NUMA Pompilius, the second king of Rome, a man of great virtue, piety, and wisdom, is considered as author of the vestal institution; though there were vestals before his time, and even so early as the settlement of Eneas in Italy, who, we are told, placed the palladium, an image of Pallas so called, which he had brought with him from Troy, in the temple of Vesta, and committed it to the care of the virgins dedicated to the service of that goddess, who from her name were called vestals. But it was Numa who gave a form to this institution, and regulated the ministry and office of the order.
That prince confined the number of the vestals to four; two more were afterwards added by Tarquinius Priscus, one of his successors, and that number continued unaltered.
Numa committed to these virgins the keeping of the immortal fire, and the palladium, with the care of certain secret sacrifices in the worship of the goddess Vesta. They vowed chastity during the space of thirty years that they attended on the service of the goddess; the age of admission was above six, and under ten, and they were to be without any corporal blemish.
The ten first years were a kind of noviciate or probation, when they were instructed in all the sacred mysteries; the next ten were passed in the practice of them, and the last ten in teaching the novices.
This term being expired, they were free to quit the order, to lay aside the distinctions of it and to marry; but very few, it is said, made use of this liberty, terrified with frequent examples of the unhappy end attending those who changed their conditition.
Very great privileges and marks of distinction were at several times granted to the vestals. They had a right to make a will during their father’s life, and to dispose of their fortunes, without a trustee; for the Roman women were always under guardianship: they were forbid to take an oath, and in courts of justice their evidence was admitted upon their bare affirmation.
When they appeared in public, a lictor attended them with the fasces; and if a vestal in her walks happened to meet a criminal leading to execution, he was pardoned upon her declaring that the meeting was accidental. They had a distinguished rank and place of honour assigned them in the circus, and at other public shews, and were educated and maintained at the expence of the commonwealth.
But if great honours were paid to the dignity and virtue of the vestals, their faults were also punished with equel severity. The faults thus punishable were either negligence of their duty, in suffering the sacred fire to go out, or incontinence in violating their vow of chastity.
In the first case, which was looked upon as the sign of some great calamity to the state, the guilty vestal was punished as a slave, that is, with scourging; covered only with a veil, she was whipped with rods by the Pontifex Maximus, or chief priest. One of the vestals spent the whole night by the sacred fire, to prevent its extinction, and watched thus each in turn. When the fire was out, it was to be rekindled by the rays of the sun, the manner of which is variously related.
The great crime of the vestals was the violation of their vow of chastity; and this was punished in a manner not to be described without horror. They were buried alive. Near the Colline gate, says Plutarch, there is a little vault, with a hole to go down to it; in the vault there is a bed, a lighted lamp, and a small quantity of provisions, consisting of a loaf, a pitcher of water, a vial of oil, and a pot of milk: these are provided for the criminal, that religion may not be wounded by starving to death a person consecrated with the most august and sacred ceremonies. Strange scruple! they feared to starve her whom they buried alive.
The offender was put into a close and covered litter, that her piercing shrieks might not be heard, and carried in that manner through crouds of people cross the forum. At the sight of the litter, all made way for it to pass, and followed it in awful silence, and all the marks of the deepest sorrow. There could not be a more horrible spectacle, nor a more dreadful or melancholy day for Rome, than that on which a vestal was carried to execution.
When the litter was come to the place of punishment, the lictors took off the covering and opened it; then the pontifex maximus, after some private prayers, with hands and eyes lifted up to heaven, took out the unhappy criminal, all closely veiled, and set her on the ladder, by which she was to descend into the vault: after which, he returned with the other priests; and the wretched vestal was no sooner down, but the ladder was removed, and the hole filled up with earth till the ground was even, and no sign of a grave remained, to intimate that the criminal was deemed unworthy to appear either among the dead or the living.
By this terrible execution is seen what notions the heathens themselves entertained concerning the breach of chastity; and their fear of its drawing down the curse and vengeance of the Gods upon the whole state, if it remained unpunished. To avoid such a fatal calamity, the vestals were exhorted not only to fly with horror from every temptation to guilt, but to avoid with the utmost care whatever could cast the least blemish on their reputation.
Posthumia, a vestal, having subjected herself to unfavourable suspicions, on account of her too great solicitude in dress, and gaiety of manners, unbecoming the sacred purity of a virgin, was called to her trial. After a long examination she was pronounced innocent; but the pontifex maximus commanded her to quit those gay airs for the future, and to shew in her dress more wisdom and modesty than elegance and taste.
The 638th year of Rome gives us an example of corruption among the vestals, never heard of before. In preceding times it rarely happened that a vestal violated her vow of chastity, and the day of her punishment was a day of universal mourning at Rome. But this year, of the six vestals, three were proved criminal, two of which losing all sense of fear as well as shame, had almost publickly abandoned themselves to dissolute practices.
The mischief was begun by a Roman knight, named Butaetius Barrus, a professed libertine, who being tired of too easy conquests, sought to vary his infamous pleasures by the charm of difficulty and danger. He therefore attacked a vestal called Emilia, and when he had succeeded in seducing her, the contagion soon spread; and two other vestals, Licinia, and Marcia, followed the example of their companion.
Marcia, however, less criminal than the other two, admitted only one lover; but Emilia and Licinia, who were become great friends, if such leagues which the wicked form with the wicked may be called by the name of friendship, not chusing to confine themselves to their first gallants, each introduced her brother to her friend, and managed each other’s interviews.
Having once begun to extend their criminal amours, they soon had occasion to observe that their secret took air; therefore to engage those to silence whom they apprehended would inform against them, they made them all accomplices in the guilt.
This scene of infamy, after having been long acted in secret, was at length brought to light by a slave named Manius, whose master was one of Emilia’s gallants.
This fellow had been employed by Licinia and her to carry on their intrigues with several young Romans, and had for some time acquitted himself very faithfully in their infamous service; but being disappointed in the rewards they had promised him, and in his expectations of liberty from his master, he made a full discovery; and the guilty vestals were immediately brought to trial.
The college of pontiffs, which by the constitution of Numa were the proper judges of this affair, acted with great lenity, and condemned only Emilia; a favourable sentence was passed upon Marcia and Licinia, for which the former was probably indebted to her having been less criminal; and the latter to the eloquence of the celebrated L. Crassus, her kinsman, who being then twenty seven years of age, defended her in an oration of which Cicero speaks with praise.
The unhappy Emilia was buried alive, pursuant to her sentence; Marcia and Licinia were just recovered from the horrors of that dreadful fate which had impended over them, when a new process was commenced against them.
The whole Roman people exclaimed against the lenity of the pontiffs, on an occasion when the crime was equally evident and odious; and the tribune Sextus Peduceus having put himself at the head of those who murmured at the sentence, caused an extraordinary commission to be voted by the people for re-hearing the cause of Marcia and Licinia; and at the head of that commission placed L. Cassius, who for that purpose was created praetor a second time, after having been consul and censor.
He was a person of rigid virtue and inflexible severity, and one who, as Cicero observes, had rendered himself agreeable to the people, not by politeness and a popular behaviour, but by an austerity of manners, which acquired him respect.
Cassius fully answered the expectation of those who had chosen him; for he not only condemned the two vestals, who were punished in the same manner as Emilia, but also a great number of other persons; so that his tribunal was called the rock of the accused.