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The goddess Feronia, identified by Varro as Sabine in origin (LL V, 74), is still largely a mystery. A handful of studies have analyzed individual inscriptions naming Feronia or specific cult locations (Torelli 1973; Sanzi di Mino and Staffa 1996), but only a single monograph has been dedicated to her overall archaeological presence in Italy (Di Fazio 2013), and many aspects of her cult remain unknown. This paper focuses on the analysis of Feronia’s female worshippers, through the study of votive inscriptions dating from the 3rd century BCE through the 2nd century CE. These
inscriptions reveal that the dedicators were predominantly males, outnumbering female dedicators by a ratio of four to one.  

It is well known that gender influences patterns of commemoration and that male individuals are statistically more prevalent that females in the epigraphic record. However, such a disparity goes beyond the noted epigraphic bias. Likewise, accidents of transmission can only be partially responsible for the gender difference that the inscriptions document. This prevalence of male dedicators has thus far remained unexplained; yet, even if the evidence for Feronia’s female worshippers is scarce, it is possible to utilize what we do have to reconstruct how these women performed their religious practice.  

For example, Padilla Peralta (2020) utilized a votive inscription set up by the freedwoman Salvia Plaria, which date to the pre-Hannibal sack of the sanctuary of Feronia in Capena, to demonstrate how women likely traveled to the extra-urban temple from other parts of Central Italy.
In particular, Plaria traveled to the sanctuary after her manumission to give a gift to Feronia, who is described as “well deserving”, thus suggesting that the liberta believed to have received some type of favor or divine intervention by the goddess herself. Another votive inscription, dated to the first
century BC, from the city of Rome was set up by an ancilla named Hedone from the household of Crassus: the inscription is presented as the fulfillment of a vow to Feronia, who aided Hedone sometime in the past.  

In addition to freed and enslaved worshippers, Feronia was also revered by elite women. Indeed, two dedications from the Umbrian town of Tuficum attest the presence there in the second century CE of a flaminica to Feronia, an elite woman named Camurena Celerina, who appears to have been an influential figure in the life of the settlement. No other inscription identifies a figure in charge of the cult of the goddess.  

As Livy attests (22.1), women were involved in the cult of the Feronia and, despite the prevalence of male dedicators in the epigraphic record, it is possible for us to catch a glimpse of the cult of the goddess and the religious practice of her female worshippers through few, yet significant, inscriptions.