Quinta Claudia

Accounts of Cybele's arrival and her transformation into Rome's Magna Mater were embellished over time with circumstantial details, and formed part of the goddess's founding festival, Megalesia.

[2] These stories, and the pageants of Megalesia, were used to promote the goddess herself, traditional Roman values, and the status and reputation of Rome's ruling families.

Magna Mater was conscripted to the Roman cause at a particularly unstable time in the city's history; the choice of Quinta and Scipio Nasica as the best of their kind may reflect their enrollment in a show of unity.

The emperor Claudius claimed Claudia as an ancestor and may have promoted her cult, alongside that of Magna Mater and her divine consort, Attis.

[5] Most ancient sources describe Quinta as an aristocratic matron (a married woman and head of a household), who actively supports and defends her country's welfare, her personal reputation and that of her family.