* Secret ceremonies in honor of Bona Dea ( Roman Empire )

The month May was named for the Greek goddess Maia, who was identified with the Roman era goddess of fertility, Bona Dea, whose festival was held in May.

In Roman religion and myth, Pan's counterpart was Faunus, a nature god who was the father of Bona Dea, sometimes identified as Fauna.

* Damia ( goddess ), a Greek deity similar to Demeter and the Roman Bona Dea

( Compare Bona Dea for a Roman deity from whose worship men were excluded.

* Bona Dea

Bona Dea (" The Good Goddess ") was a divinity in ancient Roman religion.

During the Roman Republican era, two such cults to Bona Dea were held at different times and locations in the city of Rome.

An Imperial cult centre in Aquileia honours an Augusta Bona Dea Cereria, probably in connection with the corn dole.

From the late 2nd century, an increasing religious syncretism in Rome's traditional religions presents Bona Dea as one of many aspects of Virgo Caelestis, the celestial Virgin, Great Mother of the gods, whom later Mariologists identify as prototype for the Virgin Mary in Christian theology.

According to Dumezil, Festus ' identification of Bona Dea with Damia infers a foundation date in or shortly after 272 BC, after Rome's capture of Tarentum ; but Cicero claimed the goddess ' cult as coeval with Rome's foundation.

Its use and status at the time of the Bona Dea scandal are unknown.

Most provincial sanctuaries and temples to Bona Dea are too decayed, despoiled or fragmentary to offer firm evidence of structure and layout, but the remains of four confirm a layout consistent with the sparse descriptions of her Aventine temple.

Despite the exclusively female, aristocratic connections of her winter festival at Rome and her high status as a protecting deity of the Roman state, elite dedications to Bona Dea are far outnumbered by the personal dedications of the Roman plebs, particularly the ingenui ; the greatest number of all are from freedmen and slaves ; and an estimated one-third of all dedications are from men, one of whom, a provincial Greek, claims to be a priest of her cult.

Most inscriptions to Bona Dea are simple and unadorned but some show serpents, often paired.

This combination of snake and cornucopia are unique to Bona Dea.

Cicero makes no reference to any myth of Bona Dea.

Macrobius writes that Bona Dea is " the same as Fauna, Ops or Fatua ...

In turn, the cult practice may have changed to support the virtuous ideological message required of the myths, particularly during the Augustan religious reforms that identified Bona Dea with the empress Livia.

Versnel ( 1992 ) notes the elements common to the Bona Dea festival, Fauna's myths, and Greek Demeter's Thesmophoria, as " wine, myrtle, serpents and female modesty blemished ".

Nevertheless the strong, sacrificial grade wine used in the rites to Bona Dea was normally reserved for Roman gods, and Roman men.

The vine-leaf bowers and the profusion of plants – any and all but the forbidden myrtle – transform the sophisticated, urban banqueting hall into a " primitive " dwelling, evoking the innocence of an ancestral golden age in which women rule themselves, without reference to men or Venus, drinking " milk and honey ", which are " markers par excellence of utopian golden times " – under the divine authority of Bona Dea.

br: Bona Dea

ca: Bona Dea

Well over a century after the Clodius scandal, Juvenal describes Bona Dea's festival as an opportunity for women of all classes, most shamefully those of the upper class – and men in drag (" which altars do not have their Clodius these days?

The epithet Bonus, " the Good ," is used with other abstract deities such as Bona Fortuna (" Good Fortune "), Bona Mens (" Good Thinking " or " Sound Mind "), and Bona Spes (" Valid Hope ," perhaps to be translated as " Optimism "), as well as with the mysterious and multivalent Bona Dea, a goddess whose rites were celebrated by women.

Only women celebrated the rites of the Bona Dea (" Good Goddess "), for whom sacerdotes are recorded.

In 62 BC Pompeia hosted the festival of the Bona Dea (" good goddess "), which no man was permitted to attend, in this house.

and La Bona Lingvo ( The Good Language ).

In Roman mythology, Mens, also known as Bona Mens or Mens Bona ( Latin for " Good Mind "), was the personification of thought, consciousness and the mind, and also of " right-thinking ".

Some cult practices were reserved for women only, for example, the rites of the Good Goddess ( Bona Dea ).

Its motto is Sustine Bona, Latin for Uphold the Good.

The name for Jutta ( or Guta ) translatable into English as Good ( in the feminine case ), was changed by the time of marriage to Bonne ( French ) or Bona ( Latin ).

She was explicitly identified with Earth ( Terra, the Roman counterpart of Gaia ) and the Good Goddess ( Bona Dea ) in at least one tradition.

Description of the now perverted rites of the Bona Dea ( Good Goddess ).

* 1518 – Bona Sforza is crowned as queen consort of Poland.

* April 18 – Bona Sforza is crowned as Queen of Poland.

In England and Wales ( other than the Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall ), this property is administered by the Bona Vacantia Division of the Treasury Solicitor's Department.

In an otherwise seemingly thorough account, Cicero makes no mention of Bona Dea's May festival, and claims the goddess ' cult as an aristocratic privilege from the first ; the impeccably patrician Clodius, Cicero's social superior by birth, is presented as an innately impious, low-class oaf, and his popularist policies as threats to Rome's moral and religious security.

Bona Dea's is the only known festival in which women could gather at night, drink strong, sacrificial-grade wine and perform a blood sacrifice.

If a person dies intestate with no identifiable heirs, the person's estate generally escheats ( i. e. is legally assigned ) to the Crown ( via the Bona vacantia division of the Treasury Solicitor ) or to the Duchies of Cornwall or Lancaster when the deceased was a resident of either ; in limited cases a discretionary distribution might be made by one of these bodies to persons who would otherwise be without entitlement under strict application of the rules of inheritance.

The Bona Fide Occupational Qualification exception is an extremely narrow exception to the general prohibition of discrimination based on sex ( Dothard v. Rawlinson, 97 S. Ct.

An employer or customer's preference for an individual of a particular religion is not sufficient to establish a Bona Fide Occupational Qualification ( Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Kamehameha School — Bishop Estate, 990 F. 2d 458 ( 9th Cir.

Bona Vacantia arises, in origin, by virtue of the Royal Prerogative and in some respects this remains the position although the right to bona vacantia of the two major categories is now based on statute: Administration of Estates Act 1925 and the Companies Act 2006.

Bona fide debtors usually receive a discharge either immediately ( if they have practically no assets ) or within several months to several years from the onset of proceedings ( during which time the debtor is mostly required to pay a periodic sum, set by the court, that goes towards paying the creditors ).

He is most famous as an enemy of Cicero's owing to his involvement in the Bona Dea affair.

The motto used on the coat of arms of the Royal Burgh is ' Tandem Bona Causa Triumphat.

Bona Vista is a non-profit rehabilitation center based in Howard and Miami County in Indiana that was founded in the 1960s as a developmental school.

It is the site of a Franciscan monastery build on behalf of Bona Sforza, the queen consort of King Sigismund I of Poland.

Executive produced by Vin Di Bona, with co-executive producers Todd Thicke and Michele Nasraway, it is currently the longest-running prime time entertainment program on ABC.

It is based on the Tokyo Broadcasting System show Fun TV with Kato-chan and Ken-chan, which featured a segment in which viewers were invited to send in video clips from their home movies ; Vin Di Bona Productions pays a royalty fee to the Tokyo Broadcasting System for the use of the format.

The videos deemed funniest by the screeners then go on to the show's producers, then is turned over to Di Bona and another producer for final approval.