Cloacina

Cloacina

Or Cluacina, a surname of Venus, under which she is mentioned at Rome in very early times. (History of Rome By Titus Livius iii) The explanation given by Lactantius (de Fals. Relig. i. 20), that the name was derived from the great sewer (Cloaca maxima), where the image of the goddess was said to have been found in the time of king Tatius, is merely one of the unfortunate etymological speculations which we frequently meet with in the ancients. There is no doubt that Pliny (H. N. xv. 36) is right in saying that the name is derived from the ancient verb cloare or cluere, to wash, clean, or purify.

This meaning is also alluded to in the tradition about the origin and worship of Venus Cloacina, for it is said that, when Tatius and Romulus were arrayed against each other on account of the rape of the Sabine women, and when the women prevented the two belligerents from bloodshed, both armies purified themselves with sacred myrtle-branches on the spot which was afterwards occupied by the temple of Venus Cloacina. The supposition of some modern writers, that Cloacina has reference to the purity of love, is nothing but an attempt to intrude a modern notion upon the ancients, to whom it was quite foreign. (Hartung, Die Relig. d. Röm. ii. p. 249.)

From Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology

From The History of Rome By Titus Livius. Book 3

When, bursting with passion, he had thundered out these words, the multitude themselves voluntarily separated, and the girl stood deserted a prey to injustice. Then Virginius, when he saw no aid any where, says, I beg you, Appius, first pardon a father's grief, if I have said any thing too harsh against you: in the next place, suffer me to question the nurse before the maiden, what all this matter is? that if I have been falsely called her father, I may depart hence with a more resigned mind. Permission being granted, he draws the girl and the nurse aside to the sheds near the temple of Cloacina, which now go by the name of the new sheds: and there snatching up a knife from a butcher, "In this one way, the only one in my power, do I secure to you your liberty." He then transfixes the girl's breast, and looking back towards the tribunal, he says, "With this blood I devote thee, Appius, and thy head."