“For once,” the Emperor smiled, “you have failed to read accurately the statutes of the order. It is positively refreshing. I was beginning to feel that you were altogether too accurate. In fact the scourging of a delinquent Vestal is a mere disciplinary regulation, designed to assure the maintenance of the fire. It is not in the nature of a mandatory atonement. It has nothing in common with an act of expiation. It has nothing to do with placating or propitiating the Goddess. It has no likeness whatever to the punishment of a guilty Vestal.”
“That reminds me,” said Brinnaria, “of what I came for. I’m as grateful as possible for what you have said to me, surprised that Causidiena and you so easily saw through my deception, delighted that you take it as you have, more than delighted to find you so kindly disposed towards me. I need all the kindness you can feel towards me. I want to come to the point, to the reason why I am here. I want you to answer me this question: Suppose I were accused of the worst possible misconduct, formally accused before you, what then?”
“Then,” said Aurelius, “you would have a fair trial.”
“I believe I should,” said Brinnaria. “You would be perfectly fair and entirely just. And a fair trial would be a novelty. Almost never has an accused Vestal had a fair trial.”
“Not even if acquitted?” the Emperor suggested slyly.
“No,” Brinnaria retorted vigorously. “Even most of those absolved were not tried fairly. Postumia was, if the records from so long ago are to be trusted. The first trial of the third Licinia was perfectly fair, the minutes are very full and there is no shade of bias in the discussion of her many interviews with Crassus, while the court was plainly genuinely amused at his greed for desirable real-estate and at his artifices to induce her to sell cheap. Fabia, in the same year, was justly treated. But most of the other acquittals were quite as bad as most of the convictions to my mind. I can discover almost no trial where both sides had a full hearing, where the judges tried to get at the facts and kept their attention on the evidence, where the finding as the expression of the opinions rather than of the partiality of the Pontiffs. Almost every verdict on record, it seems to me, was dictated by favoritism or influence or prejudice or wrath.”
“You seem to think you know a great deal about the subject of trials of Vestals,” Aurelius remarked.
“I feel justified in thinking so,” Brinnaria maintained. “Where the minutes of the court have perished, as, of course, in the case of all the trials before the capture and burning of the city by the Gauls, I have read what records remain. Where the court records are extant I have pored over every word of the minutes of the proceedings and of every document attached.”
“That is more than ever I found time to do,” Aurelius meditated. “Your conclusions ought to be of interest. What are they?”
Brinnaria drew a deep breath and went on. “I am convinced,” she said, “that sometimes the accused received what she deserved, but generally by accident. The judges were swayed by politics or expediency or clan-feeling or popular clamor or self-interest, not by reason.