The Unwilling Vestal

by Edward Lucas White

The salt with which they salted the holy meal was prepared with similar invariable formality. Crude salt, obtained from evaporated sea-water out of the sand-pits on the seashore near Lavinium, was conveyed to the Atrium in small two-handled earthenware jars. This coarse, dirty, dark-colored salt was dissolved by the three younger Vestals in boiling water, which water might not be obtained from the lead pipes which connected the Atrium with the general water-supply of the city’s aqueducts, but must be drawn by the Vestals themselves and carried by them in the earthenware jars from the famous fountain of Jaturna, at which Castor and Pollux were fabled to have watered their white horses after bringing to Rome the news of the victory at Lake Regillus. The solution was purified by repeated boilings, the impurities being gotten rid of by successive careful decantings of the liquid from one vessel into another, so that the sediment might be left behind as the top part was poured off. When sufficiently boiled down the solution was recrystallized in shallow earthenware pans. The resulting slabs of salt were harder than the pans and were freed from them by breaking the earthenware with an ancient stone hammer, said to have been captured by AEneas himself from a king of Ardea. The slabs of salt were sawed into pieces with an iron saw, the pieces were pounded in a mortar, the fine salt was thrown into an earthenware bowl and dried out in a kiln. When dried a little powdered gypsum was stirred through it to prevent it from again becoming moist. It was then stored in a tall jar with a tight lid, which was kept in the outer storeroom of the temple, along with the jars of meal. Three times a year, on the ninth of June, on the thirteenth of September and on the fifteenth of February, with solemn prayers the Vestals mixed the prepared salt with the prepared grits, the resultant mixture being the sacred meal.

On each First of March the fire in the temple was allowed to go out and was solemnly rekindled by the friction of maple wood on apple wood, as when the fire went out by accident. The temple was then decorated with fresh boughs of green laurel, after the boughs put up the year before had been removed.

On May fifteenth the Vestals were the chief figures in a solemn procession of the entire Roman hierarchy to the Sublician bridge, from which the Vestals threw into the Tiber thirty dolls made of rushes, fifteen representing men, fifteen women, each about two feet high.

This offering to the river of effigies of men and women commemorated the primitive human sacrifices by which the river was each year placated, that it might not drown more by floods.

On June fifth the inner storeroom of the temple was opened and its treasures inspected by the Pontifex wearing his antique vestments. With him entered always also the Chief Vestal clad in her austere habit with all her badges of office. They were attended by the other Vestals, who went through traditional pacings, haltings and prayers. The Temple of Vesta was an enclosure from which all men were rigidly excluded. The only exceptions to this immemorial taboo were a few of the more important Pontiffs, and they might only enter on specified festal days, and then must be in their full regalia. Also, in general, the temple was closed against all women except the Vestals and their assistants. It was open, however, from sunrise on the morning of each seventh of June until sunset on the evening of the fourteenth of June. During this period it was incumbent upon every Roman matron to visit the temple. And each worshipper must walk the entire distance from her home to the temple and must leave her house barefoot, barefoot she must walk from the temple to her home. Only illness excused a Roman woman from this religious duty. Few ever omitted it from indifference.

During these eight days the temple was thronged.

During these eight days also fell the great yearly festival of Vesta, on the ninth of June, on which day also all millers kept holiday, with processions and picnics to which the mill-donkeys were led decorated with wreaths of flowers and strings of tiny, crisp-baked rolls.

On June fifteenth the temple was ceremonially cleaned and the sweepings and the ashes collected from the sacred fire for the year past were solemnly carried in a stately procession to a prescribed spot on the slope of the Capitol where a great pit was closed by a heavy maple-wood door. In this pit the ashes were reverently buried.

Besides these observances of their special cult the Vestals took part in nearly every important sacrifice, procession and festival of the public worship of Rome. They were busy women and among them Brinnaria was anything but idle. She never found time hang heavy on her hands.

So busied with her duties she passed three peaceful years, contented and happy. There was but one drawback to life in the Atrium from Brinnaria’s point of view. That drawback was Meffia. Meffia was never ill but never well. Everything tired her. It tired her to walk upstairs, to stand for any length of time, to do anything. She was forever sitting down to rest or lying down to rest. Excitement exhausted her totally. She was a perpetual worry to the other Vestals.