Vestal Virgin
In
, virgin goddess of Rome's sacred hearth and its flame.The Vestals were unlike any other public priesthood. They were chosen before puberty from a number of 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, to study and practise her rites in service of the Roman State, and to maintain their chastity throughout. As well as their obligations on behalf of Rome, Vestals had extraordinary rights and privileges, some of which were granted to no others, male or female.
The Vestals took it in turns to supervise
In 382 AD, the Christian emperor Gratian confiscated the public revenues assigned to the cult of Vesta in Rome. The Vestals vanished from the historical record soon after.
History
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Priesthoods with similar functions to the Vestals of Rome had an ancient and deeply embedded religious role in various surrounding Latin communities.[1] According to Livy, the Vestals had pre-Roman origins at Alba Longa, where 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.[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. Rome's 6th King Servius Tullius, who was also said to have been miraculously fathered by the fire-god Vulcan or the household Lar on a captive Vestal, increased the number of Vestals to four.[4] In the late 4th century AD, Ambrose claims that the college comprised seven vestals in his own day, but this is unlikely; in the Imperial era, six was usual.[5]
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.[6] 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:[7]
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.[8]
Dissolution of the Vestal College would have followed soon after the emperor
Terms of service
The Vestals were committed to the priesthood before puberty (when 6–10 years old) and sworn to celibacy for a minimum period of 30 years.[14] A thirty-year commitment was divided into three decade-long periods during which Vestals were respectively students, servants, and teachers.
Vestals typically retired with a state pension, in their late 30s to early 40s, and thereafter were free to marry.[15] 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". Some Vestals preferred to renew their vows.[16][17] Occia was vestal for 57 years between 38 BC and 19 AD.[18]
Selection
To obtain entry into the order, a girl had to be free of physical, moral and mental defects, have two living parents and be a daughter of a free-born resident of Rome. 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.[19](pp 426–427)
Under the Papian Law of the 3rd century BCE, candidates for Vestal priesthoods had to be of
The choosing ceremony was known as a captio (capture). Once a girl was chosen to be a Vestal, the pontifex pointed to her and led her away from her parents with the words, "I take you, amata (beloved), to be a Vestal priestess, who will carry out sacred rites which it is the law for a Vestal priestess to perform on behalf of the Roman people, on the same terms as her who was a Vestal 'on the best terms'" (thus, with all the entitlements of a Vestal). As soon as she entered the atrium of Vesta's temple, she was under the goddess's service and protection.[20]
If a Vestal died before her contracted term ended, potential replacements would be presented in the quarters of the chief Vestal, for the selection of the most virtuous. Unlike normal inductees, these candidates did not have to be prepubescent, nor even virgins; they could be young widows or even divorcees, though that was frowned upon and thought unlucky.
Vestalis Maxima
The chief Vestal (Virgo Vestalis Maxima or Vestalium Maxima, "greatest of the Vestals") oversaw the work and morals of the Vestals, and was a member of the
Duties and festivals
Vestal tasks included the maintenance of their chastity, tending Vesta's sacred fire, guarding her sacred
The Vestals acknowledged one of their number as senior authority, the Vestalis Maxima, but all were ultimately under the authority of the
The Vestals guarded various sacred objects kept in Vesta's penus, including the
Festivals
Vesta's chief festival was the Vestalia, held in her temple from June 7 to June 15, and attended by matrons and bakers.
The
Privileges
Vestals were lawfully personae sui iuris – "sovereign over themselves", answerable only to the pontifex maximus.
The Vestals had unique, exclusive rights to use a carpentum, an enclosed, two-wheeled, horse-drawn carriage; some Roman sources remark on its likeness to the chariots used by Roman generals in triumphs.[41] Otherwise, the Vestals seem to have travelled in a one-seat, curtained litter, or possibly on foot. 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.
Vestals could also free or pardon condemned persons en route to execution by touching them, or merely being seen by them, as long as the encounter had not been pre-arranged.[42]
Vestals were permitted to see things forbidden to all other upper-class Roman women; from the time of Augustus on, they had reserved ring-side seating at public games, including gladiator contests, and stage-side seats at theatrical performances.[43]
Prosecutions and punishments
If Vesta's fire went out, Rome was no longer protected. Spontaneous extinction of the sacred flame for no apparent reason might be understood as a
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".[45] The sacred fire could then be relit, using the correct rituals and the purest materials. Loss of chastity, however, represented a broken oath. It was permanent, irreversible; no piaculum or expiation could restore it or compensate for its loss.[44]
A Vestal who committed incestum breached Rome's contract with the gods; she was a contradiction, a visible religious embarrassment.[46] By ancient tradition, she must die, but she must seem to do so willingly, and her blood could not be spilled. The city could not seem responsible for her death, and burial of the dead was anyway forbidden within the city's ritual boundary, so she was immured alive in an underground chamber within the city's ritual boundary (pomerium) in the Campus Sceleratus ("Evil Field") near the Colline Gate.[47][48] That Vesta did not intervene to save her former protege was taken as further divine confirmation of guilt.[49]
When condemned by the college of pontifices, [the Vestal] was stripped of her vittae and other badges of office, was scourged, was attired like a corpse, placed in a close litter, and borne through the forum attended by her weeping kindred, with all the ceremonies of a real funeral, to a rising ground called the Campus Sceleratus just within the city walls, close to the Colline gate. There a small vault underground had been previously prepared, containing a couch, a lamp, and a table with a little food. 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.[50]
If discovered, the paramour of a guilty Vestal was publicly beaten to death by the pontifex maximus, in the Forum Boarium or on the Comitium.[51]
Trials for Vestal incestum are "extremely rare"; most took place during military or religious crisis.
In 123 BC the gift of an altar, shrine and couch to the Bona Dea's Aventine temple by the Vestal
Pliny the Younger believed that Cornelia, a Virgo Maxima buried alive on the orders of emperor Domitian, may have been an innocent victim. He describes how she sought to keep her dignity intact when she descended into the chamber:[63]
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?" Whether she said this in flattery or derision; whether it proceeded from a consciousness of her innocence or contempt of the emperor, is uncertain; but she continued exclaiming in this manner, til she came to the place of execution, to which she was led, whether innocent or guilty I cannot say, at all events with every appearance and demonstration of innocence. 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." [The quotation is from Euripides, Hecuba.]
Postumia, though innocent according to Livy,[68] was suspected and tried for unchastity on grounds of her immodest attire and over-familiar manner. Some Vestals were acquitted. 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. 20) claims that she was condemned nevertheless but in all other sources she was acquitted.[69]
House of the Vestals
The House of the Vestals was the residence of the vestal priestesses in Rome. 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".[70]
Attire
Vestal costume had elements in common with high-status Roman bridal dress, and with the formal dress of high-status Roman matrons (married citizen-women). Vestals and matrons wore a long linen palla over a white woollen stola, a rectangular female citizen's wrap, equivalent to the male citizen's semi-circular toga.[71] A Vestal's hair was bound into a white, priestly infula (head-covering or fillet) with red and white ribbons, usually tied together behind the head and hanging loosely over the shoulders.[72][73]
The red ribbons of the Vestal infula were said to represent Vesta's fire; and the white, virginity, or sexual purity. The stola is associated with Roman citizen-matrons and Vestals, not with brides. This covering of the body by way of the gown and veils "signals the prohibitions that governed [the Vestals] sexuality".[74] The stola communicates the message of "hands off" and asserts their virginity.[75] The prescribed everyday hairstyle for Vestals, and for brides only on their wedding day, comprised six or seven braids; this was thought to date back to the most ancient of times.[76][77][78][79] In 2013 Janet Stephens recreated the hairstyle of the vestals on a modern person.[79][80]
High-status brides were veiled in the same saffron-yellow flammeum as the
Named Vestals
From the institution of the Vestal priesthood to its abolition, an unknown number of Vestals held office. Some are named in Roman myth and history and some are of unknown date. The 1st-century BC author Varro, names the first four, probably legendary Vestals as Gegania, Veneneia, Canuleia,and Tarpeia. Varro and others also portray Tarpeia, daughter of Spurius Tarpeius in the Sabine-Roman war, as a treasonous Vestal Virgin. Most Vestals named in Roman historical accounts are presented as examples of wrongdoing, threats to the well-being of the state, and punishment. While Tarpeia's status as a virgin is common to most accounts, her status as a vestal was likely the mythographer's invention, to cast her lust, greed and treason in the worst possible light.[82]
Dionysius of Halicarnasus names Orbinia, a Vestal put to death in 471.[83] Livy names a Vestal Postumia, tried for inchastity in 420, but acquitted with a warning to take her position more seriously:[84] Minucia was put to death for inchastity in 337:[85] and Sextilia, put to death for adultery in 273.[86] Some Vestals are said to have committed suicide when accused; Caparronia did so in 266:[87] essential trial details are often lacking. Livy states that two Vestals, Floronia and Opimia, were convicted of unchastity in 216. One committed suicide, the other was buried alive - he does not say which.[88]
Vestals could exploit their familial and social connections, as well as their unique, untouchable status and privileges, taking the role of patron and protector. Cicero describes how the Vestal Claudia, daughter of
.The 1st century Vestal Licinia was supposedly courted by her kinsman, the so-called "triumvir" Marcus Licinius Crassus – who in fact wanted her property. This relationship gave rise to rumours. Plutarch says: "And yet when he was further on in years, he was accused of criminal intimacy with Licinia, one of the Vestal virgins and Licinia was formally prosecuted by a certain Plotius. 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. And in a way, it was his avarice that absolved him from the charge of corrupting the Vestal, and he was acquitted by the judges. But he did not let Licinia go until he had acquired her property."[95] Licinia became a Vestal in 85 and remained a Vestal until 61. The Vestals Arruntia, Perpennia M. f., and Popillia attended the inauguration of Lucius Cornelius Lentulus Niger as Flamen Martialis in 69. Licinia, Crassus' relative, was also present.[96]
Imperial Vestals
- Junia Torquata (1st century), vestal under Tiberius, sister of Gaius Junius Silanus.[97]
- Rubria (1st century), said by Suetonius to have been raped by Nero.
- Aquilia Severa (3rd century), whom Emperor Elagabalus married amid considerable scandal.
- Clodia Laeta (3rd century).
- Flavia Publicia (mid-3rd century).
- Coelia Concordia(4th century), the last head of the order.
Outside Rome
Inscriptions record the existence of Vestals in other locations than the centre of Rome.
- Manlia Severa, virgo Albana maxima,rex sacrorum in a funerary inscription. Mommsen thought he was rex sacrorum of Rome, but this is not considered likely.[99]
- Flavia (or Valeria) Vera, a virgo vestalis maxima arcis Albanae, chief Vestal Virgin of the Alban arx (citadel).[100]
- Caecilia Philete, a senior virgin (virgo maior) of Laurentum-Lavinium,[101] as commemorated by her father, Q. Caecilius Papion. The title maior means at Lavinium the Vestals were only two.
- Saufeia Alexandria, Virgo Vestalis Tiburtium.[102]
- Cossinia L(ucii) f(iliae), a Virgo Vestalis of Tibur (Tivoli).[103]
- Primigenia, Alban vestal of Bovillae who had forsaken her vows of celibacy, mentioned by Symmachus in two of his letters.[104]
In Western art
-
Two starkly different views by two French Academic painters of the Vestals in their front-rows seats at the RomanHector Leroux, c. 1890 (private collection).
The Vestals were used as models of female virtue in
Excavations in Rome and Pompeii, as well as translation of Latin sources, made Vestals a popular subject for artists in the 18th century and the 19th century. The French painter
Procol Harum's famous hit "A Whiter Shade of Pale" (1967) contains the lyrics "One of sixteen vestal virgins/ Who were leaving for the coast".[109]
Portraits as Vestals
-
Sieve Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I (1583) by Quentin Metsys the Younger
-
Vestal Virgin (1677–1730) by Jean Raoux
-
Portrait of a Woman as a Vestal Virgin (1770s) by Angelica Kauffman
Notes
- ^ This might reflect his authority as paterfamilias over the life and death of Vestals as "daughters of Rome", though this is inconsistent with their legal independence from their birth family's control.
References
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- ^ Life of Numa Pompilius 9.5–10 Archived 2012-12-03 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ Ambrose. "Letter #18". Letter to Emperor Valentianus. Newadvent.org. Archived from the original on 2012-10-22. Retrieved 2012-11-19.
- ^ Suetonius, Julius Caesar, 1.2.
- ^ Pliny the Elder (translated by Bostock and Riley, 1855), The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 5, p. 280.
- ^ Ambrose of Milan. "The Memorial of Symmachus". The Letters of Ambrose. Tertullian.org. Archived from the original on 2012-08-12. Retrieved 2012-11-19.
- ISBN 978-1472480170.
- ISSN 0213-2052., p. 217
- ^ Conti 2003, p. 218.
- ^ Conti 2003, p. 219.
- ^ Alan Cameron, Last Pagans of Rome (Oxford UP), pp. 46–47
- Corey Brennan
- ^ Plutarch. "Life of Numa Pompilius". Stoa.org. 9.5–10. Archived from the original on 2012-12-03. Retrieved 2012-11-19.
- ^ Lindner, Molly M., Portraits of the Vestal Virgins, Priestesses of Ancient Rome, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbour, 2015, p. 34
- ^ Plutarch, Life of Numa, 10.1, translation, Loeb edition, 1914, University of Chicago
- ^ Broughton, vol. II, p. 395.
- ^ S2CID 144805147. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-04-25. Retrieved 2011-10-20 – via University of Regensburg.
- ^ Aulus Gellius. "Vestal Virgins". Attic Nights. Vol. 1. p. 12. Archived from the original on 2012-12-03 – via STOA.org.
- ^ Cornell, Tim. "Some observations on the crimen incesti". In: Le délit religieux dans la cité antique. Actes de la table ronde de Rome (6–7 April 1978). Rome: École Française de Rome, 1981. (Publications de l'École française de Rome, 48).
- Annales. ii. 86.
- ^ DiLuzio, M. J., A Place at the Altar. Priestesses in Republican Rome. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016, pp. 47–48
- ^ Schultz, C. E., Women's Religious Activity in the Roman Republic. The University of North Carolina Press, 2006, pp. 80–81
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- ^ Parker, "Why Were the Vestals Virgins?" 2004, p. 568.
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- ^ Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Roman Antiquities. University of Chicago. i.19, 38.
- ^ William Smith (1875). A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. London: John Murray – via University of Chicago.
- JSTOR 10.1525/ca.2015.34.1.74. Accessed 13 December 2022.
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- ^ Beard, Religions of Rome, Volume I, pp. 51–54
- ISBN 978-0-674-02613-1
- ^ Plutarch, Life of Numa, 10.5, translation, Loeb edition, 1914, University of Chicago
- ^ a b Cornell, Tim. "Some observations on the crimen incesti". In: Le délit religieux dans la cité antique. Actes de la table ronde de Rome (6–7 April 1978). Rome: École Française de Rome, 1981. p. 38. (Publications de l'École française de Rome, 48).
- ISBN 9781107669420.
- ^ a b Cornell, Tim. "Some observations on the crimen incesti". In: Le délit religieux dans la cité antique. Actes de la table ronde de Rome (6–7 April 1978). Rome: École Française de Rome, 1981. pp. 27-37. (Publications de l'École française de Rome, 48).
- ^ Mueller, Hans-Friedrich, Roman Religion in Valerius Maximus, p. 51; Rasmussen, Susanne William, Public Portents in Republican Rome, L'Erma di Bretschneider, 2003, p. 41.
- ^ S2CID 162395205.
- ^ Parker, N., Holt, "Why were the Vestals Virgins? Or the Chastity of Women and the safety of the Roman State," American Journal of Philology, 125, (2004) p.586. See also Staples, Ariadne, From Good Goddess to Vestal Virgins: Sex and Category in Roman Religion, Routledge, (1998), p.133
- ^ Ramsay, William, Vestales, in Smith, William, in A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, John Murray, London, 1875, pp. 1189–1191.
- ISBN 978-0-19-866121-4.
- ^ Quotation from Cornell, 1981, p. 27
- Ab urbe condita. 2.42.
- ^ Livy. "History of Rome". Marquette University. 8.15. Archived from the original on 2012-09-14. Retrieved 2012-11-19.
- ^ Wildfang 2006, pp. 92–93 , citing Cicero, De Domo Sua, 53.136.
- ISBN 9780521304016– via Google Books.
- ^ Erdkamp, Paul, "War, Vestal Virgins, and Live Burials in the Roman Republic", in M. Dillon and C. Matthews, eds., Religion and Classical Warfare. II: The Roman Republic, Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2020, p.9
- ^ Chrystal, Paul (17 May 2017). "Roman Women: The Women who influenced the History of Rome". Fonthill Media – via Google Books.
- ^ Wildfang, Robin Lorsch, Rome's vestal virgins: a study of Rome's vestal priestesses in the late Republic and early Empire, Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2007, p. 93ff.
- ISBN 9781438107943– via Google Books.
- Gracchi brothers. In 123 BCE the Roman Senate had annulled her attempted rededication of Bona Dea's AventineTemple as illegal and "against the will of the people". She may have fallen victim to the factional politics of the times.
- ^ Broughton, vol. I, p. 534.
- ^ Pliny the Younger, Letters. XLIII. To Cornelius Minicianus The Harvard Classics
- ^ The Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Loeb Classical Library, 1937, Book 1, 78.
- ^ Livy (1844). History of Rome. Vol. 1. Translated by Baker. New York: Harper & Brothers. p. 22.
- ^ The Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Loeb Classical Library, 1937, Book 3, 68.
- ^ The Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Loeb Classical Library, 1937, Book 1X, 40–41.
- ^ Livy. History of Rome. Vol. 4. Marquette University. 4.44. Archived from the original on 2012-09-15. Retrieved 2012-11-19.
- ^ Cornell, Tim. "Some observations on the crimen incesti". In: Le délit religieux dans la cité antique. Actes de la table ronde de Rome (6–7 April 1978). Rome: École Française de Rome, 1981. p. 28. (Publications de l'École française de Rome, 48).
- ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Vesta", Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 27 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 1055.
- ^ Valerius Maximus, Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium, I.1.7; Dionysus of Halicarnassus, Roman Questions. II.68; Pliny the Younger, Letters, IV.11; cited in William Ramsay, Vestales, article in Smith, William, pp.1189‑1191 in "A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities", John Murray, London, 1875.
- ISBN 9780415397964
- ^ Croom, Alexandra, Roman Clothing and Fashion, Amberley Publishing, The Hill, Stroud, Gloucestershire, 2010, p.135, ISBN 978-1-84868-977-0
- S2CID 162840383.
- S2CID 162651935.
- ^ Festus 454 in the edition of Lindsay, as cited by Robin Lorsch Wildfang, Rome's Vestal Virgins: A Study of Rome's Vestal Priestesses in the Late Republic and Early Empire (Routledge, 2006), p. 54
- ^ Laetitia La Follette, "The Costume of the Roman Bride", in The World of Roman Costume (University of Wisconsin Press, 2001), pp. 59–60 (on discrepancies of hairstyles in some Vestal portraits)
- ^ "Recreating the Vestal Virgin Hairstyle" video. Archived 2016-12-13 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b Pesta, Abigail (7 February 2013). "On Pins and Needles: Stylist Turns Ancient Hairdo Debate on Its Head". Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 6 April 2018. Retrieved 7 May 2018 – via www.wsj.com.
- ^ "Ancient Rome's hairdo for vestal virgins re-created". nbcnews.com. 10 January 2013. Archived from the original on 2 November 2017. Retrieved 7 May 2018.
- ^ Sebesta, Judith Lynn, Bonfante, Larissa (editors), "The World of Roman Costume: Wisconsin Studies in Classics", The University of Wisconsin Press, 1994, p.49, isbn 9780299138509
- S2CID 203500956.
- ^ Dionysius of Halicarnassus, ix. 40.
- ^ Livy, iv. 44.
- ^ Livy, viii. 15.
- ^ Livy, Periochae, 14.
- ^ Orosius, iv. 5 § 9.
- ^ Livy, xxii. 57.
- ^ Cicero, Pro Caelio, (14).34.
- ^ Cicero, Pro Fonteio (21).46–49
- ^ Aulus Gellius 1.12.2
- T. R. S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic (American Philological Association, 1952), vol. 2, pp. 24–25.
- ^ Wildfang, Robin Lorsch, Rome's vestal virgins: a study of Rome's vestal priestesses in the late Republic and early Empire, Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2007, p. 96
- JSTOR 3556336.
- ^ Plutarch. "Life of Crassus". University of Chicago. Retrieved 2012-11-19.
- ^ Broughton, vol. II, pp. 135-137 (note 14).
- ^ Tacitus, Annales, iii. 69.
- Via Appia, now in the Lapidary Gallery of the Vatican Museums: it mentions the dedication of a clipeusby her brother.
- ^ CIL XIV, 2413 = ILS 4942 presently no longer reperible[clarification needed] in the palazzo Mattei in Rome.
- ^ CIL VI, 2172 = ILS 5011, found in Rome near the basilica of St. Saba, now in the Lapidary Gallery of the Vatican Museum. It is a dedicatory inscription on a little base, possibly of a statuette that was housed in the home of the same vestal on the Little Aventine. M. G. Granino Cecere, "Vestali non di Roma", in Studi di epigrafia latina 20 2003 p. 70-71.
- ^ Virgo maior regia Laurentium Lavinatium, CIL XIV, 2077, as read by Pirro Ligorio, now housed in the Palazzo Borghese at Pratica di Mare. Cecere above p. 72.
- ^ CIL XIV, 3677 = ILS 6244 on the base of an honorary statue, now irreparable. Possibly also mentioned in CIL XIV, 3679. Cecere above p. 73–74
- ^ Inscription It. IV n. 213. Inscription on funerary monument discovered at Tivoli in July 1929. On the front, the name of the Vestal is incised within an oak wreath onto which adheres the sacred infula, knot of the order; with the name of the dedicant (L. Cossinius Electus, a relative, probably brother or nephew) on the lower margin. Cecere above p. 75.
- ^ Mitchell, Jill (2021). The Religious World of Quintus Aurelius Symmachus. Trivent Publishing.
- ^ Marina Warner, Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form (University of California Press, 1985), p. 244 ; Robert Tittler, "Portraiture, Politics and Society," in A Companion to Tudor Britain (Blackwell, 2007), p. 454; Linda Shenk, Learned Queen: The Image of Elizabeth I in Politics and Poetry (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 13.
- ^ Warner, Monuments and Maidens, p. 244.
- ^ Kathleen Nicholson, "The Ideology of Feminine 'Virtue': The Vestal Virgin in French Eighteenth-Century Allegorical Portraiture," in Portraiture: Facing the Subject (Manchester University Press, 1997), p. 58ff.
- ^ Couëlle, Colombe (2008). "Hector Leroux (1829-1900). Un peintre du XIXe voué à l'Antique", Journée de l'Antiquité 2008, April 2008, Université de La Réunion, Saint-Denis, La Réunion, pp. 210-245.
- ^ "Behind the Song: Procol Harum, "A Whiter Shade Of Pale"". American Songwriter.
Further reading
- Beard, Mary, "The Sexual Status of Vestal Virgins," The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 70, (1980), pp. 12–27.
- Broughton, T. Robert S., The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, American Philological Association (1952–1986).
- Kroppenberg, Inge, "Law, Religion and Constitution of the Vestal Virgins," Law and Literature, 22, 3, 2010, pp. 418 – 439. [1] Archived 2012-04-25 at the Wayback Machine
- Peck, Harry Thurston, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898)
- Parker, Holt N. "Why Were the Vestals Virgins? Or the Chastity of Women and the Safety of the Roman State", American Journal of Philology, Vol. 125, No. 4. (2004), pp. 563–601.
- Samuel Ball Platner and Thomas Ashby, A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome
- Saquete, José Carlos, "Las vírgenes vestales. Un sacerdocio femenino en la religión pública romana". Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2000.
- Sawyer, Deborah F. "Magna Mater and the Vestal Virgins." In Women and Religion in the First Christian Centuries, 119–129. London: Routledge Press, 1996.
- Staples, Ariadne, From Good Goddess to Vestal Virgins: Sex and Category in Roman Religion, Routledge, 1998
- Wildfang, Robin Lorsch. Rome's Vestal Virgins. Oxford: Routledge, 2006 (hardcover, ISBN 0-415-39796-0).
- Wyrwińska. (2021). The Vestal Virgins' Socio-political Role and the Narrative of Roma Aeterna. Krakowskie Studia z Historii Państwa i Prawa, 14(2), 127–151. https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.21.011.13519
External links
- Rodolfo Lanciani (1898) "The Fall of a Vestal" Chapter 6, in Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries. Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston and New York, 1898.
- article Vestales in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities
- House of the Vestal Virgins