Vestal virgin
As Vestal ( lat. Virgo Vestalis "vestal virgin"; original official title: sacerdos Vestalis "vestal priestess") refers to a Roman priestess of the goddess Vesta .
The priesthood of the Vestal Virgins consisted of six (in late antiquity seven) priestesses who were called at the age of six to ten for at least thirty years of service. Her main task was to guard the hearth fire in the temple of Vesta , which was never allowed to go out, and to fetch the water from the sacred spring of the nymph Egeria , which was used to cleanse the temple. In addition, they made the mola salsa (a mixture of salt water and whole grain meal ) and suffimen (ashes of unborn calves), which were needed for certain cult activities .
In the area of cult, the Vestals were subordinate to the College of Pontifices and in particular to the Pontifex maximus as the disciplinary superior . Their personal social status corresponded in many ways to that of a Roman man, but they also had numerous special rights.
During their service time, the Vestals were obliged to be chastity . The loss of virginity a Vestal was considered ominous sign for the Roman community. An unchaste vestal virgin was removed from the priesthood and could be buried alive .
History of the priesthood
The circumstances that led to the emergence of the priesthood of the Vestal Virgins were the subject of fabulous speculations even in antiquity and could not be definitively clarified by modern history either. Occasionally, it has been assumed in research that the Vestal Virgins were originally held in readiness for human sacrifice or that in Republican times they took over the cultic duties that the daughters of the king had previously performed. However, these hypotheses are now rejected as unsubstantiated speculations.
According to the Roman legend, the cult of Vesta existed in Lavinium before the founding of Rome and was transferred from there to Alba Longa and Rome. In any case, a community of vestal virgins already existed in Alba Longa at the time of the Roman kings ; it is attested in the late 4th century AD. In Tibur , vestals are only documented by inscriptions from the imperial period. Since no parallels are known outside of the Lazio region , it is assumed that the priesthood of the Vestal Virgins originated there and had no foreign models.
According to legend, the cult duties of the vestals were determined by King Numa Pompilius . The fifth King Tarquinius Priscus is said to have instituted the disciplinary power of the Pontifex maximus later, while the determination of the number of six priestesses was ascribed to his successor Servius Tullius ; before it should have been four. Some of the sources' information differ from one another and are controversial in research, but do not have to be viewed in their entirety as implausible; in any case, the establishment actually goes back to the royal era.
The community organization of the priesthood and the cultic tasks of the Vestals remained from the time of the first reliable evidence in the 3rd century BC. Until late antiquity largely unchanged. An increase in the number of Vestal Virgins to seven is reliably attested for late antiquity.
Although the Vestal Virgins received an imperial confirmation of their special rights in AD 370, a tendency towards dissolution can be ascertained in the second half of the 4th century AD. In one case there is evidence that a vestal virgin converted to Christianity . In the course of his efforts to make Christianity the sole religion of the Roman Empire , Emperor Theodosius I officially dissolved the priesthood in 391 AD. The last Virgo Vestalis maxima was Coelia Concordia , who returned from office and converted to Christianity in 394.
Eligibility criteria, vocation and social status of the Vestals
Eligibility criteria
When a vestal virgin died or left the priesthood, a successor was appointed by the pontifex maximus. Details on this can mainly be traced back to the depiction by Aulus Gellius from the 2nd century AD, from the now lost writings of the jurists Marcus Antistius Labeo († approx. 10 AD) and Gaius Ateius Capito († 22 AD) quoted:
- The girl could not be younger than six or older than ten years old.
- She was not allowed to have a speech impediment or physical disability.
- Both parents still had to live.
- Neither she nor her father were allowed to have released slaves , i. H. have been emancipated , even if she then remained in the power of her grandfather.
- No parent could have been a slave or earn a living in negotia sordida ("dirty business", that is, in handicrafts or retail trade).
However, Gellius also gives excuses to withdraw a girl's vocation as a vestal virgin:
- One sister is already a vestal virgin.
- The father already has a cultic function in Rome.
- The father resides outside Italy.
- The father has three children.
Calling the Vestal Virgin
Little is known about the appeal process itself. Gellius claims to have only found an older law of indefinite date on this subject which provides information on this. Accordingly, the pontifex maximus first selected 20 suitable candidates from among the people, from whom the new vestal virgin was determined by lottery . During Gellius' lifetime, however, this procedure was no longer used, but it was now customary for members of the upper class to voluntarily offer their daughters to the pontifex maximus for the priesthood. However, during the imperial era there were often difficulties in filling a vacant vestal position, as only a few families actually agreed to give up a daughter for this position.
The pontifex maximus carried out the calling by laying on the hand of the candidate, taking her into service through the calling formula and taking her to the Atrium Vestae , the residence and office of the Vestals. Gellius handed down the following formula:
- You, Amata, I seize as a vestal priestess who is to carry out the ordinances as the Vestal Virgin has to carry out according to law and for the benefit of the Roman people and the Quirites (Sacerdotem Vestalem, quae sacra faciat, quae ius sciet sacerdotem Vestalem facere pro populo Romano Quiritibus, uti quae optima lege fuit, ita te, amata capio).
The designation of the actual vocation by the term capere , “seize”, “arrest” or “arrest someone as a prisoner of war” as well as the address of the Vestal virgin as amata were already discussed in antiquity, as their meaning was no longer immediately obvious. According to Gellius, one spoke of capere because the Vestal Virgin was led away by her father like a prisoner of war. However, this term was also used for the appointment of the pontiffs , augurs and the Flamen Dialis , for whom no analogies to a capture can be identified. It is possible that capere originally had the meaning "to appoint someone to an office without being able to oppose this decision". So far, this question has not been plausibly clarified.
The cult name Amata , with which the candidate is addressed, is also unclear . Gellius justifies this with the fact that this was the name of the first vestal virgin, but gives no evidence for it. In fact, this is in contradiction to other traditions, as Plutarch , for example, gives the names of the first Vestal Virgins with Getania and Verenia. Some researchers suspected a connection to Amata , Lavinia’s mother , others thought of deriving the basic meaning of Latin amata as “beloved” (in this case: beloved of the gods) or from Greek ádmetos or adámatos (“virgin”). The name Amata was only used in the vocational formula and apparently played no role in the cult.
Social status of the Vestal Virgin
When she was called to be a vestal virgin, the girl left her father's or grandfather's patria potestas and was given full legal independence. The assumption occasionally expressed in older research that she was under the Patria potestas of the Pontifex maximus as a symbolic father or husband has proven to be erroneous.
The Vestal Virgin thus had unrestricted power of disposal over her property, i.e. she had an extraordinary status, since other women always needed the consent of a male tutor in order to be able to conclude legally valid transactions until at least the early imperial era.
With the departure from the family association, the Vestal Virgin had no more legal relatives. According to Antistius Labeo , she therefore left the natural line of succession and could only inherit or bequeath property on the basis of a testamentary declaration of will. If she did not leave a will, her property fell into the hands of the public after her death. The legal basis of these relationships, however, was not certain even in Labeo's time.
In research it is sometimes assumed that the Vestal Virgin did not belong to any family association because she was viewed as a symbolic or ideal relative of the entire Roman citizenry and therefore could not have family relationships with certain individuals. In this sense, the supply of fire in the temple of Vesta could represent an analogy to tending the hearth fire in a private house, so that the Vestal Virgins could be seen as the symbolic Matres familiae of the Roman people or the Roman state. This assumption could also be supported by the statement of Pliny the Younger , who stated that sick Vestal Virgins were neither cared for by their colleagues nor by relatives, but were entrusted to the care of a woman selected by the Pontifex maximus. Such hypotheses are of course very speculative, since on the one hand the real meaning of the fire in the temple of Vesta is unknown, on the other hand the Vestal Virgin Iunia mentioned by Pliny was cultivated by her sister-in-law Fannia.
Regardless of their legal position, vestals could have the same family ties as other Romans. Hence the behavior of the Vestal Virgin Claudia , who in 143 BC BC protected her father from attacks by a tribune through her sacred status , viewed as a role model for a daughter's duty to her parents. The reasoning of Cicero was also plausible for the contemporary Romans, who in his defense speech for Fonteius (69 BC) asked the judges to treat the accused mildly for the sake of his sister, since she would otherwise be convicted as a marriage and childless vestal virgin be completely alone. On the other hand, the Vestal Virgin Iunia Torquata campaigned for better conditions for her exiled brother. In this way, honorary inscriptions were found for prominent Vestal Virgins, on which the name of the father (the so-called filiation ) was indicated, which officially belonged to the full name of a person.
The majority of the Vestal Virgins obviously belonged to the senatorial upper class, as can be seen from the traditional names that indicate belonging to families of the nobility (for example Aemilia , Claudia , Cornelia , Licinia ). This assumption is also supported by the fact that vestals often had a large fortune. The political influence exercised by some vestals (for example Licinia, who supported her relative Murena in the election campaign in 63 BC ), required belonging to an upper class of society.
Appearance and privileges
One can only speculate about a possible official costume of the Vestals. Only one source mentions a special hairstyle with six braids, which was also worn by the bride to the wedding and is apparently in connection with virginity. Exact statements cannot be derived from this, however, as the text has only been handed down with gaps and is therefore hardly understandable.
Even less is known about the clothing of the Vestals. Pliny the Younger mentions the vestal stole , but does not describe its appearance. Therefore, the assumption that the Vestals wore the same stole as a married woman has not yet been proven. The interpretation of the clothing of individual Vestal Virgins depicted in sculptures is controversial in research.
In public, a vestal virgin was always accompanied by a lictor who was otherwise only entitled to magistrates with an empire and the Flemish Dialis . In addition, the Vestals had the right to sit in the seats of honor reserved for the senators in the circus and theater. They were allowed to drive to sacrificial acts in the city, which was otherwise only allowed temporarily for married women. Under Augustus they were given the ius trium liberorum (" right to three children "), which granted them special privileges.
Contrary to what is occasionally mentioned in the literature, the Vestals did not have the right to pardon those sentenced to death . However, prisoners who happened to meet a vestal virgin on the way to execution were exempted from execution, provided the priestess gave an oath that she had not intentionally brought about this encounter. The background to these conditions is just as unclear as the belief, mentioned by Plutarch in the same context, that anyone who walks under the litter of a vestal virgin must die.
Organization and service
The community of the Vestal Virgins lived in the so-called Atrium Vestae ("House" or "Hall of Vesta"), a building in the vicinity of the Temple of Vesta .
Almost nothing is known about the internal organization of the priesthood. It is controversial whether the Vestals were only single priestesses who worked together or whether they, like the pontifices and the augurs , formed a college. The Virgo Vestalis maxima , the oldest (service) vestal virgin, had a special honorary position , but it is not known whether she also had a priority position in the sense of a chairwoman. It is also unknown whether the disciplinary power of the pontifex maximus, which he exercised in ritual questions, extended to the organization of community life and the private life of the individual priestesses.
According to Plutarch, they spent the first ten years of their service as students, for a further ten years they served as priestesses and for the last ten years they functioned as teachers of the young vestals. How this schematic career went in practice, however, is unknown.
After the end of her thirty years of service, the Vestal Virgin was allowed to quit her service, marry and lead a normal civil life. However, only a few vestals are said to have used this option. The few who did, were not happy with this decision, because they could not bear to switch to a completely different way of life. There is no sure evidence that a former vestal virgin returned to civil life successfully.
Duties and Functions of the Vestals
The ancient sources name the main task and reason for the establishment of the priesthood to be the guarding of Vesta's hearth fire in the Vesta Temple, which was never allowed to go out and was ritually extinguished and re-lit only on March 1st, the old beginning of the year. In historical times this fire was understood as a symbol of political stability, so that its extinction was perceived as an ominous omen or as a cause of coming calamity. The vestal virgin on duty, who was responsible for the extinction, could be flogged personally by the pontifex maximus. Since fire was considered a symbol of purity, some ancient authors considered virgins, because of their sexual purity, to be particularly suitable to look after the hearth fire of Vesta, but it is no longer possible to tell whether this idea represented the basis for the establishment of the priests' college or whether it was itself was an attempt at an explanation from a later time. It is wrong to believe that the extinguishing of the fire was seen as a sign of the loss of a vestal virginity, since the two events are not related to one another in any ancient source.
To cleanse the Temple of Vesta, the Vestal Virgins fetched water daily from the source of the Egeria , which ancient authors saw as one of the main tasks of the priestesses in addition to keeping the fire. The spring was outside the city walls in the grove of the Camenae and was considered a sacred place, as King Numa Pompilius , the legendary founder of the Vestal College, is said to have met the spring nymph Egeria there and sought advice from her. In addition, during his reign the Ancile floated from heaven there, a sacred shield that was considered a guarantor of political stability and the integrity of the Roman community.
Whether there is a connection between these mythical events and the fetching water of the Vestal Virgins is controversial. It is pure speculation that the assumption, occasionally expressed in the research literature, is to regard this activity as an analogy to Roman women fetching water from a well or water distributor and thus to see the Vestal Virgins as symbolic matres familiae of the entire Roman state or people. It is more conceivable that they were simply clinging to a tradition that originated at a time when there was no water supply in the city itself. It is possible that the ancient authors only attach such great importance to fetching water because water was seen as the counter-element of the central fire in the Vesta cult.
In addition to these tasks, the Vestals also produced materials for cult and sacrificial acts. On the one hand, this is the mola salsa , a mixture of salt water and crushed grain that was used in all Roman sacrifices. On the other hand, the Virgo Vestalis maxima , the (service) oldest Vestal Virgin , made the suffimen for the Fordicidia , a sacrifice of pregnant cows in honor of the goddess Tellus . This is the ashes obtained from unborn calves, which were thrown into the sacrificial fire at the Parilia , a festival for the foundation of Rome.
The virginity of the Vestals
The virginity of the Vestal Virgins is a unique phenomenon in the entire ancient Mediterranean world, which cannot be explained on the basis of known Roman cultural ideas, since the Romans had no particular appreciation of the celibate status or sexual asceticism . The Vestal Virgins can therefore neither be explained as analogies to the consecrated virgins , nor can they be seen as their pagan models. Rather, the Church Fathers from the 3rd to the 5th century painted a negative image of the Vestal Virgins. One reason for this was that the Vestals promised a virginal life for a time.
Ancient justifications for chastity are mostly purely speculative and try to explain the phenomenon secondary. Livy sees the reason in the fact that, as virgins, they are particularly “worthy of admiration and inviolable”. Plutarch reports assumptions that virgins are particularly suitable for the preservation of fire, understood as a symbol of purity, because of their sexual purity, but corresponding views cannot be proven for the presumed origin of the priesthood. Possibly purely practical considerations were originally in the foreground, as Plutarch also considers by referring to comparable holy fires in Greece . These were looked after by women who had passed the fertile age and were therefore no longer impaired in their service by the burdens of pregnancy and child-rearing. Similar reasons could have been the basis of the virginity of the Vestal Virgins, but have been forgotten in historical times, so that the now no longer understood virginity offered space for all sorts of speculative interpretations.
Popular belief attributed miracles to the Vestals. So they are said to have been able to bring an escaped slave to a halt if he had not yet left the city of Rome. This expresses the idea of a local limitation of the sphere of power of the deity and the area of responsibility of the vestals. Suspected of unchastity, the Vestals Aemilia and Tuccia could allegedly prove their innocence by scooping water from the Tiber with a sieve and carrying it to the city without spilling a drop.
The loss of virginity
The loss of the virginity of a vestal virgin was considered an ominous event that put the welfare of the community in great danger. This emerges particularly clearly from the words of the Vestal Virgin Cornelia, who was presumably wrongly condemned for unchastity by Emperor Domitian in AD 91 :
- The emperor considers me unchaste, although he won victories and celebrated triumphs during my tenure as a priestess ! (Me Caesar incestam putat, qua sacra faciente vicit triumphavit )
Cornelia links her loyalty to her duty with the military success of the Romans.
The unchastity ( incestus ) of one or more vestals was mostly found in times of need and crisis. So after the devastating defeat at Cannae in the year 216 BC. BC Opimia and Floronia convicted of this offense; Aemilia was born in 114 BC. BC, Licinia and Marcia were after a second trial in 113 BC. Executed.
Becoming aware of unchastity is therefore reminiscent of the perception of prodigies (ominous miraculous signs), which mostly manifested themselves in the form of abnormal natural events (e.g. stone rain, freak births, mysterious celestial phenomena) that were rarely considered in good times. This suggests that the offenses of the Vestal Virgins were only perceived as such if one was particularly anxious to watch out for ominous signs due to strong emotional tension and general panic. It is noticeable that often several vestals of the Crimen incesti were convicted, although a single one would have been enough to put the community in danger. On the other hand, suspected vestals were almost always acquitted in good times.
In addition, many of the charges against Vestals may have been politically motivated:
- The indictment against the Vestal Virgin Postumia in 420 BC B.C. is apparently related to political attacks on prominent relatives and possibly served the purpose of weakening the influence of their entire family.
- The suspicion against the politically influential Licinia in 73 BC Chr. Should either break their own political influence or was possibly indirectly the Marcus Licinius Crassus Dives , with whom she was in close business and political relations and who was said to have a sexual relationship with her.
- The execution of Cornelia in 91 AD apparently took place in connection with a restorative cultural and religious policy of the Emperor Domitian, who wanted to demonstrate his will to implement this policy with an act of severity.
Often individual vestals were suspected of unchastity simply because of excessively revealing clothing or a particularly suggestive way of speaking. Since such cases usually ended with an acquittal, it seems reasonable to assume that here, too, only an excuse was sought to bring the priestess into disrepute.
Any resident of Rome, including women , freedmen and slaves , could report an unchaste vestal virgin. This was followed by an investigation procedure carried out jointly by the pontifices and directed by the pontifex maximus. If found guilty, the execution was scheduled. The lover of the convicted vestal virgin was publicly whipped to death and thus suffered one of the most dishonorable types of death according to Roman ideas.
The question of how the rape victims were dealt with remains open . The emperors Nero and Caracalla were accused by opposing historians of raping vestals.
Elagabal
An outrageous event from a Roman point of view was the marriage of the Syrian emperor Elagabal , who was then sixteen years old, with the probably also young vestal virgin Aquilia Severa in the year 220. According to the traditional Roman understanding of religion, this emperor shamefully disregarded his official duties as pontifex maximus and made himself one guilty of death-worthy crime. According to his own understanding, however, this “priestly wedding” was a religious act from which he hoped for god-like offspring.
Last complaint for unchastity
In the late 4th century there was another charge of unchastity against a vestal virgin in Alba Longa named Primigenia. The college of priests, which then included the famous politician and speaker Quintus Aurelius Symmachus , conducted the investigation and found guilty. At that time, however, the college was already leaderless, since the Christian emperor no longer exercised the office of pontifex maximus, and was no longer authorized to pass a final judgment and have it enforced. The efforts of the Symmachus to get the authorities to punish the Vestal Virgin apparently fizzled out.
The execution of the unchaste vestal virgin
A convicted vestal virgin was tied up and gagged in a locked sedan chair with a large participation of the population to the Porta Collina , where an underground dungeon had been prepared within the city . There was “a bed with a blanket, a lighted lamp and small amounts of the necessary food: bread, water in a jar, milk and oil, as if to avoid starving the body of a consecrated person " . After the vestal virgin was untied, she was allowed to descend into the dungeon, locked the entrance and covered with earth to obscure the place.
Certain elements of this trial show that the execution of an unchaste vestal virgin was not considered a normal punishment for a criminal offense. It was not a punishment in the sense of Roman criminal law , since the judgment was not passed by a court but by a college of priests. In such a case, the vestal virgin did not have the right to provoke every Roman citizen . It is also noticeable that the condemned woman receives a symbolic livelihood in her dungeon by providing bed, lamp and food. Plutarch already suspected a ritual fiction that was supposed to pretend that the priestess was not actually killed. This could suggest that one was more interested in getting them out of the public eye of the Roman world than killing them. In a certain way, the execution of the Vestal Virgin is reminiscent of dealing with prodigies , since freak births or ominous animals were burned or transported to overseas territories and thus also permanently removed from Rome. To what extent there were connections between the handling of prodigies and the chastity breach of a vestal virgin is, however, controversial in research. So far, Plutarch's statement has also not been clarified that certain unspecified priests held dead sacrifices at the place of execution of a vestal virgin. Possibly this is a posthumous act of service by friends or relatives, or Plutarch misunderstood the custom, which can be proven during his lifetime in Rome, of spontaneously depositing flowers at the place of death as a ritual act. At least so far nothing is known of an official death cult for executed vestals.
In the older research it was sometimes assumed that unchaste Vestal Virgins were also killed by the fall from the Tarpeian Rock , but this is a misunderstanding, since the corresponding evidence in Quintilian and Seneca the Elder does not report actual circumstances. Instead, they are fictional situations that were used as starting points for practice speeches in rhetoric lessons. In addition, only unchaste "women" or "priestesses" are spoken of, without any reference to the vestals being recognizable.
Contemporary reviews of executions
In Roman sources, the severity of the punishment for the unchaste Vestal Virgin is not fundamentally problematized, while otherwise particularly severe punishments are mostly assessed critically. So called Livy 's execution of two four-drawn carriages torn to pieces Mettius Fufetius as "cruel spectacle" that was unique in the history of the Roman people, as the Romans could boast otherwise to impose lighter sentences than all other peoples. Less serious offenses, for example letting the fire go out in the temple of Vesta, are often excused in the sources, for example in Livy, who sees it as only human negligence and thus downplays the gravity of the offense and the significance of the event.
It is noticeable that in the entire imperial period there were only two executions of vestal virgins, namely under Domitian and under Caracalla. Most of the lovers of the Vestals got away with exile under Domitian ; Of the four convicted Vestals, three were allowed to choose their own method of death, only the senior vestal was executed in the traditional way. At the trial under Caracalla, nothing is known of a conviction of the accused men (one of the vestals, Clodia Laeta , is said to have raped the emperor himself). The relative mildness of Domitian shows that the traditional punishment was already felt at that time as harsh. Caracalla's approach was condemned as tyrannical arbitrariness by the thoroughly conservative-minded contemporary historian Cassius Dio . Cassius Dio could assume that his readers would see it that way too.
Vestals as a motif of later works of art
In the 19th century in particular, the fate of the Vestals fascinated history painters and writers. The opera La vestale by Gaspare Spontini based on a libretto by Victor-Joseph Étienne de Jouy was premiered in Paris in 1807 and is still performed occasionally today.
The plot of Christoph Willibald Gluck's one-act opera L'innocenza giustificata (Vienna 1755) also revolves around a vestal virgin. The lyricist Giacano Durazzo reassembled scenes from several libretti by Pietro Metastasio .
literature
- Alexander Bätz: Sacrae virgines. Studies on the religious and social status of the Vestals. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-77354-8 .
-
Mary Beard : The Sexual Status of the Vestal Virgins . In: Journal of Roman Studies . Volume 70, 1980, ISSN 0075-4358 , pp. 13-27.
(Partly outdated state of research.) - Mary Beard: Re-reading (Vestal) virginity . In: Richard Hawley, Barbara Levick (Eds.): Women in Antiquity. New assessments . Routledge, London-New York 1995, ISBN 0-415-11368-7 , pp. 166-177.
(Corrections and additions to the 1980 essay.) - Hildegard Cancik-Lindemaier : Vestal Virgin. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 12/2, Metzler, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-476-01487-8 , column 132 f.
- Jane F. Gardner : Women in Ancient Rome. Family, everyday life, law. CH Beck, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-406-39114-1 . (Original English edition: Women in Roman law and society. Croom Helm, London 1986, ISBN 0-7099-3893-4 .)
- Christine Korten: Ovid, Augustus and the cult of the vestals. A religious-political thesis on Ovid's banishment. Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1992, ISBN 3-631-44856-2 (Studies on Classical Philology. Vol. 72).
- Nina Mekacher: The vestal virgins in the Roman Empire . Reichert, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 3-89500-499-5 .
- Christiane Schalles: The Vestal Virgin as the ideal female figure. Priestesses of the goddess Vesta in the fine arts from the Renaissance to Classicism . 2 volumes. Cuvillier, Göttingen 2002, 2003, ISBN 3-89873-624-5 (Diss. Marburg).
- Ariadne Staples: From Good Goddess to Vestal Virgins. Sex and Category in Roman Religion . Routledge, London - New York 1998, ISBN 0-415-13233-9 .
(Comprehensive presentation of the phenomenon of the Vestals and the Vesta cult against the background of Roman ideas about social categories and gender roles; partly speculative conclusions.)
Web links
- House of the Vestals on roma-antiqua.de
- Vesta and Vestalinnen on info-antike.de
- Vestal Virgins on ImperiumRomanum.com
- Reconstruction of the hairstyle of a vestal virgin on YouTube
Remarks
- ↑ On the 4th century see Stefano Conti: Tra integrazione ed emarginazione: le ultime Vestali , in: Studia historica: Historia antigua 21, 2003, pp. 209–222.
- ^ Aulus Gellius: Noctes Atticae 1.12
- ↑ If her father had emancipated, she would automatically have become an orphan. Commentary on Gellius' Oxford 1968 edition, ed. by Peter Marshall, I, 12.4.
- ↑ Gellius: Noctes Atticae 1.12.10
- ↑ Gellius: Noctes Atticae 01/12/14
- ↑ Gellius: Noctes Atticae 01/12/13
- ↑ Gellius: Noctes Atticae 1.12.15
- ↑ Gellius: Noctes Atticae 01/12/19
- ^ Plutarch: Numa 10.1
- ↑ quoted in Gellius, Noctes Atticae 1.12.18
- ↑ Pliny the Younger: Epistulae 7.19.2
- ↑ Cicero , Speech for Caelius 34; Valerius Maximus 5.4.6; Suetonius , Tiberius 2.4
- ^ Cicero, Speech for Fonteius 21
- ↑ For example for Flava Publicia: CIL 6, 32414-32419.
- ^ Festus, p. 454 Lindsay.
- ↑ Pliny the Younger: Epistulae November 4, 9
- ↑ Lit .: Mary Beard , 1980
- ^ Plutarch: Numa 10.6
- ↑ Plutarch, Numa 10.2.
- ↑ Plutarch, Numa 10.4.
- ↑ Lit .: Staples, 1998, p. 150 f.
- ↑ Corinne Leveleux: Des prêtresses déchues: l'image the Vestales chez les Pères de l'Eglise latine ., Paris, 1995, pp 145-158 bes.
- ↑ Livy 1.20.3
- ↑ Plutarch: Numa 9.10-11
- ↑ Pliny the Younger , Epistulae 4.11.7.
- ↑ Livy 22.57.2
- ↑ José Carlos Saquete, Las vírgenes vestales, un sacerdocio femenino en la Religón pública romana , Madrid 2000, p. 103; Ruth Stepper, Augustus et sacerdos: Investigations into the Roman emperor as a priest , Stuttgart 2003, p. 227: "Symmachus, who urges atonement, turns out to be a fighter in a losing position."
- ↑ Plutarch: Numa 10.9
- ↑ Plutarch: Quaestiones Romanae 96 = Moralia 286e-287a
- ↑ Quintilian Institutiones oratoriae 7.8.3
- ↑ Seneca: Controversiae 1.3.1
- ↑ Livy 1.28.11
- ↑ Livy 11/28/7
- ↑ Cassius Dio 78.16.1-2.
- ↑ On the assessment of the traditional punishment as inhuman in the imperial era, s. Mekacher pp. 34-37.
