"Now how great must that immortality be thought which is attained even by harlots! Flora, having obtained great wealth by this practice, made the people her heir, and left a fixed sum of money, from the annual proceeds of which her birthday might be celebrated by public games, which they called Floralia. And because this appeared disgraceful to the senate, in order that a kind of dignity might be given to a shameful matter, they resolved that an argument should be taken from the name itself. They pretended that she was the goddess who presides over flowers, and that she must be appeased, that the crops, together with the trees or vines, might produce a good and abundant blossom. The poet followed up this idea in his Fasti, and related that there was a nymph, by no means obscure, who was called Chloris, and that, on her marriage with Zephyrus, she received from her husband as a wedding gift the control over all flowers. These things are spoken with propriety, but to believe them is unbecoming and shameful. And when the truth is in question, ought disguises of this kind to deceive us? Those games, therefore, are celebrated with all wantonness, as is suitable to the memory of a harlot. For besides licentiousness of words, in which all lewdness is poured forth, women are also stripped of their garments at the demand of the people, and then perform the office of mimeplayers, and are detained in the sight of the people with indecent gestures, even to the satiating of unchaste eyes."
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Lactantius, Institutiones Divinae § 1.20. Translated by William Fletcher (1885)
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Flora (goddess)
Flora was an ancient Italian deity, the Roman goddess of flowers. At Rome she had two temples. She was represented as a flower-crowned female in the full bloom of youthful beauty. On the occasion of her festival, the Floralia, held at the end of April, the dwellings were decked with flowers, and feasting, dancing and singing prevailed everywhere. The Romans conflated her with the Greek Chloris. Both names have been applied to characters and personae in many literary works, especially since the R
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