Vesta- Roman GodDeity"Goddess of the Hearth"

The Flame

Numa Pompilius, Rome's second king, lit the first fire in a round temple in the Forum and set women to guard it. The flame was never allowed to die. Each year on March 1, the original New Year, the Vestals renewed it using methods older than Rome itself: a concave bronze vessel focused sunlight onto tinder, or two sticks of wood from a fortunate tree were rubbed together until they caught. No common fire could serve.

If the flame went out at any other time, it was a catastrophe. The Vestal responsible was beaten with rods by the Pontifex Maximus, in darkness. The fire was Rome's covenant with its gods, burning in a temple that held no statue of Vesta because Vesta was the fire.

The Donkey and the God

Ovid tells the story in the Fasti. At a rustic feast of the gods, Vesta lay down to sleep in the meadow. The garden god Priapus crept toward her on tiptoe through the moonlit grass.

A donkey belonging to old Silenus brayed. The sound shattered the silence. Vesta woke. The gods rushed to the scene, and Priapus fled. At the Vestalia each year, donkeys were garlanded with bread and flowers in gratitude for the beast that had saved the goddess.

I Take You, Amata

The Vestals were six women chosen from patrician families between the ages of six and ten. The Pontifex Maximus performed the captio: he took the girl by the hand and said, "I take you, Amata," using the same ritual name regardless of the child's own. She would serve thirty years: ten learning the rites, ten performing them, ten teaching.

The penalty for a Vestal who broke her vow of chastity was burial alive. She was sealed in an underground chamber near the Colline Gate with a lamp and meager provisions. No one shed her blood; killing a Vestal would itself be sacrilege. Her lover was beaten to death in the Forum. In over a thousand years, about eighteen Vestals were condemned.

The Vestalia

From June 7 to 15, the inner sanctuary of Vesta's temple opened to Roman matrons, who entered barefoot to pray for their households. Bakers and millers honored Vesta especially: she presided over the fire that turned grain to bread. On June 9, the accumulated ashes and sweepings from the sacred hearth were gathered and carried to the Tiber. The festival ended on the fifteenth, the temple sealed again, and the Vestals resumed their solitary watch.