During that year many prodigies happened.

For the purpose of averting which, the senate decreed a supplication for two days: the wine and frankincense for the sacrifices were furnished at the expense of the public; and numerous crowds of men and women attended the performance.

This supplication was rendered remarkable by a quarrel, which broke out among the matrons in the chapel of patrician chastity, which stands in the cattle market, near the round temple of Hercules.
Virginia, daughter of Aulus, a patrician, but married to Volumnius the consul, a plebeian, was, because she had married out of the patricians, excluded by the matrons from sharing in the sacred rites: a short altercation ensued, which was afterwards, through the intemperance of passion incident to the sex, kindled into a flame of contention.

Virginia boasted with truth that she had a right to enter the temple of patrician chastity, as being of patrician birth, and chaste in her character, and, besides, the wife of one husband, to whom she was betrothed a virgin, and had no reason to be dissatisfied either with her husband, or his exploits or honours: to her high-spirited words, she added importance by an extraordinary act.

In the long street where she resided, she enclosed with a partition a part of the house, of a size sufficient for a small chapel, and there erected an altar.