According to the Roman historian Pliny, in his Natural History, in 238 BC, at the direction of an oracle in the sibylline books, a temple was built to honor Flora, an ancient goddess of flowers and blossoming plants. (Pliny, XVIII.286) the temple was dedicated on April 28 and the Floralia instituted to solicit her protection for the city.

Although the Floralia originated as a "moving festival," after a period with bad crops when according to Ovid, "the blossoms again that year suffered from winds, hail, and rain" (Ovid, Fasti, V.329ff), the festival Ludi Florales started to be held every year, the first in 173 BCE. "It was later fixed on April 27th. After Caesar's reform of the calendar, it was April 28th. The purpose of the festival was to ensure the crops blossomed well." ("Flora," Roman Religion and Mythology: Lexicon, 1999)

Flora thus is fertile, like a mother, for she is the goddess of fertility. But she is also the goddess of a fertility that must be impinged upon and broken down, like her consort impinged upon her gardens. So according to Ovid, this festival was celebrated annually with games with sexually explicit farces and mimes. The prostitutes of Rome, performed naked in the theater and, deer and hares, both animal symbols of fertility, were let loose in honor of the goddess as protector of gardens and fields. Hence the nudity of Flora's statue. Then, as well, ordinary Roman matrons wore colorful clothing in the streets, rather than their usual festival white. (Ovid, Fasti, IV.946, V.189-190, 331ff.).

Unlike a fertile wife and mother, the statue of Flora stands naked and open before the viewer for she is not a virgin. She is there to encourage women to enter into the inevitable rite of springtime sowing and 'mating,' to ensure a good harvest. The statue depicts a fertile matron who is also, paradoxically, indiscriminate in her bounty and naked...

In an interesting twist for an agricultural festival meant to honor the flowers, land, soil, and toil of farmers, part of the festival was held during the night, as prostitution became more of an important component of the celebration. Ceres, Diana, and Flora were often all conflated in Roman religion, which was less anthropomorphic than their Greek counterparts, and thus between the mother-Ceres and virgin Diana, Flora stands betwixt and between these two images. She is not the ideal of what a woman should be like, or what a virgin should be like. Her being and presence represents the fact that to sow a harvest, the virgin soil must be broken. Likewise, a woman's virginity must be ended for children to be born in the world. But the public fertility cannot be contained to a single family, rather it must be spread out into the world, like the openness and accessibility of the naked Flora, and the prostitutes who embraced her image as their own. For a time, under the protection of her festival and image, they gained participation in a large springtime civic festival and some of their own color spilled over into the garments of Roman matrons, and also into the larger life of the city of Rome's civic religion, in its day and night.
Works Cited

Flora," Roman Religion and Mythology: Lexicon. Originally created 1999. Last updated 2005. Retrieved 26 Feb 2005. http://sights.seindal.dk/sight/1080_Flora.html

Flora and Pomona." Ancient Roman Mythology. Retrieved 26 Feb 2005. http://www.crystalinks.com/romemythology.html

Ovid. Fasti. Translated by a.J. Boyle and R.D. Woodard. New York: Penguin Classics, 2000.

Pliny. Natural History. Translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library, 1938.