Bacchanalia Reborn

From forbidden rituals to artistic inspiration

The whole thing came crashing down because of an informant. And not just any informant — a “well known harlot.”

Hispala Faecenia, the harlot in question, was a freed slave woman who worked as a prostitute in the Roman Republic. When her lover, Publius Aebutius, told her that he would have to spend some time away from her for religious reasons, she pressed him on his intentions. He said that he was preparing for the Bacchic rites. The historian Livy tells us that

When the woman heard this, she, perturbed, exclaimed, “Good gods!” She expressed that it would be better for him and for her to die rather than to do it, and she called down threats and perils on the heads of those who had advised it.

Hispala, it turned out, had spent some time around the cult of Bacchus in her previous life as a slave. She warned him that the rituals there started with “the pleasures of wine and feast” but became immoral, dark, and disturbing, saying that

There, no wickedness, no shameful act was left untried.…