This study explores social and gendered aspects of female fertility in popular religious practices in Italy in the last four centuries BC, and it investigates the role of supplication and votive dedications in promoting maternal health and family continuity. It tackles modern assumptions which have strongly aligned the religious activities of women in Republican Italy with their generative interests and specific ‘fertility cults’ or ‘women's goddesses’. Divinities associated with fertility are explored here, with particular emphasis on Mater Matuta who is often defined in modern research as a ‘mother goddess’. The study shows that cults purely concerned with fertility are unlikely to have existed. Fertility was only one of several fundamental personal concerns brought by women and men to the generalist and polyvalent deities of Republican Italy. Items associated with fertility, such as terracotta wombs, male and female genitals, and swaddled infants, always occur together with other anatomical ex-votos across a wide range of sites and were dedicated to many deities. Considering the archaeological and textual evidence, Mater Matuta can be shown to have occupied a more flexible and encompassing space in the pantheon, and her involvement in marriage, motherhood and childbearing was part of a wider repertoire of responsibilities. The study also focuses attention on a distinctive, but largely overlooked, votive assemblage from Capua which includes numerous tufa statues of women and babies. The paper proposes that they should be understood as votive objects offered to an unknown deity by Capuan women as thanks for support in the generative enterprise, personally and more broadly in the context of the city's religious and civic identity.

中文翻译：

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MATER MATUTA，“生育崇拜”和公元前四世纪到一世纪意大利女性融入宗教生活

本研究探讨了公元前四个世纪意大利流行宗教活动中女性生育能力的社会和性别方面，并调查了祈求和奉献在促进孕产妇健康和家庭连续性方面的作用。它处理了现代假设，这些假设强烈地将意大利共和国妇女的宗教活动与她们的生育兴趣和特定的“生育崇拜”或“女性女神”联系起来。这里探讨了与生育有关的神，特别强调了在现代研究中经常被定义为“母亲女神”的玛图塔之母。研究表明，纯粹与生育有关的邪教不太可能存在。生育能力只是女性和男性为意大利共和国的多面手和多价神带来的几个基本个人问题之一。与生育有关的物品，例如兵马俑子宫、男性和女性生殖器以及襁褓中的婴儿，总是与其他解剖学前遗物一起出现在广泛的地点，并献给许多神灵。考虑到考古和文字证据，可以证明马图塔圣母在万神殿中占据了更灵活和包容的空间，她参与婚姻、生育和生育是更广泛职责的一部分。该研究还将注意力集中在卡普阿的一个独特但在很大程度上被忽视的还愿组合上，其中包括许多妇女和婴儿的凝灰岩雕像。