Verginia, sometimes spelled Virginia, was the daughter of Aulus Verginius, a Roman patrician.
[1][2] In 296 BC, Verginia married Lucius Volumnius Flamma, a plebeian who had held the consulship the previous year.
Subsequently the leading patrician matrons prevented her from attending the sacred rights of Pudicitia, the goddess of modesty, arguing that she had dishonoured her family by marrying a plebeian.
[1][3] Verginia protested she had entered the Temple of Pudicitia in good faith, and as a pure woman.
Because she was refused entry to the temple, she dedicated a portion of her own house, in the Vicus Longus, as a shrine to Pudicitia, and invited the plebeian women to join her there to celebrate the rites of the goddess: