The Ancients - The Vestal Virgins

Episode Date: September 6, 2020

Priestesses of Vesta, Goddess of hearth, home and family, the College of Vestal Virgins were Rome’s only full-time priesthood. They numbered only six and were selected from noble Roman families at an early age, between six and 10 years old. They would tend the sacred fire in the Temple of Vesta and remain virgins for the duration of their tenure, which would stretch long into womanhood, lasting at least 30 years. Their importance to Rome was paramount and throughout this ancient civilisation's pagan history, the Vestal Virgins remained right at the heart of Roman society. But things were not always plain sailing for the Vestals during their 1,000 year history... I was delighted to be joined by a leading light on this subject Peta Greenfield to talk through the history of the Vestals. From the importance of fire and water for the cult to the infamous Vestal punishment of 'incestum' Peta explained the history behind all in this brilliant chat.Quick note:Octavia was Octavian / Augustus' sister.Livia was Augustus' wife.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. Boy, have I got another brilliant podcast for you today. I am joined by Petter Greenfield to talk about one of the longest lasting and most famous cults of ancient Rome.

Now, this was the cult associated with the Vestal Virgins. And this was an absolutely fascinating chat. Petter talked about who these virgins were, what their purpose was, why they were so important to ancient Rome, what caused their downfall, and so much more. This was an incredible chat, and I hope you enjoy. Here's Petter. Petter, thank you so much for coming on the show. Here's Petr. lasting cult. It's embedded in the foundation of the city, actually. So even pre-Rome, there seems to be an element of Vestals involved. One of the apocryphal stories of Romulus and Remus is that they are born of a Vestal virgin. So we've got this sort of like embedded sense that there are

Vestals practicing and the worship of Vesta is happening in broader Italy before we even get to Rome itself. But then we have this foundation that sort of comes about under the law-giving king, Numa. And so he's the guy that steps in after the Romulus and Remus incident, because that really doesn't go well as a foundation. There's a lot of violence and everyone after that is kind of like, we want somebody who's peaceful and somebody who's maybe going to keep the laws going for us and maybe give us some rules to live by. So we get this guy Numa and he has some visions amongst other things. And he's the one who's considered to be the founder of the order. So we're looking at sort of pretty early on, pretty close to 753 BC, around about.

And then it goes all the way through until the temple itself is shut down by Theodosius I. And that happens in 391 CE. So we've got like this huge breadth of time, over a thousand years. Maybe? No, less. I can't do maths. a thousand years. Maybe? No, less. I can't do maths. But that's amazing. So it sounds like it exists from the beginning to the end of pagan Rome. Yep, pretty much. Yeah. And the final vestal, she continues to practice even though the temple gets shut down. She's like a stalwart and she goes for at least another three years or so, according to the evidence that we have for her.

So even the closing of the temple is not enough to really shut off everything. And it sort of fades out gradually after that point. So looking into Vesta Virgin cult and the Temple of Vesta and the goddess Vesta herself, first of all, forgive my ignorance, who was Vesta? Ah, it's a good question. Forgive my ignorance. Who was Vesta? Ah, it's a good question. So Vesta is a goddess who comes with the hearth fire, essentially.

So every home has one. So Vesta is present in the flame itself. And so she's an elemental goddess in many respects, particularly because the Romans don't believe that she has a cult statue. They believe that she's represented by the flame itself. So her presence is both essential to the formation of the household and the center part of the food preparation and the keeping warm and the sense of sacrifice that goes on in every house. And then if you step up from that, what we end up getting in Rome and in many places around in sort of Magna Graecia is outlets where we have a public place for Vesta as well. So we have not just the private hearth, but we have a transition to a

public hearth as well. So the essence of the flame is really what encapsulates Vesta. And many historians think that there is a bit of a linguistic connection to the ancient Greek goddess Hestia. And you can hear the sound, it's very similar. And they are both connected with fire and both connected with the hearth in particular. So it seems reasonable to suggest that there might be a flow-on effect between these two goddesses, which also makes sense when we think about geography. We've got the Greek colonists going into southern Italy, and we have this story of Vesta moving up in terms of worship into ancient Rome. And so there's a lot

of connections here that we can't really set in stone, but seem when we look at all of the sort of like archaeological and narrative evidence seem to suggest that there's a good connection there that comes out of Greece well we know where the Romans are they're pinching from Greece so that sounds yeah that sounds plausible in itself so that's very interesting what you're saying because we normally think of all these cult statues in the households of Roman houses of every Roman house as being very important but if Vesta was the hearth itself, something that was crucial to every house in Rome, it must really emphasise this goddess's importance. I think so. And the nature of flame, I think, cannot be understated. Obviously, fire lends a lot of things to groups of people in community. And the idea that flows on from

the importance of the fire is the sense that we get the eternal flame when we're talking about the public hearth of Vesta as well. So this sense that we do not want to let this fire go out. And so there's a real primal sense in which fire represents security and safety and endurance of the people. And it gets really bound up and connected to how Romans think about fire and how they then impose those ideas about fire and how it should be managed into the cult practice of the Vestal Virgins. And you mentioned it right there, the fire and the practice of the Vestal Virgins. So the temple of the Vestal Virgins and the Temple of Vesta, is this situated right at the heart of Rome? Pretty much, yeah. If you go to the Roman Forum, you will find a reconstructed partial

element of what is called the Aedes Vesta, this temple, and that's from the Severan period. But it's almost right smack bang in the middle of the forum. It's positioned just on the Via Sacra as you're heading in towards the center on the southern end. And it's near some interesting, odd, old buildings that people like to speculate what they're used for. There's this sort of trapezoid building that people like to argue about called the Regia. And the Regia and the Aedes, which is the circular building that's related to the Vestals, these are considered some of the oldest buildings in the Forum. They're both unusually shaped, and they're both quite near the centre. Once again, this emphasis of being right at the heart of Roman culture, just like a hearth is right at the heart of the Roman house.

It really symbolizes, I'm guessing once again, the importance of this cult. You cannot get away from the importance of this cult. They underpin just about every sacrifice that we see happening in public. So they're responsible not just for looking after the fire, which is obviously considered so important in terms of thinking about the health and vibrancy of the community. But the vessels themselves also are responsible for producing a particular type of grain substance, which they call Mola Salsa. And this is like sort of crushed up elements and brine soaked and dried out through a specific sort of ritual. But that is then used in every sacrifice that happens in the public space. So the vestals become not just connected with the vestor and the fire,

but they also become connected with all of the sacrificial practices that are happening throughout the city. Ah, okay. Yeah. Fascinating. So a key part then of the religious life of ancient Rome and with the vestals in particular, you mentioned them just then, who could become a Vestal virgin? Not many people. It was pretty strict, let's say. One of our best sources for this is an incredible guy called Aulus Gellius, who I absolutely love, mostly because he's full of these kinds of fascinating details. But you had to be patrician, first of all, that was very important for a very long time. You had to be between the ages of six and 10. So you were quite young to be selected.

And you had to come from a very particular family, not just an elite family, but you also had to prove the lineage of your family in particular ways. So your father couldn't have been emancipated by his father. And there was a sense in which both your parents had to be alive very much. You also had to have a completely unblemished body. So it would have had to have been inspected before it was accepted. And you also had to demonstrate that you didn't have any problems with pronunciation. No sort of physical deformity would be committed. So there was a sense in which particular types of physicality was required. And you had to be prepubescent basically, which is a little bit weird. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I guess does that kind of lead into the next question or point as to why it's not surprising that there were never a lot of priestesses? We don't really know why there's a limit on the number of priestesses. That's something that

is a little bit, nobody's really quite sure where the number comes from. The number does increase over time, as far as we are aware. So the suggestion is that Numa sort of creates the order and there's like two or three involved. And gradually over the course of the early Roman kings, they expand the order to six. But by the time we get to six, it doesn't really go beyond that. And this is one of the popular misconceptions that I'm always speaking to on this topic because there's that really quite famous pop song, I think from the 1960s, where they talk about 16 vestal virgins and there's just legitimately no way it was possible. The Romans

never had 16, not at one time. So you have a maximum of six and that's a pretty big pre-stool order for the Romans as well. Most ritual positions are filled by one person or a pair and to have six, that's really quite interesting. Yeah. And especially considering the really long lifespan of this cult, it sounds like what you were saying. The numbers seem to stay, from what we know, relatively the same throughout almost a thousand years of history. They do. They do. And it's interesting in the sense that for most of these vestals, they don't leave either. Once they join and once they're trained, they tend to stay for life. It is possible to leave, but most of them don't. So you mentioned the training right there. If someone is selected, what training do they then

go through to become a vestal virgin? Well, these are the secrets that you'd have to join the cult to find out, I think. But essentially, we think there is about 10 years worth of training involved. Some sources, Dionysius mentions this a little bit. He seems to position it as that there's 10 years of training, 10 years of practice, and then 10 years of teaching the skills to the next generation. teaching the skills to the next generation. Obviously, that's kind of like a neat way of doing it because if Vestals could serve for life, which most of them do, then it's not going to be a neat staggering of 10 years doing this and that. It may be the case that as a quite young Vestal, you might be training a new one, or even as a very old woman, you might be training up a new Vestal. What you were saying there there it just shouts out i know in athens there were the eleusinian mysteries which always seem so mysterious people don't exactly know what's going on and of course that was at the heart of athenian culture and it

sounds like this is very similar in ancient rome they really seem to love their mystery cults it's mysterious yes but also it's not like anybody can sort of join. It's not the sort of thing that's trying to entice people in, really. It's considered a coveted position to be placed into the vestal order, but it's not something that you'd necessarily get to choose. Obviously, you could offer your daughter up, but the selection process means that ultimately you can't force that. They either pass the criteria or they don't. And if more than a certain amount of people pass the criteria,

obviously a selection process takes place that's not really to do with the families. But in the sense that there is a mystery there, certainly the inner workings of the day-to-day happenings inside the A-days, that's not necessarily at all clear. We could make speculation about it. It seems reasonable that people would be doing shifts, watching the flame to make sure that it doesn't go out, putting things onto the fire and things like that. But how long is your shift? How many people are on shift at a time? Are there special benefits if you want to go to a party? You know, who covers whose shift? These are the things that we just don't know. I guess that must also be why, though, it is so fascinating to study the Vestal Virgins,

as you say, because there are so many things that we don't know for certain that we can speculate about. Definitely. And there is a sense in which we would love written records, I think, from the women themselves, which is something that we just don't get. So, I think, from the women themselves, which is something that we just don't get. So, you know, the temptations of history. And, okay, talking about the roles and the duties just there. So what were the main duties of the Vestal Virgins?

So they definitely spend most of their time looking after the fire itself. Vesta is embodied in that fire. It's very important to look after. It is ritually relit once a year. That happens around about March. But for the rest of the time, it's really important for them to be looking at that fire, tending to it, looking after it, because if it goes out for any reason, that spells trouble for everybody. It will require an investigation, which nobody wants. But one of the things that the Vestals do as well, which tends to be overlooked most of the time because the focus is on the fire so much, is that they do have to cleanse the A-Days every day. So I talk about it as an Aedes. It's often referred to as a temple. But part of the thing that makes the vestals interesting and this space interesting

is that it's not on consecrated ground. It's not a true Roman temple. And part of the reason that we think this becomes important is it suggests the age of the cult. It's prior to a moment of consecration. The temple predates consecration. But also this means that it might become ritually impure more quickly than other spaces. So we've got this sense that maybe we need to clean this space every day. So we have a ritual where a Vesta will go each day to collect water from a particular spring, bring it back, cleanse the A-Days. And then once a year, they also have a major cleanup session. So there is a big festival for Vesta that happens in June. And lots of people who wouldn't normally have access to the space of inside the

Aedes are invited in and after they all go there is a really big cleanup and it's given a special day in the calendar because everything just is so dirty by that point apparently. Ancient Rome deep clean is without the Covid very interesting interesting. But that's very interesting, as you say, because it sounds like the fire element of it all is something that people always seem to focus on. But as you're saying there, the importance of water is also very clear to see. Yeah. And the thing with the water is that it's happening on a daily basis. So for a Roman on the street, this would be an obvious and important element of vestal ritual and process. Whereas for us coming to it much later, we really have

to think about it and remind ourselves that it's happening all the time. Yeah, that's very interesting because to say we sometimes we looking at it from here, we can sometimes focus on one element and not everything altogether. But I'm guessing they combine it all together because they're seeing it with their own eyes. But in regards to the rituals, apart from guarding the fire and the water, what other roles did they have? Ah, so there's lots of elements that they're involved in. We tend to think about their position as being one of guardianship primarily,

their position as being one of guardianship primarily, but they are also quite active in a lot of other rituals that are happening in Rome as well. One of the famous ones is the Bonadea ritual, which happens early December. We're not really sure of the exact date that might change, but it's an all-women gathering. It becomes infamous in certain moments in history, but essentially women are getting together and sacrifices do happen at that gathering. And as far as we're aware, it is the Vestals who are leading those sacrifices. One of the things that makes Rome, I think, fascinating, but also makes it really clear just how different we are from Romans as well, is the idea of sacrifice and being physically involved in actually killing animals for ritual practice.

So getting yourself into that mindset where you're thinking about women wielding the knife, taking the life of an animal in order to produce a sacrifice for a god, I think that is something that is both confronting and something that we really need to remind ourselves of as well. It's been something that in scholarship, many scholars have dismissed the capacity of women for sacrifice in Roman public practice, but there doesn't seem to be evidence that they're not involved. And in fact, there's good evidence to suggest that they are involved. One of the other major ones is the fortikidia, which is a massive scale sacrificial ritual. And the vessels are responsible for burning the calves, which are removed from the

pregnant cows, which are sacrificed. So that's pretty dramatic on some level. But yeah, that's just a couple of things that they're involved in that are a little bit out there. I mean, absolutely. And I guess when you think back to ancient Rome, and when you think of the Colosseum, or you think of the beast hunt, or even the gladiatorial games, and this witnessing of death firsthand as a spectator, and I'm guessing the Vestal Virgins, they would have seen that too. So this idea that they weren't actually involved in the killing of animals and sacrifice, it does seem a little ill-founded, doesn't it? Yeah. And I think this comes from a notion that perhaps the violence of Rome is somehow just the province of men. But the more that we look into it, the less tenable that kind of theory seems.

And the vestals are there, definitely, even if they're not wielding the knife. And in some cases, they wouldn't be. They're certainly there with the mola salsa, this sacred salt that is being offered over the animal prior to the sacrifice happening. So they're definitely in the thick of it and in the ritual process and integral to these moments of sacrifice that are happening in the public sphere. And outside of the religious aspect of the vestals, do they have any non-religious roles? I'm thinking legal roles or political roles. They do, and they become more political over time, it would seem, although arguably anything that involves elite Romans is always political. But we do get an interesting moment in the late Republic where they start becoming crucial to the storage of

documents. And this means that they start to get implicated in politics in ways that they weren't previously. And it does lead to some interesting moments of tension and friction for Romans in politics, particularly Octavian, as he will reveal himself to be maybe not the man of morals that Rome was hoping for. So it sounds as you're saying, over time, particularly as we get to this time of great change from republic to empire, can we say that the Vestal Virgins, I don't want to say they get weaponized, but they get politicized? They do. And it's difficult for them, in a sense, because they have really clear ritual duties and they

do take up most of their time. On the other hand, they're patricians as well. And it's not like they forget their families just because they enter the order. Despite the fact that they're taken in quite young, it's pretty clear that part of the privilege of being a Vestal is the capacity to now operate legally independently, which is very rare for women in the Republican period. And having that economic freedom to make business deals on their own and to look after their own property and to also make their own will puts them in a really privileged position compared to other

elite Roman women. And once they have that, and they also have this really rare capacity to be able to speak freely on their own behalf in law courts, this means that they can be dragged into politics as well. And there's a couple of infamous cases where we see in Cicero where he sort of points to a vest and we're like, there she is weeping for her brother and things like this, where they're sort of dragged into political spectacle, whether they wanted it or not. So they walk a fine line, I think, between having a whole bunch of privileges that would enable them to be political, and then what seems to happen to the order in general, because the politics itself is changing. And that's the thing that we start to see happen with the rise of Augustus.

So Augustus is rewriting the rulebook, as it were, and he's rewriting the Vestal Virgins' rulebook at the same time. Yeah, big time. So one of the things that becomes really clear as we move in further and further into the Prince of It and Augustus is really establishing his power is that he's co-opting this idea that the safety of the state is bound up with his person and with his family. And the trouble with co-opting that idea into himself is that traditionally that's an idea that's really bound up in the cult of Vesta. That hearth fire is supposed to be central to the safety of the state. And that's why it's such a problem when it goes out accidentally. to the safety of the state.

And that's why it's such a problem when it goes out accidentally. And all of a sudden, he's sort of creating this new way of thinking about the safety of the state as being bound up into himself. And he also creates the capacity for the worship of Vesta to happen near his property on the Palatine

as opposed to in the Forum. And so all of a sudden, you've got this vision of Vestals running up and down the hill all day, you know, trying to look after both of these spots being like okay all right this is complicating things so they now have two fires to look after that they're making sure neither of those fires go out i mean that's remarkable then because focusing at the time of octavian in the late republic just a bit longer because i know it seems to evolve and transform, especially with the coming

of the Judeo-Claudians and afterwards. But do we know much at this time, and you mentioned it slightly, but the privileges that the Vestal Virgins had compared to other Roman women at that time? Yeah, so what we see with the Vestals is that they have a lot of rights at law which are different from other Roman women. And the capacity to be seen in public areas is one of them. Their capacity to be seen in the stadium, for instance. But the more significant ones and the ones that start to bleed into the imperial family of the Julia Claudians are things to do with

the capacity to do their own business. So we talk about a concept called tutela, which is the guardianship, which means that Roman women by law are recognized as minors, incapable of making their own legal decisions. This is obviously a real hindrance if you're a fully capable adult human and maybe have come into some money and would like to do something with your life. The Vestals aren't constrained by this. They're released from Tutela as soon as they're brought into the cult. So they can become quite prosperous in their own right. There's nothing about being in the Vestals that prevents you from being a property owner or from owning slaves or from going and doing particular types of business. And this is something that in the legislation that Augustus starts to bring in, it really starts to free up

these kinds of privileges for other women. But he also particularly starts to give some of the favors that have been enjoyed by the Vestals for a long time to Livia and Octavia. And he does this really quite early on. And these women start to become aligned in particular legal ways with the Vestals. There's no way that anybody would mistake them for Vest vestals but certainly their privileges are starting to push up against the sorts of things that the vestals enjoyed and then we get the legislation that happens under augustus uh where he brings in a whole bunch of reforms but also some sort of like carrots for women if you like where if you have three children all of a sudden you can be released from your

tutela, which is nice. You're like, just keep having babies and you're free. As if that's some sort of, I don't know, some sort of great gift. Politicians still try it today though. So maybe it works for somebody. Nevertheless, he also brings in this and creates an exemption for Livia. Livia, as we know, has trouble conceiving and retaining pregnancies with Augustus. And so he gives her this privilege without her having the children. And so we see the vestals and really elite women start to line up more and more as we go on. So from what you're saying there, with the coming of the imperial period and it seems particularly with the imperial family women in the imperial family they seem to be able to get these privileges that in the past were just associated with the vestals indeed and it does create some issues for

recruiting into the vestals actually it seems we have a bit of a crisis late in Augustus's rule, where he's basically begging people to put forward their children to fill one of the positions that has opened up in the Vestal cult. And he sort of goes on the line being like, oh, look, if my granddaughter was old enough, I'd put her through. And everyone's like, uh-uh. But they basically have to start bribing patrician families, because if the privileges that the Vestals have are no longer that special, then maybe you don't need to put them into a whole life of service when actually the strength would be to marry them into another family. as it goes into the imperial period, although the worship to Vesta, the Vestal Virgins, the whole ritual is still very much active in central Rome, would you say then that it loses a degree of importance because of these imperial reforms that you mentioned just now? It certainly seems to undergo a pretty interesting change in the sort of meaning

that Romans read into it. And one of the ways that we might think about that happening is the way that we see a real drop-off in accusations of incestum, this concept of unchastity, which can fall upon a vestal. And we get some really big headline cases of this in the late Republic. And this really, really goes quiet, which is probably a great thing for Vestals, let's be honest, not being accused of such things. But it doesn't come back again until we get to Domitian. So we've got this really long stretch of time where we've got a transition from Republic to Empire. And we also see the Vestal version sort of flying under the radar a little bit in terms of

big cases of incestum, which I think is interesting. Absolutely. And let's go on to incestum right now, because that sounds very interesting part of the Vestal Virgins' story. But first of all, why did the Vestals have to remain virgins? Why was that so crucial? Part of this relates to the way in which the Romans conceptualized Vesta herself. And Ovid's Fasti is the big source for this idea. And he basically says that the Vestals have to resemble the goddess that they serve. Vesta is known for being virginal, and the idea is that she would definitely prefer to

have virgin priestesses. virginal and the idea is that she would definitely prefer to have virgin priestesses. For the ancient Romans and the ancient Greeks, that's not a huge leap of imagination. That's a pretty standard type of concept. So you've got that. It's like, if you're going to serve Vesta, obviously you would have to mirror her as much as possible in the way that you comported yourself. Okay. And so what was incestum? Inquestum is, it is a tricky concept because when we think about being unchaste in English, and that's kind of how the Latin translates into English, it's not a very good fit in terms of what that concept really embodies for the Romans. Enkestum relates not just to

the way that you comport yourself in public with modesty. It's about the respect that you show to your sexuality. And it's also in its most sort of like problematic sense for the Romans. It's about what they think of as the physical integrity of the female body. Now, we know now that virginity is a social construct, but for the Romans, it's very much a physical thing as well. And they will conduct bodily checks of vestals to try and determine whether they have been penetrated or not. try and determine whether they have been penetrated or not. Goodness.

But I guess, yeah, different times and all that. But if they are found guilty of incestum, what would happen to the accused? It's not good. I'll put it out there just as a heads up. Let's say you were a vestal and you were accused of incestum and you had the misfortune of being found guilty, this would usually be a verdict reached by the Pontifical College after an investigation. And this would mean that you would have to be buried alive.

So no spilling of blood buried alive outside the city, within the city? alive outside the city, within the city? Well, I wish I knew because we're so close and yet so far at the same time. This live burial, it's not like a horror film of pushing dirt into somebody's mouth, although that's pretty graphic and gross. But this is a much more, I don't want to say civilized, but what the Romans are trying to do essentially is leave the decision of the death of the vestal in the hands of the gods. So what this means is that they construct an underground chamber and in that chamber, they leave a few elements of food, the kind of symbolic, it's a couple of dishes of things down there. And the Vestal is paraded through the city.

This is obviously a disgraceful parade. People would come out to jeer probably. And they're led into this underground chamber, which is then closed over. At that point, they let the gods decide, will the Vestal come out? She never comes out. None of them come out of this alive. But the burial site is, we think, mostly it's at a gate. So it's on the very edge of what we call the Roman Pomerium. Now, whether they're just outside, we think they're not. We think they're just inside the Pomerium. So we've got this dividing

sacred line that sort of surrounds Rome. They're buried near a gate, but we think they're buried inside the sacral area that constitutes the Roman city. The idea being that a vessel cannot leave Rome realistically for any length of time, even to the point of death. Wow. I mean, it's quite gruesome to ask this, but if we have a rough idea where they may have been buried alive in these underground chambers, has there been any attempt to archaeological excavations, archaeology to try and uncover anything that might tell us a bit more about this horrible part of a possible punishment for a vestal virgin? Look, I wouldn't, I'd say I'm definitely interested. The problem that we have with

trying to find anything to do with this is the area is continuously inhabited. The Porta Colina exists near Termini Station, so you can go and visit it. But it is a built up area. And I don't think there's any way that people there are going to agree to have all of their buildings dug up. So we can just check for some underground chambers that might have some skeletons. You never know. You never know. I think you're right. Rome is definitely the eternal city in that regard. And keeping on the idea of punishments just for a bit longer, because of course, in Keston, perhaps the most famous, but not the only one. And you mentioned it earlier, if the fire went out, what would happen if the fire went out in the Temple of Vesta?

Well, if the fire goes out in the Temple of Vesta, it's a bit like panic stations, really. You can try and relight it without telling anybody. That usually doesn't go so well. This usually leads to some questions being asked because the pontificates have to be told. The Pontifex Maximus is considered to be the overseer of the Vestal Virgins, even though he's not part of the cult himself. So he would definitely need to be told. He would probably launch an investigation. And at that point, they're interested in anybody coming forward who's seen something or records of any sort of prodigies that have happened recently. So part of the trouble for Vestals with the Fire going out

is that often in our narrative history sources, we get a conflux of things happening all at once. Some of it's political, some of it's prodigy, some of it's the fire going out. And sometimes we get miracles happening as well, where things go really quite well and somehow the fire comes back on again all by itself. So at the point at which there's an investigation, often we find that people come

forward and there's rumors of somebody having behaved inappropriately. Sometimes it's something small like wearing too much jewelry. Some festivals were accused of dressing immodestly for their position. This could lead to suspicion. And part of the trouble comes from the prodigies, which are harder to dismiss. So one of the really infamous cases that we get happens in the late Republic. And we're talking about around about 114 BCE, where we have this horrific prodigy takes place. A woman, she's an equestrian woman.'s riding a horse it's a thunderstorm she gets struck by lightning while she's riding her horse as if that's not bad enough she obviously dies but she gets thrown from her horse by the force of this thunderbolt and when they find her the

speculation is that the thunderbolt has entered through her lower regions and then come out of her mouth and the reason why they think this is because she's strewn on the ground in such a way that her tunic has come up and her downstairs is exposed, but also she has her tongue poking out of her mouth in this sort of horrific sort of way. I'm hoping that death was fast and relatively painless, but I'm guessing it wasn't. But this prodigy leads to some really severe questions being asked, and suspicion turns upon the Vestals quite quickly in this moment. And as soon as the suspicion turns on them, people start coming forward with accusations. And this case is so horrifying because we have three Vestals accused of incestum

all at the same time. So we've got half the order up on an accusation of incestum, which is huge. And they have an investigation. The pontificates look into it. And the result of that investigation is that one of those Vestals is found guilty and the other two are acquitted. But there is outrage on the streets. There are people baying for blood. They think there is corruption involved. And it ends up being the case that the Tribune of the Plebs sort of demands that there be a more exposed public trial, that this be taken out of the hands of the pontificates who seem to be protecting the other vestals, and a more thorough public investigation be conducted. So you've already got one vestal on the ropes. Now the other two are being investigated again. The public trial

finds the other two also guilty. The vestal order at that point is effectively halved. But this is an insane case, outrageously insane. Absolutely. And I guess, once again, it emphasises the public nature of trials in ancient Rome, isn't it? That if it gets out of the religious hands, out of the pontificate, it's for people on the street. You're appealing to them. And it sounds in this case, they were baying for blood. Yeah. And there's a lot of speculation about what is actually going on here. And one of the more popular scholarly perspectives on this is that this is bound up in a whole bunch of politics that is happening in Rome at the time. And the prodigy is obviously a convenience, in Rome at the time. And the prodigy is obviously a convenience, but it's more about the struggles that are happening between the plebeian tribunes, the pontificates, the broader politics of patrician families in general, and what is happening behind the scenes, and that these women are taking the

fall for members of their family in various ways. There's also broader concerns related to the idea of the safety of the Roman state, which have been put forward, because there are a few different conflicts that Rome is engaged with on a more broader level across their empire at this stage. Some things are happening in Greece, some things are happening in Illyricum, some things are happening in Numidia. Some things are happening in Illyricum, some things are happening in Numidia. Everyone's like, you know, is Rome capable of maintaining its power in this time? And there seems to be a correlation of uncertainty about Rome's position in the world and convenient incestum cases coming forward as a way of seeing if they can rectify their relationship with the gods. So this time of uncertainty, this time of political turmoil, from what you're saying, we're seeing this quite interesting, significant rise in cases against the Vestal Virgins at this time. You would argue that maybe scapegoat is the wrong word, but they're being accused more often now in this time of uncertainty, of turmoil.

So this seems to be one of the big ideas that goes along with incest in cases, is that to what degree are they correlated with times of uncertainty for Rome? And if the Vestal Order is bound up in this idea of the safety of the state. And Rome is very concerned at all times with the Pax Deorum. Do they have a correct relationship with the gods? Having a Vestal cult where, conveniently, you can bury some people alive if you need to, in order to sort of make an appropriate sacrifice, as it were, then the Vestals get to sort of take on

this role. It's quite risky, the potential to be buried alive, but it also can lead to a restoration in the Romans' eyes of their fit and right relationship with the gods. I guess the one thing that emphasizes the religious aspect of it, doesn't it? But it said, if things don't look like they're going right for Rome, it's the Vestal Virgins who take the brunt of the blame unfairly. Indeed, indeed. And this might be one of the only things that you might be able to say is a positive if we've got a transition to a practically authoritarian imperial system under Augustus, is that we see a real slipping away of incestum cases under the Julio-Claudians and the vessels seem to be pretty safe under their leadership.

Huge question really to finish off, but following the Julio-Claudians, of course, the adoptive emperors, the Severans and the crisis of the third century and all that, do we still see cases of punishment of incest and do they still seem to die down compared to the late Republican period? They do. We see a really big one with demission. But what we tend to see after that period is a lot of positive work being done by Vestals as broader beneficiaries in the community. If you go to the forum today and you see the remains of the atrium of the Vestals, the house where they live,

there's lots of statuary that indicates that leaders of the Vestal Order are engaged in a lot of public work. And so not only are they able to generate their own wealth, but they're doing a lot of community support. So we see a transition in the way that their role operates, I think, as we go on further into the imperial period. Things become a bit more hazy as we start to head towards Christianity,

but that is kind of like the messiness of ancient Rome as well. But yeah, they certainly take on roles as supportive public funders if you like they've got their own clients and they're doing things in the public sphere outside of just looking after the flame could we call it a more secular role i don't know if i'd want to go that far. Okay. I'm allowed to ask because I'm completely ignorant on these things. But it does sound very interesting, as you say, this transformation as it goes along in the imperial period, this more helping the community, as it were, or we hear more of it in the sources of them being able to help the community with public works or whatever that means.

Yeah. And I think what we see is the way that they're recognised in epigraphic evidence. And I suppose one of the things that is interesting about that is that we're not sure that that's not happening in earlier periods, to be honest. It's just that we start to get a really clear record for it as we get further and further into the imperial period. for it as we get further and further into the imperial period. Whether it's more secular, I think Rome itself is always straddling the ritual and secular line almost all the time. We think of them as quite pragmatic as an initial thought, but I don't think the Romans are pragmatic at all, really, when it comes to thinking about themselves and their own relationship to the gods. And the vessels continue on, and they're clearly important to how Rome does business and they're

embedded in the daily fabric. Of course. And I guess also looking at it from a 21st century perspective where we think secular and we think religious is two separate strands, as it were, the Romans, they probably meshed it together a bit more, didn't they? So it's a bit of an unfair question to ask. But with the late imperial period, to finish it all off, as you say, the coming of Christianity and Theodosius you mentioned earlier, that sounds like that really sounds the death knell of the Vestal Virgin, the cult and the temple. It does. It does. I mean, there's not really much you can do when the emperor closes your place of worship, really. It's kind of done and dusted at that point.

And we know that there's a pagan holdout against the rising Christian tide, but there's no way. It gets swept away in the end. And I think it's incredible that it lasts as long as it does. And I think it's a testament to the value that the Romans saw in the public hearth and what it represented. And the idea of the eternal flame doesn't disappear just with the closing of the temple. I always find it fascinating that in modern culture, the eternal flame lives on regardless of the fact that the vessels have been stripped out of it. And it's clearly an ongoing symbol.

So you still have an eternal flame in Rome. And I don't know about in the UK, but we often in Australia, there is an eternal flame that's burning usually in war memorials for soldiers who have given their life. So this concept definitely endures, even if the vessels themselves have kind of been whisked off stage. Peta, that was a fantastic chat. Thank you so much for coming on the show. It's a real pleasure. Thank you.