Virginia was the daughter of Aulus Verginius, a patrician. Verginia is the usual orthography found in Latin manuscripts.

Virginia’s new husband in 296 BCE was Lucius Volumnius Flamma Violens

Lucius Volumnius Flamma Violens

Lucius Volumnius Flamma Violens was a Roman politician, the first consul from a plebeian gens: see novus homo.-Background:According to Roman tradition, membership of the Roman Senate, the city's magistracies, the offices of consul and various religious positions were restricted to patricians...

. He became a novus homo

Novus homo

Homo novus was the term in ancient Rome for a man who was the first in his family to serve in the Roman Senate or, more specifically, to be elected as consul...

 the previous year. That same time the patrician "important ladies" insulted her by forbidding her access to the ceremony at the Patrician Pudicitia honoring the female virtue pudicitia

Pudicitia

Pudicitia was a central concept in ancient Roman sexual ethics. The word is derived from the more general pudor, the sense of shame that regulated an individual's behavior as socially acceptable...

, a public religious function. This chapel is inside the Forum Boarium

Forum Boarium

The Forum Boarium was the cattle forum venalium of Ancient Rome and the oldest forum that Rome possessed. It was located on a level piece of land near the Tiber between the Capitoline, the Palatine and Aventine hills. Here, too, is where the first bridges were built...

 up against the round temple of Hercules.

The patrician women did not allow her the sacred rites of pudicitia because she had married outside the patriciate. She was unceremoniously removed from the Temple. This led to an altercation in which many other women were involved including women like Virginia wanting to go to the temple for the same purpose.

Virginia protested she had entered the temple of Pudicitia in good faith as a pure woman. She owned many houses at Vicus Longus and separated a group of them to make a modest shrine. She then invited the wives of the plebian there and told them about the arrogance of the patrician women,

I am dedicating this shrine to the Plebeian Pudicitia and invite you each to compete in a wifely modesty as the men in this City. I beg the patrician women to show the same spirit of emulation on the score of chastity that the men display with regard to courage and valor, so that this shrine may, if possible, have the reputation of being honored with a holier observance manner and by purer worshippers than that of the patrician women.

Primary sources

• Livy's History, Book X, 23 "Pudicitia"

Secondary sources

• The Ancient Library - Virginia number 2
• Virginia Brown's translation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Famous Women, pp. 129-130; Harvard University Press 2001; ISBN 0-674-01130-9