The Bona Dea was an ancient Latin goddess of good fortune, often identified either as the wife of the god Faunus or with the goddess of abundance, Ops. She was honored in Rome twice a year: the first festival, in May, was reserved for the plebeians; the second, in early December, had an esoteric character and was strictly reserved for patrician women.

On the night of December 4–5, 62 BC, Gaius Julius Caesar, then serving as pontifex maximus, hosted the sacred rite at his residence. The ceremony, however, was disrupted when Publius Clodius Pulcher, brother of the well-known Clodia (Catullus’ “Lesbia”) and lover of Caesar’s wife, Pompeia Sulla, sneaked into the house disguised as a woman in order to meet her. He was discovered by Caesar’s mother, Aurelia Cotta, who promptly drove him out.

Since the event involved all the patrician women of Rome, word quickly spread, and the scandal was widely discussed throughout the city. In Roman society, where religio was inseparably tied to politics, civil life, and the military, Clodius’ profanation of such an ancient rite was perceived by traditionalists as a serious threat to the established order. A month later, thanks to Caesar’s ally Quintus Cornificius, a trial was launched against Clodius, who was accused of incestus, a sexual crime against both nature and religion. Caesar divorced his wife, declaring that the wife of the pontifex maximus had to be above suspicion, yet he refused to testify against Clodius. Aware of Clodius’ rising popularity among the Roman plebs, Caesar may have even benefited from the incident, gaining the opportunity to remarry more advantageously to Calpurnia, thereby strengthening his political alliances.

Cicero, once a friend of Clodius, chose to testify against him. With the scandal already public knowledge, Cicero, now an ex-consul and hailed as pater patriae for having foiled Catiline’s conspiracy the year before, was unwilling to risk his credibility among the conservatives. Clodius, however, was acquitted, largely thanks to jury bribery orchestrated by Crassus, to whom Clodius was likely a client. Still, he never forgot Cicero’s betrayal. In 58 BC, taking advantage of his position as tribune of the plebs, Clodius engineered Cicero’s exile by passing a plebiscite that decreed banishment for anyone who, in the past, had executed Roman citizens without granting them the right of appeal to the people. Cicero, who had done precisely that during the Catilinarian conspiracy, was forced to pay the price.