Bona Dea (Lat. "the Good Goddess "), in Roman myth, a divinity also known as Fauna or Fatua and described as the sister, daughter or wife of Faunus. Her worship was exclusively confined to women in somuch that men were not even allowed to know her name. Being the goddess of fertility her rites degenerated from rustic simplicity in their original environment to unseemly license in the metropolis. The matrons of the noblest families in Rome met by night in the house of the highest official of the state. Only women were permitted to attend. The breach of this rule by Clodius, an aristocratic profligate who was in love with Caesar's wife, Pompeia, and assumed female disguise to gain admittance to the festival occasioned a great scandal. Though there was no direct evidence of collusion on the part of Pompeia, Caesar divorced her on the famous plea that "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion."


From Heroes and Heroines of Fiction, Classical Medi�val, Legendary by William Shepard Walsh