Vesta and Vestalia

VESTA AND VESTALIA. - The origins of the goddess V. at Rome go back to very ancient times: her festival, the Vestalia, appears in the archaic calendar; her round temple in the Roman Forum, repeatedly burned and rebuilt, belongs to the most ancient building phase of the city; her priestesses were chosen by a sacral procedure (captio) of which the only analogy is offered by the election of the Flamen Dialis, priest of Jupiter already in the period prior to the Capitoline cult.

According to Roman tradition, the origins of the cult would go back even to times more ancient than the very existence of Rome: the mother of Romulus and Remus, Rhea Silvia, would already have been a Vestal of Alba Longa; and, in fact, the existence of the cult in this city, which was destroyed by the Romans at the beginning of their history, can be demonstrated.

At Rome, the temple of V. had a round shape. It contained no cult image of the goddess, but only a perpetual fire considered as the hearth of the State. It was inaccessible to the public: only during the Vestalia could women enter it, men never (it was not, in the Roman technical sense, a templum, that is, a building inaugurated by the augurs in which the Senate could assemble). It had an enclosed chamber called the penus: here were kept objects secret and unknown to the Roman public as to us, considered as guarantees (pignora) of the power of Rome: of these, in any case, the Palladium also formed part, the statue of Minerva believed to have come from Troy.

The priesthood of V. was entrusted initially perhaps to three, later to six virgins. These were chosen by lot from among twenty patrician girls between the ages of six and ten and consecrated through the rite of captio by the pontifex maximus: a kind of taking possession of the entire personality of the subject for the purposes of the cult. The Vestals had to perform a service of thirty years, after which they were free to leave their office or not. At the head of the college stood the Virgo Vestalis Maxima, who could represent the entire college in ritual functions. The Vestals lived in the atrium Vestae next to the temple, but could go out freely. They had exceptional rights and duties. They had above all to watch over the perpetual fire, whose extinction was considered a particularly threatening prodigium for the State. For the loss of her virginity, the Vestal was buried alive with a modest supply of food, since capital execution was incompatible with her position. Corresponding to this rigor are the privileges of the Vestals, who enjoyed the highest civil rights and honors (unique among Roman women, they also had the right to make a will). A chance encounter with a Vestal entailed, for a person condemned to death, the annulment of his condemnation. The sacral duties of the Vestals were not limited to the cult of the goddess herself. Not only did they have to be present at numerous public rites of high importance (Parilia, Argei, Parentalia, etc.), but they prepared with their own hands the indispensable ingredient of any public or private sacrifice, the mola salsa, toasted flour mixed with salt, with which the object of the sacrifice was sprinkled (immolare). They also preserved the ingredients of the suffimen, a means of purification, which they themselves had to prepare and distribute to the people at the festival of the Parilia. Together with the pignora of the State's power, it may be said that the Vestals held the very keys of its sacral existence in general. This general and fundamental character is also observed in the cult of the goddess, since she and Janus are the only divinities obligatorily invoked in all prayers, the one at the beginning, the other at the end.

The Vestalia festival is fixed in the calendar on June 9 (corresponding to the festival of Janus on January 9). On this day culminates the festive cycle that lasts from the 7th to the 15th of the month; during this time the operations of purification of the temple of V. take place; therefore the 15th bears in the calendars the abbreviation Q(uando) ST(ercum) D(elatum) F(as): the "religious" character of the series of days - during which one could not contract marriage, the Flaminica Dialis could not live with her husband, nor comb her hair or cut her nails, etc. - is abolished at the moment when the refuse of the temple is carried away. The 9th is the actual festival, on which, among other things, the asses are crowned, animals sacred to the goddess especially for their function at the mill (the Vestals themselves had a small mill in their dwelling, probably for the preparation of the flour used in the mola salsa).

Ancient theology identified the goddess now with fire, now with the earth, always seeing in her, as it were, the basis and center of cosmic life. Poets and writers exalted her as a symbol of chastity, considering the Vestals as her representatives or living images, although the epithet mater also belonged to the goddess, who is not without connections to fertility (it should be noted that the Vestals paid cult to the god Fascinus, the phallus considered in itself as a god). But the speculations of philosophers and learned poets reflect only the mentality of an era by then far removed from that of the formation of the cult.

V. appears, albeit sparsely, also in private cult. According to the indirect testimonies of Roman literature, it would seem that the goddess was considered present in the domestic hearth (which, moreover, proves to be the altar of the Penates). It is not easy to say how much in this opinion of the literati is to be ascribed simply to Hellenistic culture: because the goddess Hestia - with whom V. undoubtedly has common origins (perhaps also linguistically, although the discussion of the question is still open) - was in Greece actually the domestic hearth, whereas the scanty documents of a domestic cult of V. (e.g., in the paintings of Campanian houses) limit the sphere of the goddess to the kitchen, the oven and similar functionally well-defined rooms of the house.

Angelo Brelich