Roman mythology is full of men trying to prove their masculinity at a large cost to everyone, including themselves. Roman women are often cast into the mold of virtuous wives or brave heroines who sacrifice themselves for the wellbeing of the family or the state. But Roman cults contain a great deal of complexity that refuses to fit a gender binary or dichotomy. One of my favourite is that of Venus Cloacina, whose sanctuary was placed on the Cloaca Maxima, known as the greatest sewer in Rome. This was a peculiar shrine of the Roman goddess of love, ridiculed by Saint Augustine for its location on the canal of a sewer.

Most people know that the Cloaca Maxima was used as a sewer in the Roman Empire but few realize that this was not its original purpose. It was constructed as a monumental fresh water channel in large stone blocks in the sixth century BC, a period of intense urbanisation of the urban core of Rome. It continued to serve this purpose, conveying fresh spring water until some time in the second century BC when the growing city needed to release larger amounts of effluent. However, in the regal period (tradition has it) the city was ruled by powerful Etruscan kings, the Tarquins, who supervised enormous projects to advertize their power, including the channel of Cloaca and a massive temple to Jupiter, Juno and Minerva on the Capitol hill. This was a great structure built on a scale unprecedented in Rome.

Though this display of power stood on a hill, the city centre needed to be in the valley between the hills so as to unite the disparate communities of the hillside settlements. The valley between the Palatine and the Capitoline was chosen as the ideal place but there was an issue. The continual flooding prevented the area from developing into a proper city centre and necessitated a project to manage it. The level of the valley was about 7 meters above sea level while seasonal Tiber floods (in the winter) reached up to 9 meters above sea level. A great amount of ground needed to be moved to form a massive landfill in order to raise the level of the valley. The project of draining the Forum area was extensive and took decades to complete (estimates go from about 600BC to about 530BC). Alongside the landfill, a long artificial stone channel (called Cloaca) was built primarily in order to drain the water left over from the floods. The artificial channel was conditioned by the natural properties of the terrain and followed the course of the stream that ran through the valley as the ancients believed it was an offence to the deity that resides in the water to change its course.

The shrine of Venus Cloacina was a round stone structure that stood in the northern part of the Forum, near basilica Aemilia. The story says that a statue of Venus was found by the Sabine king Titus Tatius (who ruled together with Romulus) and named Cloacina after the place where he found it. According to Pliny (NH 15.119-20), the Romans and the Sabines made a peace treaty here because the stream was a border between their two territories. Both armies then purified themselves at the spot, which explains the name: cluere means ‘to purify’. The round stone structure in the shape of a well clearly provided an entrance into the Cloaca, but may have also served to measure the levels of the Tiber when the river would rise into the Forum through the channel.

But why is Venus placed here? The story tells of Verginia, a girl killed by her own father at a time of crises caused by ten men (decemviri) usurping power in mid fifth century BC. The historian Livy (3.48) relates that Verginius kills his own daughter with a knife quickly snatched from a nearby butcher’s shop (tabernae novae) because a tyrant wanted her for himself. As Robert Ogilvie points out, Verginia is most likely a legendary embodiment of virgo (‘virgin’), a model of female chastity linked to the place of a sanctuary. The father kills his daughter so that she might stay a virgin rather than suffer violation by a brutal tyrant. It is clear that the story was politicized and Verginia (originally a patrician) even becomes a plebeian in later versions. However, the connection of a maiden with sacrum Cloacinae (mentioned by Plautus in Curcul. 471) is older.

On a fantastic Republican coin from 42BC (Crawford 1974: 508-511, n. 42-43): two women stand on a circular enclosed platform and one of them holds a branch of myrtle, a marital plant for the Romans which, according to Cato, was used in the cult of Cloacina. Myrtle was used both in marriage and purification indicating that the shrine (in the shape of a well) was used as a sacred space for purifications and ritual ablutions. The Republican coin depicting Cloacina portrays Concordia on the other side which may connect to Pliny placing the peace treaty between Sabines and Romans on this spot:

It is said that myrtle rods were used by the Romans and the Sabines, when they had wanted to fight over the stolen women but left their weapons and were cleansed at the spot which now contains the signs of Venus Cloacina.

Pliny connects the shrine to the Sabine women and the famous story of their intervention to stop the war between Roman and Sabine men after they were taken and married by the former. This part of the Roman foundation myth starts with the stereotypical motif of women suffering at the hands of men only to reverse the gender dynamic in the end as Sabine women mediate between the two warring sides and achieve reconciliation between their fathers, brothers and recent husbands.

Clearly this was a female shrine where women would come to perform some sort of ritual. But what did they exactly do? Theories widely diverge on the question. Filippo Coarelli (1983: 86-7) argues the place is appropriate for a rite of passage as the stream was a liminal space separating the inhabited area of the city from the outside at an early period. C.C. Van Essen (1963) argues that this was the place where women would come to be purified from menstruation. S. Eitrem (1923) argues the Sabine connection and dedication of arms after Romans and Sabines make up, indicates this was a marriage rite, just like the androgynous Venus Calva (‘the bald Venus’) to whom women dedicated their hair after all of it fell off due to some unknown disease. Myrtle was also used by women when bathing in the baths normally reserved for men on the Kalends of April while praying to Fortuna Virilis for a good man. It was generally the plant of Venus and also used in the ritual of Venus Murcia who was worshiped in another valley defined by a natural spring.

In her article “Take, Skamander, my viriginity!” Evy Johanne Håland writes:

Water and hair symbolize life: water is a chthonic symbol, and a living individual’s vitality is in her or his hair. Therefore, childhood is offered in exchange for the status as adult. Usually, girls offered a lock of their hair to the Nymph or Neraida on the eve of their marriage. The role of the springs in the wedding-rituals is illustrated by maiden’s preliminary sacrifice to the nymphs. Before marriage it was customary for girls to go to the nearest river or spring to bathe, probably to honour the nymphs of the spring that they might make the marriage fruitful in the begetting of children, since they also presided over birth.

It may be that this is how the shrine of Venus Cloacina was used in Rome, in a way similar to ancient Greek wedding rituals. Thus the shrine of Venus Cloacina was not dedicated to a goddess of the sewer but of love manifested in purification. Rather than being a ridiculous ritual at a sewer (as Augustine would have it) the shrine was a monument to female agency as manifested in their ability to reconcile violent men and in the purification rituals utilizing pure spring water to start a new marriage and renew society.