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Rome's Vestal Virgins
Comprehensive and thoroughly up-to-date, this volume offers a brand new analysis of the Vestal Virgins’ ritual function in Roman religion. Undertaking a detailed and careful analysis of ancient literary sources, Wildfang argues that the Vestals’ virginity must be understood on a variety of different levels and provides a solution to the problem of the Vestals’ peculiar legal status in ancient Rome. Addressing the one official state priesthood open to women at Rome, this volume explores and analyzes a range of topics New and insightful, this investigation of one of the most important state cults in ancient Rome is an essential addition to the bookshelves of all those interested in Roman religion, history and culture.
174 pages, Paperback
First published July 26, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
June 25, 2018
I decided to read this out of curiousity but ended up really enjoying it. It is short, readable and very interesting. Whenever I read something about Vestal Virgins before, they usually didn't go any further than looking at the Vestals' virginity, punishments for incestum, forbidden love with Roman emperors or being buried alive. These are the endless stories that seems to go in circles about these women. Here, Wildfang goes beyond that.
The topics she address include: The public rituals these priestesses performed in connection with official state rites and festivals, the private rites associated only with the Vestal order, the Vestals' own particular privileges and duties and the function of the order.
This is a good read for anyone interested in women of the ancient Rome.
The topics she address include: The public rituals these priestesses performed in connection with official state rites and festivals, the private rites associated only with the Vestal order, the Vestals' own particular privileges and duties and the function of the order.
This is a good read for anyone interested in women of the ancient Rome.
May 30, 2019
This book is highly academic and doesn’t follow a story, but is rather a historical look into a roughly 300 year period in the 1000+ years of the Vestal cult. As is to be expected with an academic book, it can be a bit dry at times, but that doesn’t get in the way of how fascinating all this history is. I learned so much and I really enjoyed it.
The Vestal Virgins were an important part of Roman history and their story is interesting.
Ps: I read this mostly while traveling on a subway, so I often needed some music to block out the ambient subway noise to help me concentrate on the text. I recommend the album Lost in Time by Murcof, it goes really well with the book. Especially the track on the album titled Chapitre II.
The Vestal Virgins were an important part of Roman history and their story is interesting.
Ps: I read this mostly while traveling on a subway, so I often needed some music to block out the ambient subway noise to help me concentrate on the text. I recommend the album Lost in Time by Murcof, it goes really well with the book. Especially the track on the album titled Chapitre II.
November 7, 2025
While I was reading this book, I had two visions: One of a black shroud with a necklace of dried flowers around her neck, I kissed her shroud - this, I believe, was the fate of the sacrificed Vestal Virgins to be given to the sacred chthonic black fire. The other was during a conversation with a priestess friend. While we were talking on the phone, she mentioned a divine, strangely warm fire, and a moment later I felt arms around my neck, palms moving towards my solar plexus. A figure in gold and white stood behind me. I smiled and mentioned to my friend that I was reading about the sacred order of the Vestal Virgins. The book is a great source for further, more specialised study, I have not found anything better that introduces this cult. I read a certain anecdote in another book: When a Christian girl committed sacrilege by stealing jewellery from the statue of Vesta, a Vestal Virgin pointed her finger at her and said, "This will be your last night in life". The Christian girl died that very night in terrible convulsions as punishment for her offence. It was interesting to learn that, similar to the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Vestals calmed the eidola and the shrouds of the dead and drove them out of Rome or dissolved their shadows. A function that has long been forgotten, as in Catholic necromantic ritual they are only able to place dead souls in the grave for incubation rather than helping them. There are two keys to these mysteries:
Do not understand Vesta as anything other than a living flame;
You see that no bodies were born from a flame.
Therefore, she is by right a virgin who brings forth no seed
Nor does she conceive them, and she loves companions in virginity.
(Ov. Fast. 6.291–294)17
The living flame is associated with the fortress, the septagram in the theology of arithmetic, it is indivisible, it is the divine fire that burns up all impurities and is enclosed within itself by the bodies of sacred fire. It is imperishable, connected to the fire corridors of the sun in the hyperionic realities in the pneumatic sense, and this is the place where the sacred daimons and gods dwell and partake of the wild, inextinguishable hypersolar hecatic ignis.
While reading, I was torn between understanding the key role these sacred women played in Rome, their position, power, wealth and fortune, combined with the women's need to partake of their sexual nature. The punishment for breaking the vow was harsh, but at the heart of it was the preservation of the pillars of Roman society. Given all the benefits and obligations that the vestal virgins enjoyed, I understand that ritual purification was necessary in this context. After all, the nuns, an order modelled on the Vestal Virgins but without power, wealth, political influence and legal perks, were a humbled version of the powerful orders of women who were subject to the Church. Given the patriarchal nature of Roman society, the Vestal Virgins, along with the matrons, were the most entitled women in that society.
Do not understand Vesta as anything other than a living flame;
You see that no bodies were born from a flame.
Therefore, she is by right a virgin who brings forth no seed
Nor does she conceive them, and she loves companions in virginity.
(Ov. Fast. 6.291–294)17
The living flame is associated with the fortress, the septagram in the theology of arithmetic, it is indivisible, it is the divine fire that burns up all impurities and is enclosed within itself by the bodies of sacred fire. It is imperishable, connected to the fire corridors of the sun in the hyperionic realities in the pneumatic sense, and this is the place where the sacred daimons and gods dwell and partake of the wild, inextinguishable hypersolar hecatic ignis.
While reading, I was torn between understanding the key role these sacred women played in Rome, their position, power, wealth and fortune, combined with the women's need to partake of their sexual nature. The punishment for breaking the vow was harsh, but at the heart of it was the preservation of the pillars of Roman society. Given all the benefits and obligations that the vestal virgins enjoyed, I understand that ritual purification was necessary in this context. After all, the nuns, an order modelled on the Vestal Virgins but without power, wealth, political influence and legal perks, were a humbled version of the powerful orders of women who were subject to the Church. Given the patriarchal nature of Roman society, the Vestal Virgins, along with the matrons, were the most entitled women in that society.
November 4, 2015
Wildfang lays out her case like a lawyer in a high stakes trial, determined to make, us, the ladies and gentlemen of the reading-jury, understand exactly what happened.
She is very clear on what is known, what is not known, who the sources were, what biases come to play, what possible motivations could have been behind specific actions, and some very grounded theories on the goals behind the actions taken.
What impressed me the most was that, while being a Vestal Virgin granted a woman a tremendous amount of autonomy that most Roman women did not enjoy, she was also first on the chopping block as a scapegoat whenever Rome was going through a particularly bad time.
An excellent analytic introduction to a still not well understood aspect of ancient Roman history.
February 23, 2022
Libro molto interessante, che ha diversi meriti: è breve e va subito al punto della questione; è molto onesto e chiaro nel dire ciò che sappiamo (molto poco) e ciò che possiamo solo presumere (parecchio). Ho trovato particolarmente argute le riflessioni sull'origine e il significato del culto di Vesta: non un culto della fertilità, né un culto femminile (inteso come dedito alle attività femminili) ma un culto della purificazione, che si occupava simbolicamente (dopo i primi tempi) del fuoco e del penus, cioè la dispensa, la parte più interna della arcaica casa romana.
L'autrice esamina così in dettaglio tutto ciò che ci è giunto, a livello letterario almeno, sull vestali, sulle feste in cui erano coinvolte e sulla loro storia. Perché anche le vestali hanno avuto una storia:dopo la prima fase arcaica di non coinvolgimento politico, con la fine della Repubblica assistiamo ad un forte coinvolgimento nelle lotte politiche e, persino, al mettere in dubbio l'obbligo della verginità.
Il libro si ferma al primo secolo d.C. Unico difetto è forse il capitolo sulle vestali in epoca monarchica e inizio-repubblicana, in cui l'autrice aderisce alla teoria per cui ciò che fu scritto sul periodo dagli storici successivi è per lo più inventato e quindi va interpretato.
Per il resto, ottimo libro, che consiglio. Ultima avvertenza: stile accademico, quindi un po' arido, ma che fa il suo dovere.
L'autrice esamina così in dettaglio tutto ciò che ci è giunto, a livello letterario almeno, sull vestali, sulle feste in cui erano coinvolte e sulla loro storia. Perché anche le vestali hanno avuto una storia:dopo la prima fase arcaica di non coinvolgimento politico, con la fine della Repubblica assistiamo ad un forte coinvolgimento nelle lotte politiche e, persino, al mettere in dubbio l'obbligo della verginità.
Il libro si ferma al primo secolo d.C. Unico difetto è forse il capitolo sulle vestali in epoca monarchica e inizio-repubblicana, in cui l'autrice aderisce alla teoria per cui ciò che fu scritto sul periodo dagli storici successivi è per lo più inventato e quindi va interpretato.
Per il resto, ottimo libro, che consiglio. Ultima avvertenza: stile accademico, quindi un po' arido, ma che fa il suo dovere.
August 25, 2017
Stunning monograph on the Vestal Virgins. Wildfang uses all of the resources available (written, epigraphic, etc.) to analyze the origins of the Vestal Virgins, how they are chosen, their daily lives, and how their lives changed from Rome's beginning to the first century C.E. Her analysis is very well thought out, and she arrives at well-founded conclusions. There is an enormous amount of information within, and anyone who is interested in ancient Rome or the Vestal Virgins must read this.
February 28, 2015
Lorsch's understanding of the main aspects of the Vestals (captio, virginity, chastity, sui iuris status) is based on the idea of separation from family in order to ensure that the priestesses represented the Roman people as a whole rather than a family or faction, and to prevent the pollution of the city rites by family cults.
The book examines the duties of the Vestal order in the different rites and ceremonies of the Roman calendar (emphasizing the aspects of purification, fertility and the storage of food), as well as the episodes of Roman history in which Vestals appear, as individuals or acting as a body. Appearances in the Regal period and early Republic are taken, not so much as a statement of truth, as a number of episodes are quasi-legendary, but rather as a manifestation of how the Romans themselves viewed the Vestals and their cult, while episodes dating from the 2nd century BC until Domitian's reign are taken as historical (as closer to the sources who tell of them) and reinterpreted in terms of the socio-political context as the Vestals got progressively involved with events pertaining to the public sphere and got associated in different ways with the Empire's dinasties.
A useful appendix collects the original texts referring to the Vestals, in the original Latin or Greek.
There were points in this work that I found particularly interesting, such as the linkage to family cults, the proper calendar perspective of Vestal duties and the idea that the accusation of crimen incesti was used to create a scapegoat or to make an example foar a particular faction during troubled times. Material for further research and reflection!
The book examines the duties of the Vestal order in the different rites and ceremonies of the Roman calendar (emphasizing the aspects of purification, fertility and the storage of food), as well as the episodes of Roman history in which Vestals appear, as individuals or acting as a body. Appearances in the Regal period and early Republic are taken, not so much as a statement of truth, as a number of episodes are quasi-legendary, but rather as a manifestation of how the Romans themselves viewed the Vestals and their cult, while episodes dating from the 2nd century BC until Domitian's reign are taken as historical (as closer to the sources who tell of them) and reinterpreted in terms of the socio-political context as the Vestals got progressively involved with events pertaining to the public sphere and got associated in different ways with the Empire's dinasties.
A useful appendix collects the original texts referring to the Vestals, in the original Latin or Greek.
There were points in this work that I found particularly interesting, such as the linkage to family cults, the proper calendar perspective of Vestal duties and the idea that the accusation of crimen incesti was used to create a scapegoat or to make an example foar a particular faction during troubled times. Material for further research and reflection!
October 14, 2015
Excellent work on the Vestal virgins. While many historians go no further than looking at the Vestals virginity or the punishment for incestum, devoting endless pages to a discussion that seems to go in circles, Wildfang gives a broader overview of the Vestals' lives and work. She clearly knows her subject and I find her theories concerning the Vestals' position far more convincing than for instance Beard or Parker's. A short but impressive and highly readable discussion.
March 10, 2010
What I adored about this book is that it does so much more than present the facts. Instead of giving us the what, who, when, and where, she gives us a rare treat: WHY. What was the purpose behind the things the Vestal Virgins did? What was the meaning behind their lives? Wildfang's evidence and logic is clear, intelligent, and fascinating. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Rome.
May 23, 2012
This is an excellent reference work, but it's also highly readable. Wildfang provides plentiful citations and does not simply assert things as facts. I actually agree with the cover blurb that she provides "a new and penetrating investigation" into the cult of Vesta and of her priestesses, the Vestals.
January 6, 2017
An interesting and accessible, if sometimes a bit too sketchy study on the character and development of the Vestal virgins in Republican and early Imperial Rome.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews