CHAPTER XI.
JUNE, 313—THE FESTIVAL OF VESTA.
Years passed swiftly by, in the fourth century as in the nineteenth!
They brought with them as they came many changes, they bore away with them many hopes, and left behind the memory of many sorrows, and the soft radiance of many vanished joys!
The persecution of the Christians had in great measure ceased, and, with the abdication of Diocletian, the edicts for their arrest and slaughter had been revoked.
It was comparatively a time of peace, and the conflict between the old and the new faiths seemed for a season at rest.
Constantius Chlorus had put a stop to the persecution of the Christians in Britain in the year after Alban had suffered, and now, in the year 313, Constantine was Emperor, and well known to favour the religion of Christ.
But if the old faiths were shaken to their very foundations, every effort was made to put on an appearance of increased enthusiasm at public ceremonials, and to load the altars of the gods and goddesses with the choicest offerings and the most costly sacrifices.
The great festival in honour of Vesta was to be celebrated this year with excessive pomp and circumstance. The preparations were organised on a very large scale, and enormous offerings were continually pouring in to the vestals’ house and the temple, some time before the great day, which fell on the ninth of June.
The Vestal Maxima, Terentia Rufilla, was overwhelmed with all the arrangements which devolved upon her, and on the evening of the seventh of June was lying on a couch in her own chamber, weary and sad. A tall and most beautiful maiden was standing at a marble slab or table covered with evergreens and flowers, which she was weaving into wreaths and emblems with her long slender fingers.