Sacerdos Bonae Deae

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Swedish. (January 2021) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Swedish article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 221 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Swedish Wikipedia article at [[:sv:Sacerdos Bonae Deae]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|sv|Sacerdos Bonae Deae}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Sacerdos Bonae Deae or Damiatrix was the title of the Priestess of the goddess Bona Dea in Ancient Rome.^[1]

As Damiatrix she officiated over the famous December rites reserved for women. She also performed secret sacrifices and rites to benefit the welfare of the city in regard the health and fertility. The sanctuary of the goddess provided herbal medicine and functioned as a pharmacy, and the priestess are likely to have been expected to have knowledge within pharmacy and herbal medicine.^[2] She was the head of a large sanctuary staff including priestesses of lower rank called ministrae, who performed smaller ceremonies, as well as assistants. Antistites managed the temple pharmacy. Priestesses of lower rank could be freedwomen.