Venus Verticordia

Venus Verticordia ("Changer of Hearts" or "Heart-Turner") was an aspect of the Roman goddess Venus conceived as having the power to convert either virgins or sexually active women from dissolute desire (libido) to sexual virtue (pudicitia). Under this title, Venus was especially cultivated by married women, and on 1 April the Veneralia festival was celebrated in her honor.

The epithet Verticordia derives from the Latin words verto, "turn", and cor, the heart as "the seat of subjective experience and wisdom". The conversion, however, was thought of as occurring in the mind – the mens or "ethical core". Women were thus viewed as having the moral agency necessary for shaping society, albeit in roles differing from men.

In Roman state religion
The cult of Venus Verticordia was established with the installation of a statue (simulacrum) around the time of the Second Punic War, before 204 BC, possibly 220 BC. Its initial location is not known. Similarly to the legislative process for establishing other women-centered cults such as that of Fortuna Muliebris or the religious reparations owed to Juno Regina in 207 BC, the senate compiled a list of one hundred matronae (married women) eligible to make the dedication, then narrowed their number by sortition (drawing lots) to ten. The ten women themselves nominated a Sulpicia as the most worthy of the honor among them. Pliny the Elder implies that it was the first time a woman was selected for an official religious task in this way, and says that this process was followed again for the importation of the cult of the Magna Mater by Claudia Quinta. T. P. Wiseman regarded the story of Sulpicia as a myth.

The Temple of Venus Verticordia in Rome was one of eight dedicated to ten different deities, seven of them goddesses, constructed on the authority of the Sibylline Books during the Roman Republic. Work was started in 114 BC. It was the last temple (aedes) the Romans built on Sibylline authority. The cult statue may have been moved there. The temple was located in the Vallis Murcia in Rome, though precisely where is unclear – possibly near the shrine of Murcia at the Circus Maximus. The establishing of a temple was a response to an incident of incestum (violation of religious chastity) involving three of the six women serving as "professionally chaste" Vestals.

The Veneralia
The festival of Veneralia took place on 1 April. Games (ludi) were held. According to Ovid, the cult image of Venus was bathed and redressed in the ritual act of lavatio. Matrons and brides undertook the rites of Verticordia, seeking physical beauty, socially approved behaviors, and a good reputation, while women of lesser standing celebrated Fortuna Virilis.

Participants consumed cocetum, a slurry of poppy seed, milk, and honey that may have served a ceremonial purpose similar to the kykeon of the Eleusinian Mysteries. The beverage may have helped relax anxious virgin brides, or had a more strongly narcotic or hallucinatory effect, depending on the opiate content of the poppy. Poppy also evokes a connection to Greek Demeter, perhaps because the Greek equivalent of Verticordia, Aphrodite Apostrophia ("Aphrodite of Turning Away"), was associated with Demeter Erinys. The most detailed source on the Veneralia is the opening of Book 4 of Ovid's poem about the Roman calendar, the Fasti, but the word Verticordia is metrically impossible in elegiac couplets and thus can't be used as an epithet for Venus in the passage. Ovid refers to Verticordia, however, in a line that plays on the etymology of the epithet: inde Venus verso nomina corde tenet, "and from her change of heart Venus holds her title."