2nd-century AD Roman statue of a Virgo Vestalis Maxima (National Roman Museum)
The Vestal Virgins or Vestals, were virgin Roman women dedicated to the service of Vesta. They tended to the sacred fire of Vesta and had many rights and privileges, such as being carried in a palanquin (which had a right of way), being able to pardon criminals/slaves, the right to own property and vote, being able to give evidence without an oath and a reserved seat at games and performances.
Their body was sacrosanct: harming or injuring them physically was punishable by death. Vestal virgins were sworn to celibacy, after they took their vows, they passed from the protection of their father to the protection of the state, and were thus considered daughters of the state. Any sexual relations with citizens was deemed incestuous in nature.
Those who broke their vows were punished harshly. Those who failed to attend the sacred fire were scourged. Breaking the vow of celibacy was punished by burying the offending priestess alive, outside the city of Rome. Roman law forbade the burial of persons inside the city, but ancient traditions decreed that the Vestal should be buried inside the city limits. Therefore, the priestess was buried outside the city, but with food and water for a few days, thus being a guest of the city. It was also forbidden to shed the blood of a Vestal. Rhea Silva, the mother of Romulus and Remus, was a Vestal.
History[]
Priesthoods with similar functions to the Vestals of Rome had an ancient and deeply embedded religious role in various surrounding Latin communities. According to Livy, the Vestals had pre-Roman origins at Alba Longa, where Rhea Silvia, a virgin daughter of the king, forced by her usurper uncle to become a Vestal, miraculously gave birth to twin boys, Romulus and Remus. The twins were fathered by Mars. They survived their uncle's attempts to kill them through exposure or drowning, and Romulus went on to found Rome. In the most widely accepted versions of Rome's beginnings, 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. He then added a second pair. Rome's sixth king, Servius Tullius, who was also said to have been miraculously fathered by the fire god Vulcan or the household Lar with a captive Vestal, increased the number of Vestals to six. In the Imperial era as attested by Plutarch, the college had six Vestals at any given time. Claims by Ambrose and others that the college comprised seven Vestals in the late 4th century rest on "very unsatisfactory evidence".
The dedication ceremony of a Vestal Virgin
The Vestals were a powerful and influential priesthood. Towards the end of the Republican era, when Sulla included the young Julius Caesar in his proscriptions, the Vestals interceded on Caesar's behalf and gained him pardon. 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. They were held in awe and attributed certain mysterious and supernatural powers and abilities. Pliny the Elder tacitly accepted these powers as fact:
At the present day, too, it is a general belief that our Vestal virgins have the power, by uttering a certain prayer, to arrest the flight of runaway slaves and to rivet them to the spot, provided they have not gone beyond the precincts of the City. 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.
Dissolution of the Vestal College would have followed soon after the emperor Gratian confiscated its revenues in 382 AD. 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. Zosimos claims that when Theodosius I visited Rome in 394 AD, his niece Serena insulted an aged Vestal, said to be the last of her kind. It is unclear from Zosimos's narrative whether Vesta's cult was still functioning, maintained by that single Vestal, or moribund. Cameron is skeptical of the entire tale, noting that Theodosius did not visit Rome in 394.