Aside from possibly Greece’s Oracle of Delphi,
the Vestal Virgins devoted to the Roman goddess
Vesta, ruler of the Hearth, are the most famous
ancient cult in European history.
Yet most people don’t really know much about
this esteemed group, even though they were
one of the most enduring organizations in
Roman history.
Its name, and the associations the average
reader has with the word “cult,” will
likely give an impression that the organization
was more sinister or more fanatical than the
historical record indicates.
Not that there weren’t some unsavory aspects
to the religion, but you’ll get that with
any major belief system, particularly in ancient
times.
So let’s get to know these women in white
a little better.
10.
Virginity was Not Just a Religious Requirement,
It was a Legal Technicality
As BBC explains, the reason that it was so
important the Vestal Virgins never had sex
with anyone wasn’t just a religious matter
related to sex (or the lack thereof) having
a mystical value.
It was largely because of what those women
represented in an official capacity.
See, priestesses at the Temple of Vesta didn’t
merely serve the faith of one particular goddess.
They were supposed to be, in a very real sense,
married to the entire city of Rome.
So if the Vestal Virgins had sex, it wouldn’t
mean that they were betraying the tenets of
their religion.
It would mean they were guilty of a much more
Earthly crime: Treason.
And unless the person they had sex with happened
to not be from Rome, it was also regarded
as incest.
We’ll talk more about the consequences of
this later.
9.
There Were Few of Them at Any Given Time
Given how long their legacy endured, and that
the city of Rome was large enough to have
a permanent population of over a million people
for centuries, you’d think there was a significant
holy order of Vestal Virgins.
But in fact the holy order was not at any
one time large enough to staff a modern day
McDonald’s restaurant for a single shift.
There would only be six of them in the order
at any given time, and these were women with
a rather large number of diverse duties to
perform.
These duties included preparing ritual food,
maintaining a holy spring, keeping the eternal
flame of their goddess Vesta burning, officiating
holy services that could stretch out for weeks
at a time, filing and maintaining wills and
testaments for citizens, and so forth.
Surely there would be a strong desire for
at least a few of them to stray, and you’d
imagine a few more redundant virgins would
be kept around.
Even the famous pop song “Whiter Shade of
Pale” mentions “sixteen Vestal Virgins.”
Further, that was a significant expansion
since, when the Temple of Vesta was first
founded, for awhile there were only four of
them.
8.
Family Connections Were Severed
Unlike any other cult in Roman society, when
a girl was selected for the Vestal Virgins,
she had to cut off all ties to her family
for the 30 year span that was expected of
her before she was allowed to leave the order,
as Robin Wildfang explains in his book Rome’s
Vestal Virgins.
The rationale for this was that they were
supposed to be connected to the entire city
while performing their duties, and having
a family was too much connection for anyone
that needed to be completely objective for
the city’s sake.
This seemingly horrible situation did at least
mean that when the Vestal Virgins left the
order, they could at least own and make determinations
over what happened to their property.
That was, provided they didn’t decide to
marry after their time in the Vestal Virgins
was up, which may have been a significant
contributing factor to the fact most of them
chose to live out their days single (additionally
there was a belief among the Vestal Virgins
that any marriage for them would be unlucky
even though their respected positions meant
plenty of men wanted to marry them, as said
in Gary Westfahl’s A Day in Working Life).
7.
Their Blood Must Never be Shed
Like the situation with Genghis Khan when
he executed his brother and other respected
authority figures, there was a requirement
that the blood of a Vestal Virgin was not
supposed to be shed, even in the event they
broke their vows.
Also like the Mongols, the Vestal order found
a way around that.
One of the more notable methods of executing
a tarnished member of the order, described
by Ancient.eu, was to pour molten lead down
their throat.
A less violent but no less cruel method was
to bury them alive outside the temple gate.
A little place called Collina, where the historian
Plutarch noted wryly that a “little mound
of Earth stands,” is a reminder that there
were indeed enough Virgins that were put to
death this way to effect the shape of the
soil.
Surprisingly, they were given small amounts
of food and water prior to burial, which feels
as if it were done just to prolong the agony
a little.
There was at least some sense of fairness
in that their sex partner was put to death
with them.
There was nothing that dictated that the blood
of someone joining a Vestal Virgin in death
was not to be shed, so they were usually whipped
to death.
6.
Decade Long Stations
Despite the fact that those who inducted into
the Vestal Virgins were supposed to be without
physical defects and the best of elite families,
apparently little faith was placed in their
abilities to learn the duties of their priesthood,
as reported by the Numismatic Circular.
For the first ten years of their time at the
temple, they were effectively apprentices
which, since the average inductee was around
ten years of age, means it pretty much took
up all of their adolescent years, though some
particularly bright girls joined the order
when they were only six years old.
Then for ten years they actually put their
education into practice running the temple.
For the final ten years of their term they
each took one of the new Vestal Virgins under
their wing and taught them.
Susan G. Bell, in her book Women, states that
any Vestal Virgins that didn’t want to risk
married life or other pursuits outside of
the religion decided to stick around, since
there was no obligation for them to leave.
One, named Occacia, decided to stay in the
service for fifty-seven years and another
named Junia Torqutta did more than double
duty and stayed a Vestal Virgin for sixty-four
years.
5.
Hair Offerings
It was felt the duties of Vestal Virgins required
cutting them off from general society in a
number of ways.
They were kept in carriages while they moved
through Rome’s busy streets.
In court, they technically weren’t under
oath when they gave testimony.
When they went to the Colosseum, they were
given special seating in private boxes.
But probably the single most prominent thing
they did that went against mainstream Roman
practice took place during March ceremonies,
as explained by Sarolta Takács in Women in
Religion.
Since March 1 was a sacred public holiday,
particularly to the goddess Juno (who was
the highest of all goddesses in Roman religion),
a tribute needed to be offered.
The Vestal Virgins were required to go to
Esquiline Hill.
There were two lotus trees located there,
and lotus trees had mythical importance in
Rome because legend said the nymph Lotis was
supposed to have been turned into one of them
as a way of being saved from a sexual assault.
During the ceremony, the Vestal Virgins were
to take their hair and leave it on the trees.
Since hair had a secondary meaning, indicating
that someone was supposed to be a child bearer,
placing their hair on a symbol of prevented
rape was a layered gesture of their commitment
to chastity.
4.
Holy Beatings
Not every priestess who was disciplined was
put to death, though the punishments for even
the most minor of infractions were very severe.
Those who were judged as not being sufficiently
pure in thought, or not dutiful enough with
their holy obligations, were to be beaten.
But not by just anyone, since the consecrated
flesh of a Vestal Virgin was not to be touched;
not even by a Vestal Virgin.
Thus, the same Pontifex that was the only
person the Vestal Virgins were to answer to
was the only one who could punish them.
Such was the nature of the Vestal Virgins
that even official beatings had an element
of discretion about them.
While the sinner was to be naked when they
were beaten, the room was supposed to be too
dark for them to be seen.
As if that wasn’t enough, the Pontifex and
the Virgin were separated by a curtain during
the process, as told by Women’s Life in
Greece and Rome.
Considering that it was part of the doctrine
that the blood of a Vestal Virgin was never
to be shed, it does raise the issue of how
the Pontifex was supposed to make sure that
they beat the person they couldn’t see in
such a way that they didn’t draw blood.
3.
Military Scapegoats
Of all the duties that the were bestowed on
the Vestal Virgins, by far the most significant
to the Romans on the street was the keeping
of the fire of Vesta burning in a round temple
called the Forum Romanum.
This act of appeasing the Gods was necessary
for Rome’s military to be successful, as
it conquered new territories for slaves and
other resources and defended against the barbarians.
For the military and elite class, they were
much more useful for saving face.
When Rome’s troops suffered a disastrous
defeat, instead of needing to blame their
commanders, the Vestal Virgins were perfect
for blaming instead.
A loss simply must have meant that they had
been impure in some way, either by committing
some sort of incest or by not maintaining
the fire properly.
So it’s possible that in Rome no one was
more desperate for Roman military success
than the Vestal Virgins, who might have been
completely true to their vows and buried alive
anyway.
2.
Unsavory Origin
The earliest days after Rome’s founding
after Romulus and Remus don’t get a lot
of attention, but the Vestal Virgins gained
their esteemed position very quickly.
Indeed, they even predated the Republic, which
is practically synonymous with Rome in people’s
minds.
After the death of the very warlike Romulus,
the second king was Numa Pompilius, a monarch
as pious as they came.
In the seventh century BC, he founded the
College of the Vestals and installed the first
priestess as part of an attempt to lessen
Rome’s militarism by making the rest of
the city more pious.
But rather than volunteering for the honor,
the first Virgin inducted was actually abducted
from her parents by the Pontifex Maximus.
Martin Goodman, in The Roman World, tells
us the ancient Roman historians Plutarch and
Aulus Gellius rather vividly described her
abduction “as though she had been captured
in war.”
Her name was Amata, and ever after whenever
a girl was recruited into the Vestal Virgins
it was customary for the Pontifex to refer
to her as Amata in her dubious honor.
1.
Officially Banned
When the Roman Empire adopted Christianity
as its state religion in the fourth century
AD, it inevitably meant that the days of the
Vestal Virgins were numbered.
The Temple of Vesta was closed in 391 AD,
which was a particularly bad sign.
It was made official when Emperor Theodosius
I banned every religion in Rome except Christianity
in 394, and even the religion that had been
the most esteemed in Rome for seven hundred
years wasn’t spared.
The last senior member was Cordelia Concordia,
whom Women’s Life in Greece and Rome credits
with being one of a handful of Vestal Virgins
to be commemorated with a statue.
They at least had some vindication in that
Rome was sacked by barbarians multiple times
less than twenty years after they were abolished.
Furthermore, in 2008, the traditions of the
Vestal Virgins were reported by CCTV International
as making a comeback.
