Vestal Virgin
They were chosen before puberty from several suitable candidates, freed from any legal ties and obligations to their birth family, and enrolled in Vesta's priestly college of six priestesses.
They were supervised by a senior vestal but chosen and governed by Rome's leading male priest, the pontifex maximus; in the Imperial era, this meant the emperor.
Vesta's acolytes vowed to serve her for at least thirty years, study and practise her rites in service of the Roman State, and maintain their chastity throughout.
[2] In the most widely accepted versions of Rome's beginnings[3] the city's legendary second king, Numa Pompilius, built its first Temple of Vesta, appointed its first pair of Vestals and subsidised them as a collegiate priesthood.
[7] Caesar's adopted heir, Augustus, promoted the Vestals' moral reputation and presence at public functions, and restored several of their customary privileges that had fallen into abeyance.
If then these opinions be once received as truth, and if it be admitted that the gods do listen to certain prayers, or are influenced by set forms of words, we are bound to conclude in the affirmative upon the whole question.The 4th-century AD urban prefect Symmachus, who sought to maintain traditional Roman religion during the rise of Christianity, wrote: The laws of our ancestors provided for the Vestal virgins and the ministers of the gods a moderate maintenance and just privileges.
This gift was preserved inviolate till the time of the degenerate moneychangers, who diverted the maintenance of sacred chastity into a fund for the payment of base porters.
A public famine ensued on this act, and a bad harvest disappointed the hopes of all the provinces [...] it was sacrilege which rendered the year barren, for it was necessary that all should lose that which they had denied to religion.
[10] The last epigraphically attested Vestal is Coelia Concordia, a Virgo Vestalis Maxima who in 385 AD erected a statue to the deceased pontiff Vettius Agorius Praetextatus.
[16] The pontifex maximus, acting as the father of the bride, might arrange a marriage with a suitable Roman nobleman on behalf of the retired Vestal, but no literary accounts of such marriages have survived; Plutarch repeats a claim that "few have welcomed the indulgence, and that those who did so were not happy, but were a prey to repentance and dejection for the rest of their lives, thereby inspiring the rest with superstitious fears, so that until old age and death they remained steadfast in their virginity".
From at least the mid-Republican era, the pontifex maximus chose Vestals by lot from a group of twenty high-born candidates at a gathering of their families and other Roman citizens.
[22] Tacitus recounts how Gaius Fonteius Agrippa and Domitius Pollio offered their daughters as Vestal candidates in 19 AD to fill such a vacant position.
His influence and status grew during the Republican era, and the religious post became an important, lifetime adjunct to the political power of the annually elected consulship.
[35] The Fordicidia was a characteristically rustic, agricultural festival, in which a pregnant cow was sacrificed to the Earth-goddess Tellus, and its unborn calf was reduced to ashes by the senior Vestal.
In every case, they were preceded by a lictor, who was empowered to enforce the Vestal's right-of-way; anyone who passed beneath the litter, or otherwise interfered with its passage, could be lawfully killed on the spot.
Spontaneous extinction of the sacred flame for no apparent reason might be understood as a prodigy, a warning that the pax deorum ("peace of the gods") was disrupted by some undetected impropriety, unnatural phenomenon or religious offence.
Romans had a duty to report any suspected prodigies to the Senate, who in turn consulted the pontifex maximus, the pontifices and the haruspices to determine whether the matter must be tried or dismissed.
[45] Extinction of Vesta's sacred fire through Vestal negligence could be expiated by the scourging or beating of the offender, carried out "in the dark and through a curtain to preserve their modesty".
The pontifex maximus, having lifted up his hands to heaven and uttered a secret prayer, opened the litter, led forth the culprit, and placing her on the steps of the ladder which gave access to the subterranean cell, delivered her over to the common executioner and his assistants, who conducted her down, drew up the ladder, and having filled the pit with earth until the surface was level with the surrounding ground, left her to perish deprived of all the tributes of respect usually paid to the spirits of the departed.
[53] Some Vestals were probably used as scapegoats; their political alliances and alleged failure to observe oaths and duties were held to account for civil disturbances, wars, famines, plagues and other signs of divine displeasure.
[54] In 337 BC, Minucia, another possible first plebeian Vestal, was tried, found guilty of unchastity and buried alive on the strength of her excessive and inappropriate love of dress, and the evidence of a slave.
[55] In 123 BC the gift of an altar, shrine and couch to the Bona Dea's Aventine temple by the Vestal Licinia "without the people's approval" was refused by the Roman Senate.
Of the three Vestals executed for incestum between the first Punic War (216) and the end of the Republic (113–111), each was followed by a nameless, bloodless form of human sacrifice seemingly reserved for times of extreme crisis, supposedly at the recommendation of the Sibylline Books; the living burial or immurement in the Forum Boarium of a Greek man and woman, and a Gaulish man and woman, possibly to avert divine outrage at the ritual killing of the Vestal priestesses involved.
He describes how she sought to keep her dignity intact when she descended into the chamber:[65] As they were leading her to the place of execution, she called upon Vesta, and the rest of the gods, to attest her innocence; and, amongst other exclamations, frequently cried out, "Is it possible that Cæsar can think me polluted, under the influence of whose sacred functions he has conquered and triumphed?"
As she was being lowered down into the subterranean vault, her robe happening to catch upon something in the descent, she turned round and disengaged it, when, the executioner offering his assistance, she drew herself back with horror, refusing to be so much as touched by him, as though it were a defilement to her pure and unspotted chastity: still preserving the appearance of sanctity up to the last moment; and, among all the other instances of her modesty, "She took great care to fall with decency."
]Dionysius of Halicarnassus claims that long before Rome's foundation, Vestals at ancient Alba Longa were whipped and "put to death" for breaking their vows of celibacy, and that their offspring were to be thrown into the river.
Some cleared themselves through ordeals or miraculous deeds; in a celebrated case during the mid-Republic, the Vestal Tuccia, accused of unchastity, carried water in a sieve to prove her innocence; Livy's epitomator (Per.
Located behind the Temple of Vesta (which housed the sacred fire), the Atrium Vestiae was a three-storey building at the foot of the Palatine Hill, "very large and exceptionally magnificent both in decoration and material".
Cicero describes how the Vestal Claudia, daughter of Appius Claudius Pulcher, walked beside her father in his triumphal procession, to repulse a tribune of the plebs, who wanted to veto the triumph.
Now Licinia was the owner of a pleasant villa in the suburbs which Crassus wished to get at a low price, and it was for this reason that he was forever hovering about the woman and paying his court to her until he fell under the abominable suspicion.
