Lo strano caso della vergine prostituta. Un dibattito sulla purezza nella cultura augustea

he controversia of the Priestess prostitute, belonging to the declamatory collection of Seneca the Elder (I century BCE-I century CE), is about a young woman captured by pirates, sold to a pimp, accused of homicide, acquitted and sent back to her family and finally asking for a female priesthood requiring candidates to be castae and purae. The text provides an in-depth exploration of such cultural categories as purity and chastity; in particular, the contribution is focused on the so-called divisio, that is the lines of arguments which the pupils were to follow, where the rhetoricians pose inter alia the question whether chastity coincides with virginity or it has to be interpreted as a more general abstinence from all shameful and obscene things.