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Gardens were dedicated to Venus on August 19 as well. The Temple of Venus Libitina, a goddess of death, celebrated its dies natalis on the same day, in a part of Rome on the Esquiline Hill where funerary services were concentrated. Plutarch saw this Venus as encompassing the regenerative cycle of birth and death, but Varro distinguished between Libitina and Libentina, the latter inspiring "sensual pleasure".
The association of Venus and Fortuna in Roman religion is of long standing; Servius Tullius, semilegendary sixth king of Rome, is supposed to have set up an altar to Fortuna within a precinct of Venus, along with his many other dedications to Fortuna. A Fortuna Obsequens is known from inscriptions, a mention in an early comedy by Plautus, and Plutarch.
The cultivation of "Venus the Obedient" overtly expresses "an attempt to control the goddess", though counterbalanced over time by other instantiations such as Venus Erycina, originally a goddess of prostitution celebrated with sexual license. The establishment of state cult for Venus Erycina mirrors that for Obsequens in several particulars, including the authority of the Sibylline Books and a dies natalis on the second Vinalia (April 23); Erycina's temple was vowed in 217 BC by Quintus Fabius Maximus Cunctator, the grandson of the founder of the Temple of Venus Obsequens.
In the year 295 BC, Rome had been subject to pestilence, and prodigies had prompted the consultation of the libri, the Sibylline books. The Obsequens cult was founded following a perceived outbreak of sexual misconduct (stuprum) among matronae (ordinarily a term for respectable married women), which was supposedly so widespread that Gurges could fund the project from the fines he collected.
The line of thought that led from the victory at Sentinum to funding the temple with fines for stuprum is not recorded, but it was one in a series of foundings based on regulating female behavior as a religious response to social disorder particularly in time of war or crisis for the Roman state. In 331 BC Rome's first trial for poisoning had resulted in the conviction of 170 matrons, and the involvement of patrician women may suggest that the founding of the scantly attested Temple of Pudicitia Patricia was a consequence. Pudicitia was the virtue by which women were to demonstrate their excellence, often invoked in settings when married women were competing for social standing, encompassing sexual integrity and self-discipline equivalent to virtus, "manly" virtue. In 296 BC, a corresponding cult for Pudicitia Plebeia was established so that plebs could compete as pudicae. Participation in both cults was limited to univirae, women who had married only once. The Temple of Venus Obsequens is one of the proposed locations of the first statue, dedicated in 220 BC, to Venus Verticordia ("Heart-Turner"), whose sphere of influence was diverting sexual desire into marital expression.
Adultery might be more plausible in the case that resulted in the Obsequens cult; the temple may have served as a public warning against infidelity. The matrons were brought before an aedile as a matter of Roman law, and yet their offenses seem to have been regarded as less serious than sex crimes that could result in capital penalties. That fines were deemed a sufficient penalty may suggest "something less than adultery". Jane F. Gardner conjectured that the matrons were guilty of "nothing more than disorderly and uninhibited behaviour 'under the influence'" at festivals where women drank wine, such as the feast of Anna Perenna and the two Vinalia in honor of Venus – "debauched picnics" that allowed them to cast off their usual propriety in the guise of religion. They may not have been "guilty" of anything; but since a conviction for stuprum could result in exile, property forfeiture as a consequence might explain the source of temple funding more fully than mere fines.
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