Pudicitia

(Αἰδώς), a personification of modesty, was worshipped both in Greece and at Rome. At Athens an altar was dedicated to her. (Paus. 1.17.1.) At Rome two sanctuaries were dedicated to her, one under the name of Pudicitia patricia, and the other under that of Pudicitia plebeia. The former was in the forum Boarium near the temple of Hercules. When the patrician Virginia was driven from this sanctuary by the other patrician women, because she had married the plebeian consul L. Volumnius, she built a separate sanctuary to Pdicitia plebeia in the Vicus Longus. (Liv. 10.23; Fest. p. 242, ed. Millezrr) No woman who had married twice was allowed to touch her statue; and Pudicitia, moreover, was considered by some to be the same as Fortuna Muliebris. She is represented in works of art as a matron in modest attire. (Hirt, Mythol. Bilderb. p. 114. tab. 13.) [L.S]

The Roman goddess of modesty and chastity. She was at first worshipped in a chapel in Rome exclusively by the patrician matrons. When, in B.C. 296, the patrician Virginia was excluded from this worship by her marriage with the plebeian consul Volumnius, she erected in her own house a chapel to the goddess, so that the plebeian matrons might worship there. Afterwards this cult died out with the decay of morals. In imperial times altars were erected to Pudicitia in honour of the empresses. The goddess was represented as a draped matron, concealing her right hand in her garment. Pudicitia is the same as the Greek Αἰδώς, who had an altar at Athens.