Item Details

The Gendered Deep History of the Bona Dea Cult

Issue: Vol 3 No. 1-2 (2016) Special Issue: Digital Humanities, Cognitive Historiography, and the Study of Religion

Journal: Journal of Cognitive Historiography

Subject Areas: Ancient History Cognitive Studies Archaeology

DOI: 10.1558/jch.30172

Abstract:

The article offers an overview of the cult of Bona Dea in light of the gendered social framework of ancient Roman society. Intrasexual competition and patriarchal, institutionalized sociodicy are taken into account, respectively, as ultimate and proximate explanations of the Bona Dea mythography. The diffusion of the cult and its spread in the literary environment are also tentatively explained by the presence of specific narrative elements (e.g. metamorphosis), some of which are apt to elicit strong reactions (i.e. rape, incest). Finally, the December cult devoted to the goddess is interpreted as a teletropic ritual device both symbiotic/euphoric (i.e. stress-relieving) and exploitative (i.e. a top-down concession enhancing psychological dependence on masculine hierarchy).

Author: Leonardo Ambasciano

View Original Web Page

References :

Ahmed, L. 1992. Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press.


Alexander, R. D. 1979. Darwinism and Human Affairs. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.


Ambasciano, L. 2015. “Review of A. Mastrocinque, 2014. Bona Dea and the Cults of Roman Women. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag”. Culture and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Journal (16)1: 110–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/14755610.2014.1001626


Ampolo, C. 2013. “Il problema delle origini di Roma rivisitato: concordismo, ipertradizionalismo acritico, contesti. I”. Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa – Classe di Lettere e Filosofia (5)1: 217–84.


Anderson, B. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Revised Edition. London: Verso (1983).


Armitage, D. 2012. “What’s the Big Idea? Intellectual History and the Longue Durée”. History of European Ideas 38(4): 493–507. https://doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2012.714635


Astuti, R., and M. Bloch. 2015. “The Causal Cognition of Wrong Doing: Incest, Intentionality, and Morality”. Frontiers in Psychology (6): 136. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00136


Bamberger, J. 1974. “The Myth of Matriarchy: Why Men Rule in Primitive Society”. In Women, Culture, and Society, eds L. Lamphere and M. Zimbalist Rosaldo, 263–80. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.


Baudy, D. 2006. “Prohibitions of Religion in Antiquity: Setting the Course of Europe’s Religious History”. In Religion and Law in Classical and Christian Rome, eds C. Ando and J. Rupke, assisted by S. Blake and M. Holban, 100–114. Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag.


Beard, M. 2015. SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome. London: Profile.


Benke, N. 2001. “Why Should the Law Protect Roman Women? Some Remarks on the Senatus Consultum Velleianum (ca. 50 A.D.)”. In Gender and Religion/Genre et religion, eds K. E. Børensen, S. Cabibbo and E. Specht, 41–56. Rome: Carocci.


Bettini, M. 2002. “Missing Cosmogonies: The Roman Case?” Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 13(1): 69–92. https://doi.org/10.1515/afgs.2012.69


Bettini, M. 2009. Affari di famiglia. La parentela nella letteratura e nella cultura antica. Bologna: il Mulino. Includes “In Vino Stuprum”, originally published in 1995 in O. Murray and M. Tecuşan (eds), In Vino Veritas, 224–38. London: British School at Rome in association with American Academy at Rome.


Bloch, M. 2008. “Why Religion Is Nothing Special But Is Central”. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 363(1499): 2055–61. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2008.0007


Bloch, M., and D. Sperber. 2002. “Kinship and Evolved Psychological Dispositions: The Mother’s Brother Controversy Reconsidered”. Current Anthropology 43(5): 723–48. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/341654


Bloom, P. 2004. Descartes’ Babies: How the Science of Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human. New York: Basic Books.


Bohner, G., and N. Schwartz. 1996. “The Threat of Rape: Its Psychological Impact on Nonvictimized Women”. In Sex, Power, Conflict: Evolutionary and Feminist Perspectives, eds D. M. Buss and N. M. Malamuth, 162–78. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.


Bourdieu, P. 1971. “Genèse et structure du champ religieux”. Revue française de sociologie 12(3): 295–334. http://www.persee.fr/doc/rfsoc_0035-2969_1971_num_12_3_1994


Bourdieu, P. 2001. Masculine Domination. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Originally published in 1998 as La domination masculine. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.


Boyer P. 2001. Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought. New York: Basic Books.


Brouwer, H. H. J. 1989. Bona Dea: The Sources and a Description of the Cult. Leiden and New York: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004295773


Burkert, W. 1996. Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press.


Buss, D. M. 2002. “Human Mate Guarding”. Neuro Endocrinology Letters 23/Suppl. 4: 23–29.


Cantarella, E. 1987. Pandora’s Daughters. The Role and Status of Women in Greek and Roman Antiquity. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Originally published in 1981 as L’ambiguo malanno. Condizione e immagine della donna nell’antichità greca e romana. Rome: Editori Riuniti (2010, Milan: Feltrinelli).


Cantarella, E. 1999. “La vita delle donne”. In Storia di Roma, ed. A. Giardina and A. Schiavone, 867–94. Turin: Einaudi.


Cantarella, E. 2002. Bisexuality in the Ancient World. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press. Originally published in 1988 as Secondo natura. La bisessualità nel mondo antico. Rome: Editori Riuniti (1995, Milan: Rizzoli).


Cantarella, E. 2009. Dammi mille baci. Veri uomini e vere donne nell’antica Roma. Milan: Feltrinelli.


Cantarella, E. 2010 (1996). Passato prossimo. Donne romane da Tacita a Sulpicia. Milan: Feltrinelli.


Chalupa, A. 2006/2007. “How Did Roman Emperors Become Gods? Various Concepts of Imperial Apotheosis”. Anodos. Studies of the Ancient World (6-7): 201–207.


Chalupa, A. 2009. “Religious Change in Roman Religion from the Perspective of Whitehouse’s Theory of the Two Modes of Religiosity”. In Imagistic Traditions in the Graeco-Roman World: A Cognitive Modeling of History of Religious Research. Acts of the Panel Held during the XIX Congress of the International Association of History of Religions (IAHR), Tokyo, Japan, March 2005, eds L. H. Martin and P. Pachis, 113–35. Thessaloniki: Vanias Editions.


Chentsova-Dutton, Y. E., and C. Heath. 2010. “Cultural Evolution: Why Are Some Cultural Variants More Successful Than Others?” In Evolution, Culture, and the Human Mind, eds M. Schaller, A. Norenzayan, S. J. Heine, T. Yamagishi and T. Kameda, 49–70. New York: Psychology Press-Taylor & Francis Group.


Chioffi, L. 1993. s.v. “Bona Dea Subsaxana”. In Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae. Vol I, ed. E. M. Steinby, 200–201. Rome: Quasar.


Chiusi, T. J. 2013. “‘Fama’ and ‘Infamia’ in the Roman Legal System: The Cases of Afrania and Lucretia”. In Judge and Jurist: Essays in Memory of Lord Rodger of Earlsferry, eds A. Burrows, D. Johnston and R. Zimmermann, 143–56. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Originally published in 2010 as “La fama nell’ordinamento romano. I casi di Afrania e di Lucrezia”. Storia delle donne 6(7): 89–105. https://doi.org/10.13128/SDD-9608


Cipriani, G. 1990. “Il tramite d’amore”. In S. Alonso, G. Cipriani, P. Fedeli, I. Mazzini and A. Tedeschi, Il poeta elegiaco e il viaggio d’amore, 85–120. Bari: Edipuglia.


Clark, P. 2001. “Women, Slaves, and the Hierarchy of Domestic Violence: The Family of St Augustine”. In Women & Slaves in Graeco-Roman Culture: Differential Equations, ed. S. Joshel and S. Murnaghan, 109–129. New York and London: Routledge (1998).


Culham, P. 2004. “Women in the Roman Republic”. In The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic, ed. H. I. Flower. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 139–59. https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521807948.007


Currie, A. 2016. “Ethnographic Analogy, the Comparative Method, and Archaeological Special Pleading”. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 55: 84–94. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2015.08.010


Czachesz, I. 2011. “Explaining Magic: Earliest Christianity as a Test Case”. In Past Minds: Studies in Cognitive Historiography, eds L. H. Martin and J. Sørensen, 141–66. London and Oakville, CT: Equinox Publishing.


Dennett, D. C. 2007. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. London: Penguin. Originally published by Viking, New York (2006).


Di Donato, R. 2015 s.v. “Pestalozza, Uberto”. In Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 82, Available at www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/uberto-pestalozza_(Dizionario_Biografico)/ (accessed 10 November 2016).


Di Fazio M. 2015. Review of A. Mastrocinque, 2014. Bona Dea and the Cults of Roman Women. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2015.03.51. Available at http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2015/2015-03-51.html (accessed 10 November 2016).


DiMaggio, P. 1997. “Culture and Cognition”. Annual Review of Sociology 23(1): 263–87. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.23.1.263


Dunbar, R. 2005. The Human Story: A New History of Mankind’s Evolution. London: Faber & Faber.


Eriksson, K., and J. C. Coltas. 2014. “Corpses, Maggots, Poodles and Rats: Emotional Selection Operating in Three Phases of Cultural Transmission of Urban Legends”. Journal of Cognition and Culture 14(1–2): 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12342107


Feder, Y. 2015. “Contamination Appraisals, Pollution Beliefs, and the Role of Cultural Inheritance in Shaping Disease Avoidance Behavior”. Cognitive Science 40(6): 1561–585. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12293


Finley, M. I. 2002. “The Silent Women of Rome”. In Sexuality and Gender in the Classical World: Readings and Sources, ed. L. K. McClure, 147–60. Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell. Originally published in 1965 in Horizon 7(1): 57–64. Reprinted in 1968 in Aspects of Antiquity: Discoveries and Controversies, 129–42. London: Chatto & Windus. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470756188.ch5


Fortunato, L., and M. Archetti. 2010. “Evolution of Monogamous Marriage by Maximization of Inclusive Fitness”. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 23(1): 149–56. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1420-9101.2009.01884.x


Foucault, M. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews & Other Writings 1972–1977, ed. C. Gordon. New York: Pantheon.


Garavaso, P., and N. Vassallo. 2007. Filosofia delle donne. Rome and Bari: Laterza.


Gibson, R. K. 2003. Ars Amatoria Book 3. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.


Gillespie, C. C. 2010. Review of Luisi, A. and N. F. Berrino, L’ironia di Ovidio verso Livia e Tiberio. Bari: Edipuglia. Bryn Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2010.12.41. Available at http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2010/2010-12-41.html (accessed 23 April 2015).


Glick, R. A. 2002. “Looking at Women: What Do Men See?” In Constructing and Deconstructing Woman’s Power, eds B. J. Seelig, R. A. Paul, and C. B. Levy, 110–22. London: Karnac.


Gottschall, J. 2008. The Rape of Troy: Evolution, Violence, and the World of Homer. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.


Gragg, D. L. 2004. “Old and New in Roman Religion: A Cognitive Account”. In Theorizing Religions Past: Archaeology, History, and Cognition, eds H. Whitehouse and L. H. Martin, 69–86. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.


Griffith, A. B. 2009. “The ‘Modes Theory’ and Roman Religion: National Catastrophe and Religious Response in the Second Punic War”. In Imagistic Traditions in the Graeco-Roman World: A Cognitive Modeling of History of Religious Research. Acts of the Panel Held during the XIX Congress of the International Association of History of Religions (IAHR), Tokyo, Japan, March 2005, eds L. H. Martin and P. Pachis, 153–78. Thessaloniki: Vanias Editions.


Griffith, A. B. 2010. “Miracles, Memory and Meaning: A Cognitive Approach to Roman Myth”. In Chasing Down Religion: In the Sights of History and the Cognitive Sciences. Essays in Honour of Luther H. Martin, eds P. Pachis and D. Wiebe, 135–49. Sheffield and Bristol, CT: Equinox Publishing. Originally published by Barbounakis, Thessaloniki.


Hallett, J. P. 2012. “Women in Augustan Rome”. In A Companion to Women in the Ancient World, eds S. L. James and S. Dillon, 372–84. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444355024.ch27


Harvey, P. H., and K. Ralls. 1986. “Inbreeding: Do Animals Avoid Incest?” Nature 320: 575–76. https://doi.org/10.1038/320575b0


Henrich, J. 2009. “The Evolution of Costly Displays, Cooperation and Religion: Credibility Enhancing Displays and Their Implications for Cultural Evolution”. Evolution and Human Behavior 30(4): 244–60. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2009.03.005


Henry, M. M., and S. L. James. 2012. “Woman, City, State: Theories, Ideologies, and Concepts in the Archaic and Classical Periods”. In A Companion to Women in the Ancient World, eds S. L. James and S. Dillon 84–95. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444355024.ch6


Héritier-Augé, F. 1993. “La costruzione dell’essere sessuato, la costruzione sociale del genere e le ambiguità dell’identità sessuale”. In Maschile/femminile. Genere e ruoli nelle culture antiche, ed. M. Bettini, 113–40. Rome and Bari: Laterza.


Holland, L. 2012. “Women and Roman Religion”. In A Companion to Women in the Ancient World, eds S. L. James and S. Dillon, 204–214. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444355024.ch15


Holmes, B. A. 2012. Gender: Antiquity and Its Legacy. London and New York: I.B. Tauris.


Huebner, S. R. 2012. s.v.Brother-Sister Marriage”. In The Encyclopaedia of Ancient History, eds R. S. Bagnall, K. Brodersen, C. B. Champion, and A. Erskine, 1194–195. Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah22040


Jensen, J. S. 2013. “Normative Cognition in Culture and Religion”. Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion 1(1): 47–70. https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.v1i1.47


Joshel, S. 1993. “The Body Female and the Body Politic: Livy’s Lucretia and Verginia”. In Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome, ed. A. Richlin, 112–30. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.


Joshel, S. 1997. “Female Desire and the Discourse of Empire: Tacitus’s Messalina”. In Roman Sexualities, eds J. P. Hallett and M. B. Skinner, 221–54. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.


Junginger, H. ed. 2008. The Study of Religion Under the Impact of Fascism. Leiden and Boston: Brill.


Juschka, D. M. 2005. “Religion and Gender”. In The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion, ed. J. R. Hinnells, 229–42. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.


Kraemer, R. S. 2011. Unreliable Witnesses: Religion, Gender, and History in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.


Kroppenberg, I. 2010. “Law, Religion, and Constitution of the Vestal Virgins”. Law & Literature 22(3): 418–39. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/lal.2010.22.3.418


Langseth, J. 2014. Review of A. Mastrocinque, 2014. Bona Dea and the Cults of Roman Women. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Sehepunkte 14(11). Available at http://www.sehepunkte.de/2014/11/25185.html (accessed 10 November 2016).


Lennon, J. J. 2014. Pollution and Religion in Ancient Rome. New York: Cambridge University Press.


Leopold, A. M. 2011. “Narrativity in View of a Theory of Syncretism”. In Religious Narrative, Cognition and Culture: Image and Word in the Mind of Narrative, eds A. W. Geertz and J. S. Jensen, 263–79. Sheffield and Oakville, CT: Equinox Publishing.


Lincoln, B. 1981. Emerging from the Chrysalis: Studies in Rituals of Women’s Initiation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.


Lindsay, W. M. 1913. Sexti Pompeii Festi De verborum significatu quae supersunt cum Pauli Epitome. Thewrewkianis copiis usus edidit Wallace M. Lindsay. Leipzig: Teubner.


Lisdorf, A. 2004. “The Spread of Non-Natural Concepts: Evidence from the Roman Prodigy Lists”. Journal of Cognition and Culture 4(1): 151–73. https://doi.org/10.1163/156853704323074796


– 2011. “Prisons of the Longue Durée: The Circulation and Acceptance of Prodigia in Roman Antiquity”. In Past Minds: Studies in Cognitive Historiography, eds L. H. Martin and J. Sørensen, 89–106. London and Oakville, CT: Equinox Publishing.


Lloyd, G. E. R. 1983. Science, Folklore and Ideology: Studies in the Life Sciences in Ancient Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


Lopez, D. S. 1998. “Belief”. In Critical Terms for Religious Studies, ed. M. C. Taylor, 21–35. Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press.


Mackey, J. L. 2017. “Roman Children as Religious Agents: The Cognitive Foundations of Cult”. In Children and Everyday Life in the Roman and Late Antique World, eds C. Laes and V. Vuolanto, 179–97. London and New York: Routledge.


Maine, H. S. 1870. Ancient Law: Its Connection with the Early History of Society, and Its Relation to Modern Ideas. New York: Charles Scribner & Co.


Marcattili, F. 2010. “Bona Dea, ἡ θεὸς γυναικεία”. Archeologia Classica 61: 7–40.


– 2012. “Per un’archeologia dell’Aventino: i culti della media Repubblica”. Mélanges de l’École française de Rome – Antiquité [Online] 124(1). Available at http://mefra.revues.org/144 (accessed 10 November 2016).


Martin, C. 2014, 2012. A Critical Introduction to the Study of Religion. London and New York: Routledge.


Martin, L. H. 2000. “Kingship and the Consolidation of Religio-Political Power during the Hellenistic Period”. Religio. Revue pro religionistiku 8(2): 151–60. http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/124933


– 2009. “Conclusion: Imagistic Traditions in the Graeco-Roman World”. In Imagistic Traditions in the Graeco-Roman World: A Cognitive Modeling of History of Religious Research. Acts of the Panel Held during the XIX Congress of the International Association of History of Religions (IAHR), Tokyo, Japan, March 2005, eds L. H. Martin and P. Pachis, 238–47. Thessaloniki: Vanias Editions.


– 2014. “The Deep History of Religious Ritual”. In Deep History, Secular Theory: Historical and Scientific Studies of Religion, 254–71. Boston and Berlin: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781614515005.254


Masse, W. B., E. Wayland Barber, L. Piccardi and P. T. Barber. 2007. “Exploring the Nature of Myth and Its Role in Science”. In Myth and Geology, eds L. Piccardi and W. B. Masse, 9–28. London: The Geological Society. https://doi.org/10.1144/GSL.SP.2007.273.01.02


Mastrocinque, A. 1993. Romolo. La fondazione di Roma tra storia e leggenda. Este: Zielo.


– 2014. Bona Dea and the Cults of Roman Women. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.


Murray, O. 1995. “Histories of Pleasure”. In In Vino Veritas, eds O. Murray and M. Tecuşan, 3–17. London: British School at Rome in association with American Academy at Rome.


Norenzayan, A. 2013. Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict. Princeton, NJ and Woodstock: Princeton University Press.


North, J. A. 2000. Roman Religion. Oxford: Clarendon Press.


Parker, H. N. 2001 (1998). “Loyal Slaves and Loyal Wives: The Crisis of the Outsider-Within and Roman Exemplum Literature”. In Women & Slaves in Graeco-Roman Culture: Differential Equations, eds S. R. Joshel and S. Murnaghan, 152–73. London and New York: Routledge.


Phang, S. E. 2003. Review of L. K. McClure, ed. 2002. Sexuality and Gender in the Classical World: Readings and Sources. Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell. Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2003.02.23. Available at http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2003/2003-02-23.html (accessed 10 November 2016).


Piccaluga, G. 1964. “Bona Dea. Due contributi all’interpretazione del suo culto”. Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni 35: 195–237. Digitized version available at http://cisadu2.let.uniroma1.it/smsr/issues/1964/pages/#page/194/mode/2up (accessed 10 November 2016).


Platner, S. B. 1929. A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


Purcell, N. 1994. “Women and Wine in Ancient Rome”. In Gender, Drink and Drugs, ed. M. McDonald, 191–208. Oxford and Providence: Berg.


Pusey, A., and M. Wolf. 1996. “Inbreeding Avoidance in Animals”. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 11(5): 201–206. https://doi.org/10.1016/0169-5347(96)10028-8


Rey, T. 2007. Bourdieu on Religion: Imposing Faith and Legitimacy. London and Oakville, CT: Equinox Publishing.


Richardson, L., Jr. 1992. A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.


Richlin, A. 2009. “Writing Women into History”. In A Companion to Ancient History, ed. A. Erskine, 146–53. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444308372.ch14


Rives, J. 2013. “Women and Animal Sacrifice In Public Life”. In Women and the Roman City in the Latin West, eds E. Hemelrijk and G. Woolf, 129–46. Leiden and Boston: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004255951_009


Roubekas, N. P. 2015. “Belief in Belief and Divine Kingship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt: The Case of Ptolemy II Philadelphus and Arsinoe II”. Religio: revue pro religionistiku 23(1): 3–23. http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/134551


Rüpke, J. 2012. Religion in Republican Rome: Rationalization and Ritual Change. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsilvania Press. https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812206579


Rüpke, J. 2015. “Religious Agency, Identity, and Communication: Reflections on History and Theory of Religion”. Religion 45(3): 344–66. https://doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2015.
1024040


Saller, R. 1999. “I rapporti di parentela e l’organizzazione familiare”. In Storia di Roma, eds A. Giardina and A. Schiavone, 825–65. Turin: Einaudi.


Scheid, J. 2002. “The Religious Role of Roman Women”. In G. Duby and M. Perrot, eds A History of Women: From Ancient Goddesses to Christian Saints, ed. P. Schmitt Pantel, 377–408. Cambridge, MA and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (1992). Originally published in 1990 as “Indispensabili ‘straniere’. I ruoli religiosi delle donne a Roma”. In Storia delle donne nell’Antichità, 424–64. Rome and Bari: Laterza.


Scheidel, W. 2009a. “Sex and Empire: A Darwinian Perspective”. In The Dynamics of Ancient Empires: State Power from Assyria to Byzantium, eds I. Morris and W. Scheidel, 255–324. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.


Scheidel, W. 2009b. “A Peculiar Institution? Greco-Roman Monogamy in Global Context”. History of the Family 14(3): 280–91. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hisfam.2009.06.001


Scheidel, W. 2014. “Evolutionary Psychology and the Historian”. The American Historical Review 119(5): 1563–575. https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/119.5.1563


Schelling, R., and J. Rüpke, 2005 (1987). s.v. “Roman Religion: The Early Period”. In Encyclopaedia of Religion. Second Edition. Vol. 12, ed. L. Jones, 7892–911. Detroit, MI: MacMillan Reference USA-Thomson Gale.


Sela, Y., T. K. Shackelford and J. R. Liddle. 2015. “When Religion Makes It Worse: Religiously Motivated Violence as a Sexual Selection Weapon”. In The Attraction of Religion: A New Evolutionary Psychology of Religion, eds J. D. Slone and J. A. Van Slyke, 111–32. London and New York: Bloomsbury.


Shankman, P. 1996. s.v.Mead-Freeman Controversy”. In Encyclopaedia of Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 3, eds D. Levinson and M. Ember, 757–59. New York: Henry Holt & Co.


Shermer, M., and A. Grobman. 2009. Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? Updated and Expanded. Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press.


Sissa, G. 2008. Sex and Sensuality in the Ancient World. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press. Originally published in 2003 as Eros tiranno. Sessualità e sensualità nel mondo antico. Rome and Bari: Laterza.


Sjöblom, T. 2005. “Going, Going, Gone, or How I Fail to Gain Hermeneutic Understanding”. In How to Do Comparative Religion? Three Ways, Many Goals, ed. R. Gothoni, 35–44. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110922608.35


Slone, D. J. 2008. “The Attraction of Religion: A Sexual Selectionist Account”. In The Evolution of Religion: Studies, Theories, & Critiques, eds J. Bulbulia, R. Sosis, E. Harris, R. Genet, C. Genet and K. Wyman, 181–88. Santa Margarita, CA: Collins Foundation Press.


Smail, D. L. 2008. On Deep History and the Brain. Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press.


Smith, J. Z. 1978. Map Is Not Territory. Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press. Originally published by Brill, Leiden.


Sørensen, J. 2004. “Religion, Evolution, and an Immunology of Cultural Systems”. Evolution and Cognition 10(1): 61–73. Available at http://www.kli.ac.at/evolution-and-cognition (accessed 23 April 2015).


Sperber, D. 1996. Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach. Oxford: Blackwell.


– 2011. “A Naturalistic Ontology for Mechanistic Explanations in the Social Sciences”. In Analytical Sociology and Social Mechanisms, ed. P. Demeulenaere, 64–77. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511921315


Spineto, N. 2009. “Momolina Marconi (1912–2006). Profilo biografico”. Studi e Materiali di Storia delle Religioni 75(1): 335–42.


Trautmann, T. R., G. Feeley-Harnik and J. C. Mitani. 2011. “Deep Kinship”. In Deep History: The Architecture of Past and Present, eds A. Shryock and D. L. Smail, 160–88. Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press.


Turchin, P., H. Whitehouse, P. François, E. Slingerland and M. Collard. 2012. “A Historical Database of Sociocultural Evolution”. Cliodynamics: The Journal of Theoretical and Mathematical History 3(2): 271–93. http://escholarship.org/uc/item/2v8119hf


Várhelyi, Z. 2015. “Gendered Agents and Embodied Religious Experience”. In A Companion to the Archaeology of Religion in the Ancient World, eds R. Rubina and J. Rüpke 120–30. Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118886809.ch9


Veyne, P. 2002. The Roman Empire. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. (1992). Originally published in 1985 as L’Empire romain. In Histoire de la vie privée, vol. I. De l’Empire romain à l’an mil. Dirigé par P. Veyne, eds P. Ariès, and G. Duby, 19–223. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.


Volpato, C. 2013. Psicosociologia del maschilismo. Rome and Bari: Laterza.


Weisner, T. S., and D. Price-Williams. 1982. “Women’s Rites”. Review of B. Lincoln, Emerging from the Chrysalis: Studies in Rituals of Women’s Initiation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981. The Sciences 22(9): 29–31. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2326-1951.1982.tb02125.x


Welch, T. S. 2004. “Masculinity and Monuments in Propertius 4.9”. The American Journal of Philology 125(1): 61–90. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1562210


Welch, T. S. 2012. “Elegy and the Monuments”. In A Companion To Roman Love Elegy, ed. B. K. Gold, 103–18. Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118241165


Wettlaufer, J. 2000. “The jus primae noctis as a Male Power Display: A Review of Historic Sources with Evolutionary Interpretation”. Evolution and Human Behavior 21(2): 111–23. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1090-5138(99)00032-X


Williams, C. A. 2010. Roman Homosexuality. Second Edition. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.


Wilson, D. S. 2002. Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society. Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226901374.001.0001


Winsor Leach, E. 2001. “Gendering Clodius”. The Classical World 94(4): 335–59. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4352588


Woolf, G. 2008. “Divinity and Power in Ancient Rome”. In Religion and Power: Divine Kingship in the Ancient World and Beyond, ed. N. Brisch, 235–51. Chicago, IL: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.


Woolf, G. 2013. “Ritual and the Individual in Roman Religion”. In The Individual in the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean, ed. J. Rüpke, 136–60. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199674503.003.0006


Woolf, G. 2014. “Isis and the Evolution of Religion”. In Power, Politics and the Cults of Isis. Proceedings of the 5th International Conference of Isis Studies, Boulogne-sur-Mer, October 13-15, 2011 (organized in cooperation with Jean-Louis Podvin), eds L. Bricault and M. J. Versluys, 62–92. Leiden and Boston: Brill.


Zimbalist Rosaldo, M. 1974. “Women, Culture and Society: A Theoretical Overview”. In Women, Culture, and Society, eds L. Lamphere and M. Zimbalist Rosaldo, 18–42. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.