about materiality have helped forge a common meeting ground for scholars seeking to integrate images, sites, texts, and implements in their approach to religion in the ancient Mediterranean. The fourteen chapters in this volume explore the productivity of these approaches, with case studies from Israel, Athens, Rome, Sicily, and North Africa . The results foreground the capacity of material approaches to cast lighton the cultural cr…
Priestesses in Action Ritual Instruments Employed by Roman Women
The Peace of the Gods
416 PHOENIX In Chapter Four Gladhill reveals how “Vergil constructs his entire epic according to a series of foedera struck by Aeneas, which organizes and motivates the narrative” (118) and culminates in Aeneas’ sacrifice of Turnus at the poem’s end. On a larger scale, the violation of foedera struck between Europe and Asia underlies the poem’s entire poetic landscape. Within this structure, Gladhill shows how certain patterns, such as altar viol…
The Women and the Lares
This paper offers a reexamination of a small Augustan lares altar found on the Capitoline Hill and now in the Museo Nazionale Romano at the Terme di Diocleziano. The altar features two women, one on each of its sides, wearing very similar costumes and offering libations, and twin lares on the front. The discussion analyzes the altar's original context, scale, iconography, workmanship, and state of preservation. This altar fits into the well-known…
Women’s Lives, Women’s Voices
This volume offers a bold and creative approach to recovering the experiences of women in the Roman world. The collection includes thirteen papers that were originally presented at the Third Annual Symposium Campanum at the Villa Vergiliana in October 2018. The authors demolish long-standing assumptions about the limitations of the material record, casting women as active participants in their communities.Following a brief introduction by the edi…
Classical Antiquity Studies (13 works) · History (10 works) · Art (9 works) · Ancient history (5 works) · Historical and Religious Studies of Rome (5 works) · Altar (4 works) · Classical Studies and Legal History (4 works) · Genealogy (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works)