Mater Matuta
Roman · deity · regal · deity
Mater Matuta's festival is one of the strangest in the Roman calendar. At the Matralia on 11 June, women in their first marriage gathered in her temple in the Forum Boarium, drove a slave woman out of the building, and then prayed and cared not for their own children but for their sisters' — the explanation offered in antiquity being that this imitated Ino, who nursed her sister's child Dionysus. Her name ties her to the morning, and her older sphere is the ripening of the grain and of the child.
Domains
- dawn
- childbirth
Sources
- Reference treatment of Mater Matuta, her spheres, and the ritual of the Matralia.