In ancient Roman religion, birth and childhood deities were thought to care for every aspect of conception, pregnancy, childbirth, and child development. Some major deities of Roman religion had a specialized function they contributed to this sphere of human life, while other deities are known only by the name with which they were invoked to promote or avert a particular action. Several of these slight "divinities of the moment"Giulia Sissa, "Maidenhood without Maidenhead: The Female Body in Ancient Greece," in Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World (Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 362, translating the German term Augenblicksgötter which was coined by Hermann Usener. are mentioned in surviving texts only by Christian polemicists.Mary Beard, J.A. North, and S.R.F. Price, Religions of Rome: A Sourcebook (Cambridge University Press, 1998), vol. 2, p. 33.
An extensive Greek and Latin medical literature covered obstetrics and infant care, and the 2nd century Greek gynecologist Soranus of Ephesus advised midwives not to be superstitious. But childbirth in antiquity remained a life-threatening experience for both the woman and her newborn, with infant mortality as high as 30 or 40 percent.M. Golden, "Did the Ancients Care When Their Children Died?" Greece & Rome 35 (1988) 152–163; Keith R. Bradley, "Wet-nursing at Rome: A Study in Social Relations," in The Family in Ancient Rome: New Perspectives (Cornell University Press, 1986, 1992), p. 202; Beryl Rawson, Children and Childhood in Roman Italy (Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 104. Rites of passage pertaining to birth and death had several parallel aspects.Anthony Corbeill, "Blood, Milk, and Tears: The Gestures of Mourning Women," in Nature Embodied: Gesture in Ancient Rome (Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 67–105. Maternal death was common: one of the most famous was Julia, daughter of Julius Caesar and wife of Pompey. Her infant died a few days later, severing the family ties between her father and husband and hastening the civil war that ended the Roman Republic.Rawson, Children and Childhood in Roman Italy, p. 103. Some ritual practices may be characterized as anxious superstitions, but the religious aura surrounding childbirth reflects the high value Romans placed on family, tradition (mos maiorum), and compatibility of the sexes.Rawson, Children and Childhood in Roman Italy, p. 99. Under the Empire, children were celebrated on coins, as was Juno Lucina, the primary goddess of childbirth, as well as in public art.Rawson, Children and Childhood in Roman Italy, p. 64. Funerary art, such as relief on sarcophagi, sometimes showed scenes from the deceased's life, including birth or the first bath.Rawson, Children and Childhood in Roman Italy, pp. 101–102.
Only those who died after the age of 10 were given full funeral and commemorative rites, which in ancient Rome were observed by families several days during the year (see Parentalia). Infants less than one year of age received no formal rites. The lack of ritual observances pertains to the legal status of the individual in society, not the emotional response of families to the loss.Rawson, Children and Childhood in Roman Italy, p. 104. As Cicero reflected:
Some think that if a small child dies this must be borne with equanimity; if it is still in its cradle there should not even be a lament. And yet it is from the latter that nature has more cruelly demanded back the gift she had given.Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.93, as cited by Rawson, Children and Childhood in Roman Italy, p. 104.
Sources The most extensive lists of deities pertaining to the conception-birth-development cycle come from the Church Fathers, especially Augustine of Hippo and Tertullian. Augustine in particular is known to have used the now-fragmentary theological works of Marcus Terentius Varro, the 1st century BC Roman scholar, who in turn referenced the books of the Roman pontiffs. The purpose of the patristic writers was to debunk traditional Roman religion, but they provide useful information despite their mocking tone.Beard et al., Religions of Rome,vol. 2, p. 33. Scattered mentions occur throughout Latin literature.
The following list of deities is organized chronologically by the role they play in the process.The order is based on that of Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome (Routledge, 2001; originally published in French 1998), pp. 18–20, and Jörg Rüpke, Religion in Republican Rome: Rationalization and Ritual Change (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), pp. 181–182.
Conception and pregnancy
The gods of the marriage bed (di coniugales) are also gods of conception.Beard, Religions of Rome: A Sourcebook, vol. 2, pp. 32–33; Rüpke, Religion of the Romans, p. 79. Juno, one of the three deities of the Capitoline Triad, presides over union and marriage as well, and some of the minor deities invoked for success in conceiving and delivering a child may have been functional aspects of her powers. Jugatinus is a conjugal god, from iugare, "to join, yoke, marry."Augustine, De Civitate Dei 6.9.Ludwig Preller, Römische Mythologie (Berlin, 1881), vol. 1, p. 211. Cinxia functions within the belt (cingulum) that the bride wears to symbolize that her husband is "belted and bound" (cinctus vinctusque) to her.Festus 55 (edition of Lindsay); Karen K. Hersch, The Roman Wedding: Ritual and Meaning in Antiquity (Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 101, 110, 211. It was tied with the knot of Hercules, intended to be intricate and difficult to untie.William Warde Fowler, The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic (London, 1908), p. 142. Augustine calls this goddess Virginiensis (virgo, "virgin"), indicating that the untying is the symbolic loss of virginity.For an extensive look at the knot of virginity, primarily in early Christian culture, see S. Panayotakis, "The Knot and the Hymen: A Reconsideration of Nodus Virginitatis (Hist. Apoll. 1)," Mnemosyne 53.5 (2000) 599–608. Cinxia may have been felt as present during a ritual meant to ease labor. The man who fathered the child removes his own belt (cinctus), binds it (cinxerit) around the laboring woman, then releases it with a prayer that the one who has bound her in labor should likewise release her: "he should then leave."Pliny, Natural History 28.42; Anthony Corbeill, Nature Embodied: Gesture in Ancient Rome (Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 35–36. Women who had experienced spontaneous abortions were advised to bind their bellies for the full nine months with a belt (cingulum) of wool from a lamb fed upon by a wolf.Attributed to Theodorus Priscianus, Additamenta 10; Corbeill, Nature Embodied, p. 37. See also Marcellus Empiricus, De medicamentis 10.70 and 82. Subigus is the god (deus) who causes the bride to give in to her husband.Augustine, De Civitate Dei 6.9. The name derives from the verb subigo, subigere, "to cause to go under; tame, subdue," used of the active role in sexual intercourse, hence "cause to submit sexually".J.N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), pp. 155–156. The verb is used in the satiric verses chanted by the soldiers at the triumph of Julius Caesar, where he is said to have caused the Gauls to submit (see Gallic Wars), and to have submitted himself to Nicomedes. A subigitatrix was a woman who took the active role in fondling (Plautus, Persa 227). Prema is the insistent sex act, from the verb primo, primere, to press upon. Although the verb usually describes the masculine role, Augustine calls Prema dea Mater, a mother goddess.Adams, Latin Sexual Vocabulary, p. 182; Augustine, De Civitate Dei 6.9. Inuus ("Entry"), the phallic god Mutunus Tutunus, and Pertunda enable sexual penetration. Inuus, sometimes identified with Faunus, embodies the mammalian impulse toward mating. The cult of Mutunus was associated with the sacred fascinum.The cult of this god was either misunderstood or deliberately misrepresented by Church Fathers as a ritual deflowering during marriage rites; no Roman source describes such a thing. See Mutunus Tutunus. Both these gods are attested outside conception litany. Pertunda is the female personificationSissa, "Maidenhood without Maidenhead," p. 362. of the verb pertundere, "to penetrate",Augustine of Hippo, De Civitate Dei 6.9.3. and seems to be a name for invoking a divine power specific to this function. Janus, the forward- and backward-facing god of doorways and passages, "opened up access to the generative seed which was provided by Saturn," the god of sowing.Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome, p. 18. Consevius or Deus Consevius, also Consivius, is the god of propagation and insemination,Rüpke, Religion in Republican Rome, p. 181. from con-serere, "to sow." It is a title of Janus as a creator god or god of beginnings.Fowler, Roman Festivals, p. 289. Macrobius, Saturnalia `1.9, lists Consivius among the titles of Janus from the act of sowing (a conserendo), that is, "the propagation of the human race," with Janus as the auctor ("increaser," source, author). Macrobius says that the title Consivia also belongs to the goddess Ops.
Liber Pater ("Father Liber") empowers the man to release his semen,Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome, p. 18, citing Augustine, De Civitate Dei 6.9.3. while Libera does the same for the woman, who was regarded as also contributing semina, "seed."Rüpke, Religion in Republican Rome, p. 181. Mena or Dea Mena with Juno assured menstrual flow,Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome, p. 18, citing Augustine, De Civitate Dei IV.11: dea Mena, quam praefecerunt menstruis feminarum ("The goddess Mena, who was in charge of menstruation"). This may seem illogically placed in the sequence; Roman girls were not married until they were ready for childbearing, so menstruation would mark the bride as old enough to marry, and conception would halt the flow. which is redirected to feed the developing child.Rüpke, Religion in Republican Rome, p. 181. Fluonia or Fluvionia, from fluo, fluere, "to flow," is a form of Juno who retains the nourishing blood within the womb.Tertullian, Ad nationes 2.11.3; Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome, p. 18. Women attended to the cult of Juno Fluonia "because she held back the flow of blood (i.e., menstruation) in the act of conception."Excerpts from Paulus in Festus, p. 82 (edition of Lindsay): mulieres colebant, quod eam sanguinis fluorem in conceptu retinere putabant. Medieval mythographers noted this aspect of Juno,Juno "is called Fluonia, from the flowing (fluoribus) of seed, because she frees women in childbirth," according to the Third Vatican Mythographer, as translated by Ronald E. Pepin, The Vatican Mythographers (Fordham University Press, 2008), p. 225. Fluoribus might also be translated as "emissions, discharge." The Berlin Commentary to the De nuptiis of Martianus Capella (2.92) compares this moisture to the dew that drips from the air and nourishes seeds; Haijo Jan Westra and Tanja Kupke, The Berlin Commentary on Martianus Capella's De Nuptiis Philologie et Mercurii, Book II (Brill, 1998), p. 93. which marked a woman as a mater rather than a virgo.In his commentary on the De nuptiis of Martianus Capella, Remigius of Auxerre "explains Fluvonia from the contraceptive use of the discharges of seeds to free women from childbirth"; see Jane Chance, Medieval Mythography from Roman North Africa to the School of Chartres, A.D. 433–1177 (University Press of Florida, 1994), p.286. Alemona feeds the embryoTertullian, De anima 37.1 (Alemonam alendi in utero fetus); Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome, p. 18. or generally nourished growth in utero.Rüpke, Religion in Republican Rome, p. 181.