A quick notice. To celebrate the 10th year of the Emperors of Rome

podcast we will be holding a live podcast and special screening of the hit

movie Gladiator. It's on Saturday 19th of October at 4.30 PM at the Thornbury Picture House in

Melbourne and tickets are now on sale on their website. There's a link in the show notes. We hope to

see you there. and welcome to Emperors of Rome a Roman history podcast from Latrobe University.

I'm your host Matt Smith and with me today is Rianna Evans, an associate professor in

classics and ancient history at Latrobe University. This is episode

CC XXIX, Plodius Pulker and the Bonnodea. The Bonnadea was a goddess of Rome whose celebrations were the secret domain of elite women.

To our male Roman sources, they were mysterious and magical.

That is until Clodius Pulker decided he would gate crash. He's

Rianna Evans. Bonadea or the good goddess was a Roman goddess worshipped in a

festival in early December. It was secret, it was exclusive. It was celebrated by women only and it was quite elite, so a very elite woman in charge of it, the wife of the Pontifex Maximus.

And this isn't a Roman goddess that I've come across very often.

Really, Matt, you're not over all of the Roman gods every single one of them maybe

because I'm not involved in the secret club for this goddess in particular yeah

she's pretty obscure it should be said We just don't have much remaining that tells us much about it. We don't

have the temples. There aren't that many mythic narratives, like we get with lots of the gods,

origin stories or whatever. When we do hear about her in written

texts, it often seems to be a case of she needs to be explained to people. So possibly

she was a bit obscure even in antiquity. Both Greek and Roman texts are, you know, well this is what the Bonnadea is and they're

contradictory explanations as well, certainly about her origins. I can kind of buy that because our

sources are written by men so does the confusion around it echo their confusion

...