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THE VESTAL VIRGINS: THE MOST FAMOUS FEMALE PRIESTESSES IN ANCIENT ROME |
The origin of the vestal virgins as an organized cult, may be said to date from the time of Numa Pompilius ( 715 BC ), a sabine and second king of Rome.
The earliest vestals whom we find mentioned in connection with roman history are Rhea Silvia, mother of Romulus and Remus, and Tarpeia who betrayed Rome to the Sabins. In Rome two brothers, Numitor and Amulius, were rivals for the throne. Amulius drove out his eldr brother and appointed the latter's daughter, Rhea Silvia, as a vestal, pretending to do her honour but really to prevent her having children. The name Vesta comes from " Hestia" who was the daughter of Chronos ( Time ) and Rhea ( Earth ).
Fire, which was not too readily obtained in primitive times, was looked upon as sacred and its maintenance became the duty of the daughters of each roman family, while engaged in their domestic functions. When the village of early Rome expanded in due course and became a town, the need for a regular organization arose. As the duty of keeping the sacred fire alight was important and an honor itself, the early watchers were naturally selected from the patrician families. We know also that they had the duty of guarding this sacred fire conveying it to the various temples for the sacrifices and lights, and of drawing and carrying all the water needed for the service of the temples with which they were concerned.
They had also to supply the salt- wafer ( Mola salsa ) and the salt sprinkled over the victims, but it must be remembered that they took no part in living sacrifices. They had also the charge of the Palladium and of certain other holy relics. They and the Salii, or priests of Mars, had between them the care of all the sacred objects of Rome.
In Rome, where religion and politics formed virtually a single cultural institution, women's complete exclusion from one aspect of it and prominence in the other is noteworthy. Can the prominence of women in religion help provide an answer to their absence in politics? Roman religion is not alone in its attempt to define and construct Roman women. There are other points of view: roman law, the Roman poetry too, for example.
We only must assume that the roman culture and the " Romanness" is a whole system. Each aspect of that system operated in a different ways but generated meaning within the same bounds and constraints that affect all the other aspects of the system.