BONA DEA  , the " good goddess," an old Roman deity of fruitfulness, both in the earth and in women . She was identified with Fauna, and by later syncretism also with Ops and Maiathe latter no doubt because the dedication-day of her temple on the Aventine was 1st May (Ovid, Fasti, v . 149 foil.) . This temple was cared for, and the cult attended, by women only, and the same was the case at a second celebration at the beginning of December in the house of a magistrate with imperium, which became famous owing to the profanation of these mysteries by P . Clodius in 62 B.C., and the political consequences of his act . Wine and myrtle were tabooed in the cult of this deity, and myths grew up to explain these features of the cult, of which an account may be read in W . W . Fowler's Roman Festivals, pp . 103 foil . Herbs with healing properties were kept in her temple, and also snakes, the usual symbol of the medicinal art . Her victim was a porca, as in the cults of other deities of fertility, and was called damium, and we are told that the goddess herself was known as Damia and her priestess as damiatrix . These names are almost certainly Greek; Damia is found worshipped at several places in Greece, and also at Tarentum, where there was a festival called Dameia .

It is thus highly probable that on the cult of the

original Roman goddess was engrafted the Greek ICI one of Damia, perhaps after the conquest of Tarentum (272 B.c.) . It is no longer possible to distinguish clearly the Greek and Roman elements in this curious cult, though it is itself quite intelligible as that of an Earth-goddess with mysteries attached . See also Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopddie . (W . W .