The dreadful preparations were complete. The Vestal's grave was ready—a narrow niche in the massive stone foundations of the Temple—the temple of that goddess whose worship she had mocked. In this tiny cell was placed a pallet, a lamp that when lighted would burn for forty hours, and a small quantity of food. All knew what course the funeral ceremonies would follow. The Pontifex would read some prayers over the doomed priestess, but without the lustrations and other expiatory ceremonies that were used at the burial of the dead. When the last prayer had been uttered, the lictors would let her down into the vault, the entrance would be filled with slabs of stone, then covered up with earth.
The awful hours, the agonizing days, would slowly pass. The lamp would flicker and the light expire. Deep silence that no shriek could pierce would shut the buried vestal from the ken of all who loved her. The food would fail; then, slowly, hour by hour, and day by day, the dreadful sentence of the law would be fulfilled. No father, mother, lover, friend, could save the victim, or by one iota lessen the torture of starvation, or that still greater torture of the brain to which her judges had condemned her.
Did not the crime of which she was convicted strike at the root of the religion of the people? The maintenance of the sacred fire as a pious and propitiatory observance was not peculiar to the Romans. The Hebrews held it a divine commandment: "The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar, saith the Lord; it shall never go out." Undying fires were maintained in the temples of Ceres at Mantinea; of Apollo at Delphos and at Athens; and in that of Diana at Echatan. A lamp was always burning in the temple of Jupiter Ammon. The ancient custom came from the Egyptians to the Greeks, and from the Greeks to the Romans, who had made it a vital, essential feature of their faith. Like the veil of Astoreth in the temple of the moon-goddess at Carthage; like the sacred shield which, as Numa Pompilius avowed, had fallen from heaven, the altar-fire of Sul safeguarded the domestic prosperity, the political wisdom, the military supremacy of Rome in Britain.
And this gross insult to the mighty goddess had been perpetrated in the midst of the festival; on the very eve of the ceremony of the blessed waters used specially on that occasion for purifying the temple of Sul. It was a local event of paramount importance, for then the statue of Sul was covered with flowers and anointed with perfumed oil. The Salii marched through the city carrying vessels, richly decorated and of beautiful design, containing water from the sacred spring. The feast lasted for three days, and during that time the Romans undertook no serious or important business. The banquets with which the festival was concluded were magnificent and costly. The edict of Numa Pompilius enjoining reverence to the gods remain unrepealed. It was obeyed in Sulcastra as in Rome itself. Inscribed on tables of stone, it could be read in all the schools and temples:
"Let none appear in the presence of the gods but with a pure heart and sincere piety. Let none there make a vain show and ostentation of their riches but fear lest they should thereby bring on themselves the vengeance of heaven.
"Let no one have particular gods of his own, or bring new ones into his house, or receive strange ones unless allowed by edict. Let everyone preserve in his house the oratories established by his fathers, and pay his domestic gods the worship that has always been paid to them.
"Let all honour the ancient gods of heaven, and the heroes whose exploits have carried them thither, such as Bacchus, Hercules, Castor and Pollux. Let altars be erected to the virtues which carry us up to heaven; but never to vices."
These dread laws the sculptor and the priestess had impiously broken and defied.
The climax was at hand. A strange, loud clangour beat upon the ear, pierced by the wailing cry of weeping women. The dreamer heard the tramp of many feet; then saw a long and closely packed procession emerging from the centre of the city. Slowly and solemnly the multitude advanced. The first section of the great procession reached the narrower road which wound amid the trees that beautified the Hill of Sul. High up on the barer slopes of the great hill stood out the jutting rock from which the sculptor was to take his last long gaze upon the sunlit world. A band of lictors headed the procession. Behind them, with head erect, walked Lucius Flaccus on the road to death.
The trees swayed gently in the morning breeze, the birds were singing in the groves; the glory of the summer decked the land. Yet the tenderness of nature and all the splendour of the world seemed but to mock the tragedy of that slow procession. On every side was life, life, strong, abundant, free; but this one lonely man, bare-headed and white-faced, who climbed the hill, had done with life. With each step of the slow advance he drew nearer and nearer to the gate of death.