The Vestal Virgins (they originally numbered two, but were later increased to four and eventually six) were
selected by lotCleromancy is a form of divination using sortition, casting of lots, or casting bones, in which an outcome is determined by means that normally would be considered random, such as the rolling of dice, but that are believed to reveal the will of God or other supernatural entities.- In classical...
and served for thirty years, tending the
holy fireThe Holy Fire is described by Orthodox Christian believers as a miracle that allegedly occurs every year at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on Holy Saturday, the day preceding Orthodox Easter . It is considered by many to be the longest-attested annual miracle in the Christian world...
and performing other rituals connected to
domestic lifeThe household is "the basic residential unit in which economic production, consumption, inheritance, child rearing, and shelter are organized and carried out"; [the household] "may or may not be synonymous with family"....
—among them were the ritual sweeping of the temple on June 15 and the preparation of foods for certain festivals. By analogy, they also tended the life and soul of the city and of the body politic through the sacred fire of
VestaVesta was the virgin goddess of the hearth, home, and family in Roman mythology. Although she is often mistaken as analogous to Hestia in Greek mythology, she had a large, albeit mysterious, role in Roman religion long before she appeared in Greece. Little is known about the goddess, since, unlike...
, which was renewed every year on the
KalendsThe Calends , correspond to the first days of each month of the Roman calendar. The Romans assigned these calends to the first day of the month, signifying the start of the new moon cycle...
of March.
The sacred fire burned in Vesta's circular temple, which was built in pre-republican times, in the
Roman ForumThe Roman Forum , sometimes known by its original Latin name, is located between the Palatine hill and the Capitoline hill of the city of Rome. It is the central area around which the ancient Roman civilization developed...
below the
Aventine HillThe Aventine Hill is one of the seven hills on which ancient Rome was built. It belongs to Ripa, the twelfth rione, or ward, of Rome.-Etymology:...
.
The Vestal Virgins (they originally numbered two, but were later increased to four and eventually six) were
selected by lotCleromancy is a form of divination using sortition, casting of lots, or casting bones, in which an outcome is determined by means that normally would be considered random, such as the rolling of dice, but that are believed to reveal the will of God or other supernatural entities.- In classical...
and served for thirty years, tending the
holy fireThe Holy Fire is described by Orthodox Christian believers as a miracle that allegedly occurs every year at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on Holy Saturday, the day preceding Orthodox Easter . It is considered by many to be the longest-attested annual miracle in the Christian world...
and performing other rituals connected to
domestic lifeThe household is "the basic residential unit in which economic production, consumption, inheritance, child rearing, and shelter are organized and carried out"; [the household] "may or may not be synonymous with family"....
—among them were the ritual sweeping of the temple on June 15 and the preparation of foods for certain festivals. By analogy, they also tended the life and soul of the city and of the body politic through the sacred fire of
VestaVesta was the virgin goddess of the hearth, home, and family in Roman mythology. Although she is often mistaken as analogous to Hestia in Greek mythology, she had a large, albeit mysterious, role in Roman religion long before she appeared in Greece. Little is known about the goddess, since, unlike...
, which was renewed every year on the
KalendsThe Calends , correspond to the first days of each month of the Roman calendar. The Romans assigned these calends to the first day of the month, signifying the start of the new moon cycle...
of March.
The sacred fire burned in Vesta's circular temple, which was built in pre-republican times, in the
Roman ForumThe Roman Forum , sometimes known by its original Latin name, is located between the Palatine hill and the Capitoline hill of the city of Rome. It is the central area around which the ancient Roman civilization developed...
below the
Aventine HillThe Aventine Hill is one of the seven hills on which ancient Rome was built. It belongs to Ripa, the twelfth rione, or ward, of Rome.-Etymology:...
. Other sacred objects were stored within the temple, including the
PalladiumIn Greek and Roman mythology, a palladium or palladion was an image of great antiquity on which the safety of a city was said to depend. "Palladium" especially signified the wooden statue of Pallas Athena that Odysseus and Diomedes stole from the citadel of Troy and which was later taken to the...
(a statue of
Pallas AthenaIn Greek mythology, Athena is the goddess of wisdom, peace, warfare, strategy, handicrafts and reason, shrewd companion of heroes and the goddess of heroic endeavour...
) supposed to have been brought by
AeneasIn Greco-Roman mythology, Aeneas was a Trojan hero, the son of prince Anchises and the goddess Venus. His father was also the second cousin of King Priam of Troy. The journey of Aeneas from Troy, which led to the founding of the city Rome, is recounted in Virgil's Aeneid...
from
TroyTroy is a legendary city and center of the Trojan War, as described in the Epic Cycle and especially in the Iliad, one of the two epic poems attributed to Homer...
. The temple burned completely on at least four occasions and caught fire on two others. The current temple (somewhat restored in the 20th century) dates from 191 AD, when
Julia DomnaJulia Domna was a member of the Severan dynasty of the Roman Empire. Empress and wife of Roman Emperor Lucius Septimius Severus and mother of Emperors Geta and Caracalla, Julia was among the most important women ever to exercise power behind the throne in the Roman Empire.- Family background...
, wife of the emperor
Septimius SeverusLucius Septimius Severus was a Roman Emperor who reigned from 14 April, 193 until his death in 211. Severus was the first emperor of the troubled Severan dynasty, the last imperial dynasty of the Roman principate before the Crisis of the Third Century...
, ordered a thorough rebuilding. The rites of Vesta ended in
394-Roman Empire:* September 6—Battle of the Frigidus: Emperor Theodosius I defeats and kills the usurper Eugenius and his Frankish magister militum Arbogast.* The sacred fire of the Roman Empire stops burning ....
, when the fire was extinguished and the Vestal Virgins disbanded by order of
Theodosius IFlavius Theodosius , also called Theodosius I and Theodosius the Great , was Roman Emperor from 379 to 395. Reuniting the eastern and western portions of the empire, Theodosius was the last emperor of both the Eastern and Western Roman Empire...
.