Listening to a stunningly good paper by Abigail Straub (UMich) on her work on Pompeii Bakeries and their religious protections. (Well worth making it to this 8am session and even skipping a coin session — I feel guilty about the latter!)
The points I want remember are the representations of Vesta with donkeys, the Vestalia, but most importantly the placing images of phalloi at the hearth/oven mouth. This made me think immediately of one of the narratives of Servius Tullius’ conception:
They say that from the hearth in the palace, on which the Romans offer various other sacrifices and also consecrate the first portion of their meals, there rose up above the fire a man’s privy member, and that Ocrisia was the first to see it as she was carrying the customary cakes to the fire, and immediately informed the king and queen of it. Tarquinius, they add, upon hearing this and left beholding the prodigy, was astonished; but Tanaquil, who was not only wise in other matters but also inferior to none of the Tyrrhenians in her knowledge of divination, told him it was ordained by fate that from the royal hearth should issue a scion superior to the race of mortals, to be born of the woman who should conceive by that phantom. (Dion. Hal. RA 4.2.1-2)
Can’t wait to see Straub’s final dissertation. A real shame this paper was scheduled at exactly the same time as Sinead Brennan-McMahon (Stanford), “Queer Spaces in Pompeii? Phallic Aesthetics and Shared Communities”. I’d have loved to seen both and be able to think about how the two papers might be in dialogue with each other.
Liv Mariah Yarrow 
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