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Vesta is the virgin goddess of the hearth, home, and family in Roman religion. She was rarely depicted in human form, and was more often represented by the fire of her temple in the Forum Romanum. Entry to her temple was permitted only to her priestesses, the Vestal Virgins, who guarded particular sacred objects within, prepared flour and sacred salt for official sacrifices, and tended Vesta's sacred fire at the temple hearth. Their virginity was thought essential to Rome's survival; if found guilty of inchastity, they were buried or entombed alive. As Vesta was considered a guardian of the Roman people, her festival, the Vestalia, was regarded as one of the most important Roman holidays. During the Vestalia privileged matrons walked barefoot through the city to the temple, where they presented food-offerings. Such was Vesta's importance to Roman religion that following the rise of Christianity, hers was one of the last non-Christian cults still active, until it was forcibly disbanded by the Christian emperor Theodosius I in AD 391.
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References
- ↑ Ovid, Fasti 3.422; Geraldine Herbert-Brown, Ovid and the Fasti: An Historical Study (Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 76–77; R. Joy Littlewood, A Commentary on Ovid's Fasti, Book 6 (Oxford University Press, 2006) pp. 132–135; Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome (Routledge, 2001; originally published in French 1998), p. 59; Andreas Hartmann, Zwischen Relikt Und Reliquie: Objektbezogene Erinnerungspraktiken in Antiken Gesellschaften (Verlag Antike, 2010), pp. 545–565.
- ↑ Sabine MacCormack, The Shadows of Poetry: Vergil in the Mind of Augustine (University of California Press, 1998), p. 167; Symmachus, Third Relatio 8.
- ↑ Clifford Ando, "The Palladium and the Pentateuch: Towards a Sacred Topography of the Later Roman Empire," Phoenix 55 (2001) 369–410, especially pp. 398–399.
- ↑ Servius, note to Aeneid 7.188: septem fuerunt pignora, quae imperium Romanum tenent: acus matris deum, quadriga fictilis Veientanorum, cineres Orestis, sceptrum Priami, velum Ilionae, palladium, ancilia.
- ↑ It is disputed what the item was precisely. Meteor showers during the Second Punic War motivated the Romans, after consulting the Sibylline Books, to introduce the cult of the Great Mother of Ida (Magna Mater Idaea, also known as Cybele) to the city. With the aid of their ally Attalus I (241-197 BC), they brought the goddess' most important image, a large black stone that was said to have fallen from the sky, from Pessinus to Rome (Livy 10.4-11.18). This was called a baetylus
- ↑ Vergil, Aeneid I.647-655.
- ↑ "He who walks into battle"
- ↑ Alan Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (Oxford University Press, 2011), n.p. edition online.
- ↑ Lanciani, Rodolfo (1898). "Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries". penelope.uchicago.edu. Houghton, Mifflin and Company. p. 128.
- Cancellieri, Francesco (1842). Le sette cose fatali di Roma antica (Seven things whose loss was Fatal for Ancient Rome, i.e. Pignora Imperii). Rome: L.P. Salvioni.