Vestal Virgins

In ancient Rome, the Vestal Virgins or Vestals ( la, Vestālēs, singular ) were priestesses of Vesta, virgin goddess of Rome's sacred hearth and its flame.

The Vestals were unlike any other public priesthood. They were chosen before puberty from a number of suitable candidates, freed from any legal ties and obligations to their birth family, and enrolled in Vesta's priestly college of six priestesses. They were supervised by a senior vestal but chosen and governed by Rome's leading male priest, the ; in the Imperial era, this meant the emperor.

Successful acolytes vowed to serve Vesta for at least thirty years, to study and practise her rites in service of the Roman State, and to maintain their chastity throughout. As well as their obligations on behalf of Rome, Vestals had extraordinary rights and privileges, some of which were granted to no others, male or female.

The Vestals took it in turns to supervise Vesta's hearth, so that at least one Vestal was stationed there at all times. Vestals who allowed the sacred fire to go out were punished with whipping. Vestals who lost their chastity were guilty of , and were punished with living burial, a bloodless death that must seem voluntary. Their sexual partners were publicly whipped to death. In over a thousand years from the legendary foundation of Vesta's to its disbanding, this punishment was rare and notable, used "no more than a handful" of times. Most vestals retired with a generous pension and universal respect. They were then free to marry, though few of them did. Some appear to have renewed their vows.

In 382 AD, the Christian emperor Gratian confiscated the public revenues assigned to the cult of Vesta in Rome, and the Vestals vanish from historical record soon after.

History

Priesthoods with similar functions to the Vestals of Rome had an ancient and deeply embedded religious role in various surrounding Latin communities. According to Livy, the Vestals had pre-Roman origins at Alba Longa, where a virgin daughter of the king, forced by her usurper uncle to become a Vestal, miraculously gave birth to twin boys, Romulus and Remus. The twins were fathered by Mars; they survived their uncle's attempts to kill them through exposure or drowning, and Romulus went on to found Rome. In the most widely accepted versions of Rome's beginnings the city's legendary second king, Numa Pompilius, built its first Temple of Vesta, appointed its first pair of Vestals and subsidised them as a collegiate priesthood. Rome's 6th King Servius Tullius, who was also said to have been miraculously fathered by the fire-god Vulcan or the household Lar on a captive Vestal, increased the number of Vestals to four. In the late 4th century AD, Ambrose claims that the college comprised seven vestals in his own day, but this is unlikely; in the Imperial era, six was usual.

The Vestals were a powerful and influential priesthood. Towards the end of the Republican era, when Sulla included the young Julius Caesar in his proscriptions, the Vestals interceded on Caesar's behalf and gained him pardon. Caesar's adopted heir, Augustus, promoted the Vestals' moral reputation and presence at public functions, and restored several of their customary privileges that had fallen into abeyance. They were held in awe, and attributed certain mysterious and supernatural powers and abilities. Pliny the Elder tacitly accepted these powers as fact:

The 4th-century AD urban prefect Symmachus, who sought to maintain traditional Roman religion during the rise of Christianity, wrote:

Dissolution of the Vestal College would have followed soon after the emperor Gratian confiscated their revenues in 382 AD. The last epigraphically attested Vestal is Coelia Concordia, a who in 385 AD erected a statue to the deceased pontiff Vettius Agorius Praetextatus. The pagan historian Zosimos claims that when Theodosius I visited Rome in 394 AD, his niece Serena insulted an aged Vestal, said to be the last of her kind. it is not clear from Zosimos's narrative whether Vesta's cult was still functioning, maintained by that single Vestal, or moribund. Cameron is skeptical of the entire tale, noting that Theodosius did not visit Rome in 394.

Terms of service

The Vestals were committed to the priesthood before puberty (when 6–10 years old) and sworn to celibacy for a minimum period of 30 years. A thirty-year committment was divided into three decade-long periods during which Vestals were respectively students, servants, and teachers.

After their term of service, Vestals retired and were replaced by new inductees. Vestals who retired, typically in their late 30's to early 40s, were given a pension and allowed to marry. The , acting as the father of the bride, might arrange a marriage with a suitable Roman nobleman on behalf of the retired Vestal, but no literary accounts of such marriages have survived; Plutarch repeats a claim that "few have welcomed the indulgence, and that those who did so were not happy, but were a prey to repentance and dejection for the rest of their lives, thereby inspiring the rest with superstitious fears, so that until old age and death they remained steadfast in their virginity". Some Vestals preferred to renew their vows.

Selection

To obtain entry into the order, a girl had to be free of physical, moral and mental defects, have two living parents and be a daughter of a free-born resident of Rome. From at least the mid-Republican era, the chose Vestals by lot from a group of twenty high-born candidates at a gathering of their families and other Roman citizens.

Under the Papian Law of the 3rd century BCE, candidates for Vestal priesthoods had to be of patrician birth. Membership was opened to plebeians as it became difficult to find patricians willing to commit their daughters to 30 years as a Vestal, and then ultimately even from the daughters of freedmen for the same reason.

The choosing ceremony was known as a (capture). Once a girl was chosen to be a Vestal, the pointed to her and led her away from her parents with the words, "I take you, (beloved), to be a Vestal priestess, who will carry out sacred rites which it is the law for a Vestal priestess to perform on behalf of the Roman people, on the same terms as her who was a Vestal 'on the best terms' " (thus, with all the entitlements of a Vestal). As soon as she entered the atrium of Vesta's temple, she was under the goddess's service and protection.

If a Vestal died before her contracted term ended, potential replacements would be presented in the quarters of the chief Vestal, for the selection of the most virtuous. Unlike normal inductees, these candidates did not have to be prepubescent, nor even virgin; they could be young widows or even divorcees, though that was frowned upon and thought unlucky. Tacitus recounts how Gaius Fonteius Agrippa and Domitius Pollio offered their daughters as Vestal candidates in 19 AD to fill such a vacant position. Equally matched, Pollio's daughter was chosen only because Agrippa had been recently divorced. The (Tiberius) "consoled" the failed candidate with a dowry of 1 million sesterces.

The chief Vestal ( or , "greatest of the Vestals") oversaw the work and morals of the Vestals, and was a member of the College of Pontiffs. The chief Vestal was probably the most influential and independent of Rome's high priestesses, having committment to the maintenance of several different cults, maintaining personal connections to her birth family and cultivating the society of her equals among the Roman elite. The Occia presided over the Vestals for 57 years, according to Tacitus. The and the also held unique responsibility for certain religious rites, but each held office by virtue of their standing as the spouse of a male priest.

Duties and festivals

Vestal tasks included the maintenance of their chastity, tending Vesta's sacred fire, guarding her sacred (store-room) and its contents; collecting ritually pure water from a sacred spring; preparing substances used in public rites and presiding at the Vestalia and perhaps other festivals. Vesta's temple was essentially the temple of all Rome and its citizens; it was open all day, by night it was closed but only to men. The Vestals regularly swept and cleansed Vesta's shrine, functioning as surrogate housekeepers, in a religious sense, for all of Rome, and maintaining and controlling the connections between Rome's public and private religion. So long as their bodies remained unpenetrated, the walls of Rome would remain intact. Their flesh belonged to Rome, and when they died, whatever the cause of their death, their bodies remained within the city's boundary.

The Vesals acknowledged one of their number as senior authority, the ''Vestalis Maxima'', but all were ultimately under the authority of the , head of his priestly college. His influence and status grew during the Republican era, and the religious post became an important, lifetime adjunct to the political power of the annually elected consulship. When Augustus became , and thus supervisor of all religion, he donated his house to the Vestals. Their sacred fire became his household fire, and his domestic gods (Lares and Penates) became their responsibility. This arrangement between Vestals and Emperor persisted throughout the Imperial era.

The Vestals guarded various sacred objects kept in Vesta's , including the Palladium – a statue of Pallas Athene which had supposedly been brought from Troy – and a large, presumably wooden phallus, used in fertility rites and at least one triumphal procession, perhaps slung beneath the triumphal general's chariot.

Festivals

The chief festival of Vesta was the Vestalia, a festival of purification held in Vesta's temple and celebrated June 7 until June 15, attended by matrons and bakers. Three times a year, so Servius claims, the three youngest Vestals reaped unripened (spelt wheat, or possibly emmer wheat). The three senior Vestals parched it to make it edible, and mixed it with salt, to make the used by priests and priestesses to consecrate (dedicate to the gods) the animal victims offered in public sacrifices. Servius claims that this was done during the Vestalia, the Lupercalia and on September 13.

For the Fordicidia, an essentialy rustic, agricultural festival, an unborn calf was drawn from a pregnant cow sacrificed to the Earth-goddess Tellus, and reduced to ashes by the senior Vestal. The ashes were mixed with various substances, most notably the dried blood of the previous year's October horse, sacrificed to Mars. The mixture was called . It had only one use; on April 21st it was sprinkled on the Parilia bonfires, to purify shepherds and their flocks, and probably the fertility of human and animal in the Roman community. Parilia led up to Lemuralia, to placate the unquiet spirits of those who had died without rites or burial or before their time. On May 1st, Vestals officiated at Bona Dea's public-private, women-only rites at her Aventine temple; Vestals were present in some capacity at the Bona Dea's December festival, which was also women-only but was hosted by the wife of Rome's senior magistrate, who was supposed to stay elsewhere for the occasion. On May 15, Vestals and pontifs collected ritual straw figures called Argei from stations along Rome's city boundary and cast them into the Tiber, to purify the city.

Privileges

The presence of Vestal Virgins was required for numerous public ceremonies, to which they were transported in a , an enclosed, two-wheeled, horse-drawn carriage whose use was unique to the Vestals; some Roman sources point out its likeness to the chariots used by Roman generals in triumphs. Otherwise, Vestals were carried in a one-seat, curtained litter. Whether travelling by or litter, or on foot they were preceded by a lictor, and had the right-of-way; anyone who passed beneath the litter, or interfered with its passage, could be lawfully killed on the spot. In law, Vestals were – in effect, "sovereign over themselves" and answerable only to the . This might reflect his authority as over the life and death of Vestals as "daughters of Rome", though this is inconsistent with their legal independence from their birth-family's control. In their presence, the lictors of all other magistrates had to lower their , the symbols of the magistrate's powers and authority. The Vestals were deemed uncorrupted by sights forbidden to all other upperclass Roman women, and had reserved ring-side seating at public games and stage-side seats at theatrical performances, including gladiator contests. Unlike any other Roman women, they could make a will of their own volition, and dispose their property without sanction of a male guardian. As they embodied the Roman state, they could give evidence in trials without first taking the customary oath to the State. They had custody of important wills and state documents, which were presumably locked away in the . Their person was sacrosanct; anyone who assaulted a Vestal was, in effect, guilty of assaulting Rome and its gods, and could be killed with impunity.

Vestals also had the power to free condemned prisoners and slaves by touching them – if a person sentenced to death saw a Vestal on their way to their execution, they were automatically pardoned, as long as the encounter had not been pre-arranged.

Punishments

If Vesta's fire went out, Rome was no longer protected. The failure of the sacred flame could be interpreted as a sign of Vestal negligence, or it might be a prodigy, a sign from the gods that the ''pax deorum'' ("peace of the gods") was disrupted by some undetected impropriety, unnatural phenomenon or religious offence. Prodigies affected the entire Roman community. Romans had a duty to report suspected prodigies to the Senate, who would consult religious advisers and if neccesary, take appropriate action to restore the right relationship between mortals and gods. This usually involved the offering of a special sacrifice (''piaculum'') and the destruction of the "unnatural" object that had caused divine offence. Concealment of the same was a further offence.

If the inquiry confirmed that the extinction of the sacred fire was caused by simple accident or Vestal negligence, it could be expiated by a scourging or beating, carried out "in the dark and through a curtain to preserve their modesty". Loss of chastity, however, was a different matter - permanent, irreversible; no ''piaculum'' or expiation could restore it or compensate its loss.

The chastity of Vestals was thought to have a direct bearing on the health of the Roman state. When they entered the , they left behind the authority of their natural fathers and became daughters of the state, members of Vesta's priestly community, with the ''pontifex maximus'' as symbolic ''paterfamilias''. Decisions to try, discharge or punish Vestal negligence or charges of ''incestum'' were the collective responsibility of the and the Vestal college. A Vestal who committed breached Rome's contract with the gods. An unchaste Vestal was a contradiction, a visible religious embarrasment. By ancient tradition, she must die, but she must seem to do so willingly, and her blood could not be spilled. The city could not seem responsible for her death, and burial of the dead was forbidden within the city's ritual boundary, so she was buried alive in the ("Evil Field") in an underground chamber near the Colline Gate, accompanied by a small quantity of food and drink, and a lamp – not to prolong her punishment, but so that the Vestal would not technically be interred, but instead descend into a "habitable room":

The paramour of a guilty Vestal was beaten to death by the ''pontifex maximus'' in person, in the Forum Boarium or on the Comitium.

In more than a thousand years of Roman history, Vestal executions were very rare. Most took place at times of crisis for the Roman state. The end of Roman monarchy and the beginnings of the Republic involved extreme social tensions between aristocrats and commoners plebeians, competing for power and influence. In 483 BC, the Vestal Oppia was executed for ''incestum'' merely on the basis of various portents, and allegations that she neglected her Vestal duties. In 337 BC, Minucia, possibly the first plebeian Vestal, was tried, found guilty of unchastity and buried alive on the strength of her excessive and inappropriate love of dress, and the evidence of a slave. Two Vestals were executed for ''incestum'' between the first Punic War (216) and the end of the Republic (113-111). Each was followed by the living burial of a Greek and Gaul, male and female, in the ''Forum Boarium'', a rare, nameless and bloodless form of human sacrifice that seems to have been reserved for times of extreme crisis. Some Vestals were probably used as scapegoats; their political alliances and alleged failure to observe oaths and duties were held to account for civil disturbances, wars, famines, plagues and other signs of divine displeasure.

In 123 BC the gift of an altar, shrine and couch to the Bona Dea's Aventine temple by the Vestal Licinia "without the people's approval" was refused by the Roman Senate. In 114 Licinia and two of her colleagues, Vestals Aemilia and Marcia, were accused of multiple acts of . Aemilia, who had supposedly incited the two others to follow her example, was condemned outright and put to death. Marcia, who was accused of only one offence, and Licinia, who was accused of many, were at first acquitted by the pontifices, but were retried by Lucius Cassius Longinus Ravilla (consul 127), and condemned to death in 113. The prosecution offered two Sibylline prophecies in support of the final verdicts. The charges were almost certainly trumped up, and may have been politically motivated.

Pliny the Younger believed that Cornelia, a buried alive on the orders of emperor Domitian, was an innocent victim. He describes how she sought to keep her dignity intact when she descended into the chamber:

Dionysius of Halicarnassus claims that at Alba Longa Vestals were whipped and "put to death" for breaking their vows of celibacy, and that their offspring were to be thrown into the river. According to Livy, Rhea Silvia, mother of Romulus and Remus, had been forced to become a Vestal Virgin, and was chained and imprisoned when she gave birth. Dionysius writes that the Roman king Tarquinius Priscus instituted live burial as a punishment for Vestals, and inflicted it on the Vestal Pinaria. The 11th-century Byzantine historian George Kedrenos claims that prior to this, King Numa Pompilius introduced death by stoning as punishment for unchaste Vestal Virgins. Dionysus claims that whipping with rods sometimes preceded the immuration as was done to Urbinia in 471 BCE.

Posumia, though innocent according to Livy, was suspected and tried for unchastity on grounds of her immodest attire and over-familiar manner. Some Vestals were acquitted. Some cleared themselves through ordeals or miraculous deeds; in a celebrated case during the mid-Republic, the Vestal Tuccia, accused of inchastity, carried water in a sieve to prove her innocence; Livy's epitomator (Per. 20) claims that she was condemned nevertheless but in all other sources she was aquitted.

House of the Vestals

The House of the Vestals was the residence of the vestal priestesses in Rome. Located behind the Temple of Vesta (which housed the sacred fire), the was a three-storey building at the foot of the Palatine Hill, "very large and exceptionally magnificent both in decoration and material".

Attire

Vestal costume had some elements in common with high-status Roman bridal dress, and some with the formal dress of high status Roman matrons (married citizen-women). Vestals and matrons wore a long linen over a white woolen , a rectangular female citizen's wrap, equivalent to the male citizen's semi-circular toga. The most important and distinctive part of Vestal attire was the head-covering. A Vestal's hair was bound into a white, priestly (head-covering or fillet) with red and white ribbons, usually tied together behind the head and hanging loosely over the shoulders.

Vestal Virgins wore the same priestly hairstyle daily. High status brides were veiled in the same saffron-yellow as the , priestess of Jupiter and wife to his high priest. Vestals wore a white, purple-bordered (veil) when travelling outdoors, performing public rites or offering sacrifices. Respectable matrons were also expected to wear veils in public. One who appeared in public without her veil could be thought to have repudiated her marriage, making herself "available".

The red ribbons of the Vestal were said to represent Vesta's fire; and the white, virginity, or sexual purity. The stola is associated with Roman citizen-matrons and Vestals, not with brides. This covering of the body by way of the gown and veils "signals the prohibitions that governed he Vestalssexuality". The communicates the message of "hands off" and asserts their virginity. The prescribed hairstyle for Vestals and for brides on their wedding day comprised six or seven braids; this was thought to date back to the most ancient of times. In 2013 Janet Stephens recreated the hairstyle of the vestals on a modern person.

Lists of Vestals

From the institution of the Vestal priesthood to its abolition, an unknown number of Vestals held office. Some are named in Roman myth and history and some are of unknown date.

Earliest Vestals (Roman kingdom)

The 1st-century BC author Varro, names the first four, probably legendary Vestals as Gegania, Veneneia, Canuleia, and Tarpeia. He and others also Roman legend portray Tarpeia, daughter of Spurius Tarpeius in the Sabine-Roman war, as a treasonous Vestal Virgin. While her status as virgin is common to most accounts, her status as a vestal was likely the mythographer's invention, to cast her lust, greed and treason in the worst possible light.

Vestals in the Republic (509–27 BC)

*Orbinia, put to death for misconduct in 471.
*Postumia, tried for misconduct in 420, but acquitted.
*Minucia, put to death for misconduct in 337.
*Sextilia, put to death for misconduct in 273.
*Caparronia, committed suicide in 266 when accused of misconduct.
*Floronia, Opimia, convicted of misconduct in 216, one was buried alive, the other committed suicide.
*Claudia Ap. f. Ap. n., daughter of Appius Claudius Pulcher, consul in 143. During the triumph of her father, she walked beside him to repulse a tribune of the plebs, who were trying to veto his triumph.

*Fonteia, served , recorded as a Vestal during the trial of her brother in 69, but she would have begun her service before her father's death in 91.
* Fabia, chief Vestal (born ; 50), admitted to the order in 80, half-sister of Terentia (Cicero's first wife), and full sister of Fabia the wife of Dolabella who later married her niece Tullia; she was probably mother of the later consul of that name. In 73 she was acquitted of with Lucius Sergius Catilina. The case was prosecuted by Cicero.
*Licinia ( 1st century) was supposedly courted by her kinsman, the so-called "triumvir" Marcus Licinius Crassus – who in fact wanted her property. This relationship gave rise to rumors. Plutarch says: "And yet when he was further on in years, he was accused of criminal intimacy with Licinia, one of the Vestal virgins and Licinia was formally prosecuted by a certain Plotius. Now Licinia was the owner of a pleasant villa in the suburbs which Crassus wished to get at a low price, and it was for this reason that he was forever hovering about the woman and paying his court to her, until he fell under the abominable suspicion. And in a way it was his avarice that absolved him from the charge of corrupting the Vestal, and he was acquitted by the judges. But he did not let Licinia go until he had acquired her property." Licinia became a Vestal in 85 and remained a Vestal until 61.
*Arruntia, Perpennia M. f., Popillia, attended the inauguration of Lucius Cornelius Lentulus Niger as Flamen Martialis in 69. Licinia, Crassus' relative, was also present.
*Occia, vestal for 57 years between 38 BC and 19 AD.

Imperial Vestals

*Junia Torquata (1st-century), vestal under Tiberius, sister of Gaius Junius Silanus.
* Rubria (1st-century), said by Suetonius to have been raped by Nero.
*Aquilia Severa (3rd century), whom Emperor Elagabalus married amid considerable scandal.
*Clodia Laeta (3rd century).
*Flavia Publicia (mid-3rd century).
*Coelia Concordia (4th century), the last head of the order.

Outside Rome

Inscriptions record the existence of Vestals in other locations than the centre of Rome.
* Manlia Severa, , a chief Alban Vestal at Bovillae whose brother was probably the L. Manlius Severus named as a in a funerary inscription. Mommsen thought he was of Rome, but this is not considered likely.
* Flavia (or Valeria) Vera, a , chief Vestal Virgin of the Alban ''arx'' (citadel).
* Caecilia Philete, a senior virgin () of Laurentum-Lavinium, as commemorated by her father, Q. Caecilius Papion. The title means at Lavinium the Vestals were only two.
*Saufeia Alexandria, .
*Cossinia L(ucii) f(iliae), a of Tibur (Tivoli).
*Primigenia, Alban vestal of Bovillae, mentioned by Symmachus in two of his letters.

In Western art

The Vestals were used as models of female virtue in allegorizing portraiture of the later West. Elizabeth I of England was portrayed holding a sieve to evoke Tuccia, the Vestal who proved her virtue by carrying water in a sieve. Tuccia herself had been a subject for artists such as Jacopo del Sellaio ( 1493) and Joannes Stradanus, and women who were arts patrons started having themselves painted as Vestals. In the libertine environment of 18th century France, portraits of women as Vestals seem intended as fantasies of virtue infused with ironic eroticism.Kathleen Nicholson, "The Ideology of Feminine 'Virtue': The Vestal Virgin in French Eighteenth-Century Allegorical Portraiture," in ''Portraiture: Facing the Subject'' (Manchester University Press, 1997), p. 58ff. Later vestals became an image of republican virtue, as in Jacques-Louis David's '' The Vestal Virgin''. The discovery of a "House of the Vestals" in Pompeii made the Vestals a popular subject in the 18th century and the 19th century.

Portraits as Vestals

File:Metsys Elizabeth I The Sieve Portrait c1583.jpg, ''Sieve Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I'' (1583) by Quentin Metsys the Younger
File:Jean Raoux – Vestal Virgin.jpg, ''Vestal Virgin'' (1677–1730) by Jean Raoux
File:Madame Henriette de France as a Vestal Virgin () by Jean-Marc Nattier.jpg, ''Madame Henriette de France as a Vestal Virgin'' (1749) by Jean-Marc Nattier
File:Angelica Kauffmann, Portrait of a Woman as a Vestal Virgin, 1780-1785 02.jpg, ''Portrait of a Woman as a Vestal Virgin'' (1770s) by Angelica Kauffman

Notes

References

Further reading

* Beard, Mary, "The Sexual Status of Vestal Virgins," ''The Journal of Roman Studies'', Vol. 70, (1980), pp. 12–27.
* Broughton, T. Robert S., ''The Magistrates of the Roman Republic'', American Philological Association (1952–1986).
*Kroppenberg, Inge, "Law, Religion and Constitution of the Vestal Virgins," ''Law and Literature'', 22, 3, 2010, pp. 418 – 439

* Peck, Harry Thurston, ''Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities'' (1898)
* Parker, Holt N. "Why Were the Vestals Virgins? Or the Chastity of Women and the Safety of the Roman State", ''American Journal of Philology'', Vol. 125, No. 4. (2004), pp. 563–601.
* Samuel Ball Platner and Thomas Ashby, ''A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome''
* Saquete, José Carlos, "Las vírgenes vestales. Un sacerdocio femenino en la religión pública romana". Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2000.
* Sawyer, Deborah F. "Magna Mater and the Vestal Virgins." In ''Women and Religion in the First Christian Centuries'', 119–129. London: Routledge Press, 1996.
*Staples, Ariadne, ''From Good Goddess to Vestal Virgins: Sex and Category in Roman Religion'', Routledge, 1998
* Wildfang, Robin Lorsch. ''Rome's Vestal Virgins''. Oxford: Routledge, 2006 (hardcover, ; paperback, ).
* Wyrwińska. (2021). The Vestal Virgins’ Socio-political Role and the Narrative of Roma Aeterna. Krakowskie Studia z Historii Państwa i Prawa, 14(2), 127–151. https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.21.011.13519

External links

{{Commons category, Portraits as vestals
*Rodolfo Lanciani (1898
"The Fall of a Vestal"
Chapter 6, in ''Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries.'' Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston and New York, 1898.

* ttp://sights.seindal.dk/sight/173_House_of_the_Vestal_Virgins.html House of the Vestal Virgins
390s disestablishments in the Roman Empire
Ancient Roman religious titles

Gendered occupations
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