Sulpicia (wife of Quintus Fulvius Flaccus)

late 3rd century BC) was an ancient Roman woman whose outstanding sexual integrity (pudicitia) earned her the honor of instituting the cult of Venus Verticordia.

Anxieties about women with more agency and at greater liberty were often mediated through the articulation of standards of conduct, particularly the virtue of pudicitia, and new or theologically reinterpreted religious practices.

Violations of the sexual and religious purity (castitas) of the Vestals were detected, and married women of the respectable classes (matronae) were investigated and sometimes prosecuted for criminal debauchery.

Pliny the Elder implies that it was the first time a woman who was not a priestess was charged with carrying out an official religious task on behalf of the state,[9] and sees Sulpicia as a precedent for Claudia Quinta, who was granted a similar responsibility when the cult of Magna Mater was imported to Rome.

Sulpicia holds a symbolic model of the goddess's temple, which was not built until at least century after her death, and stands before a view of the ancient city as imagined by Orioli.

[17] The Latin inscription on the pedestal[b] erroneously identifies Sulpicia as the temple founder, with the moral "An altar of chastity (pudicitia) is that breast which is chaste unto itself.