From Good Goddess to Vestal Virgins: Sex and Category in Roman Religion (27 page)

circumvent the procedure that was always necessary before an exe- cution could be carried out. The Vestal
’
s burial was not an execu- tion in the ordinary sense. She was not put to death. The under- ground chamber in which she was interred contained, in Plutarch
’
s words,
‘
very small portions of the necessities of life
’
.
81
Her death occurred spontaneously, just as the fire went out spontaneously.

The sentence of death was imposed on a Vestal not by a judicial but by a religious body, the pontifical college.
82
The right of the
pon- tifex maximus
and the pontifical college to pronounce judgement on a Vestal was one of the main reasons that scholars have argued that the
pontifex
was her pseudo-
paterfamilias
. The role of the pon- tifical college was seen as analogous to the role of the family council and the fact that the
pontifex
participated in the ceremony of live burial as analogous to a
pater
’
s
ius vitae necisque
. However, I have shown in my discussion of a Vestal
’
s privileges with regard to prop- erty that the notion of pseudo-
paterfamilias
is untenable.
83
The suggestion that the Vestal transcended even the category of
civis,
has much greater explanatory power for the fact that the normal criminal procedure was circumvented in her case. In the following discussion of the palladium we shall see how such isolation and its concomitant extraordinary status enabled her to perform a unique function.

The Vestals
’
isolation from the incidents of categorization, which included the category of
civis,
gave them unique ritual status. The palladium, like the
ancile,
was regarded as a surety of the power of Rome
—
pignus imperii Romani
.
84
It was kept in the
aedes Vestae,
but unlike the
ancile
was never displayed in public. In fact only the Vestal Virgins were allowed to see it or to touch it.
85
In this regard it was different from the sacred fire which was on open view in the temple. The secrecy that shrouded the palladium led to the specula- tion that in fact it did not exist and that the temple contained noth- ing more than the fire.
86
But the belief that there was indeed some- thing secret, sacred and powerful that the Vestals guarded in their temple was more pervasive. It was also believed to have been origi- nally a pledge of Trojan power, which was brought to Italy by Aeneas after the sack of Troy.
87
It was a symbol of the continuation of power, reaching backward as well as forward in time.

The question is what
imperium Romanum
meant in the context of the palladium and the
ancile
. Did it refer to Roman power over her empire, her dominance over other nations and continuous aggrandizement, or only to her continuing existence? To make a

political analogy, was the power of the palladium related to the
imperium domi
or the
imperium militiae?
A passage in Livy suggests an answer.
88
In it Camillus argues against moving Rome to the site of Veii after the sack of the city by the Gauls in 390 BC. The argu- ment is based almost entirely on religion, on the impropriety of carrying out Roman rites away from Rome. But it also suggests that the palladium and the
ancile
could not be moved from Rome at all. Their religious potency operated only on the site of Rome itself. A permanent move to Veii would have necessitated abandoning them. They were guardians of Rome, pledges of Roman
imperium
. Mov- ing them to the site of Veii would make them Veientine and there- fore powerless. Rome could not be Rome on the site of Veii. To leave them behind on a site that was no longer Rome, would also deprive them of power. The notion of
imperium
that these cult objects represented was more akin to the notion of the
imperium domi
. It did not extend beyond the limits of the city. The palladium and the
ancile
were assurances of the continuing existence of the collectivity and the integrity of Roman sovereignty.

These two pledges of Roman sovereignty, the
ancile
and the palla- dium, had in common an aura of mystery. Both were concealed, albeit in different ways, from the population at large. The palladium was kept altogether out of sight, while the
‘
real
’
ancile
was hidden among the fakes. Nobody at all was able to identify the genuine
ancile
. This made the Vestals unique in their function of guarding the palladium, in their ability to see it and touch it with full knowl- edge of its import. Again I suggest that it was their isolation from all factional interests that qualified them to perform this extraordinary function. It made them, like the palladium, symbols of Roman integrity. They also were pledges for the continuing existence of Rome. Their powers also extended only to the bounds of the city. We saw that their prayers could stop a runaway slave, but only if he had not left the city. This was perhaps another reason why they were buried within the city, even when they were buried alive for unchastity. Outside the city, in the space that was not Rome, as it were, a Vestal was as meaningless as the palladium.

A third ritual obligation of a Vestal was the preparation of
mola salsa,
ground, salted spelt which was an essential part of every Roman sacrifice. The meal was sprinkled on the head of the sacrifi- cial victim before it was killed. Indeed
mola
by itself could constitute a sacrifice.
89
The word
immolare,
‘
to sacrifice
’
, derives, says Festus from
mola
.
90
And Pliny writes,
‘
no sacrifice is carried out without

mola salsa
’
.
91
The custom was an ancient one attributed, as many religious traditions were, to Numa.
92

The preparation of
mola salsa
was the task of the Vestals exclu- sively. No other individual at all was allowed to participate. Ironi- cally, the fact that no other women were allowed to participate in the preparation of
mola salsa
has been used to bolster the argument that women typically occupied a marginal position in Roman reli- gion.
93
The fact is that making
mola salsa
was neither a male task nor a female task. It was a Vestal
’
s task. And it was a Vestal
’
s task by virtue of her singular ritual status.

The reason that it was exclusively the task of the Vestals was that
mola salsa
was an essential component of all Roman sacrifice. But all sacrifice did not involve the participation of the collectivity as a whole. More often than not one or other of a ritually defined group was excluded from a specific sacrifice. The sacrifice to Hercules at the
Ara Maxima,
for example, excluded women, that to the Bona Dea excluded men. Festus mentions a ritual formula where at cer- tain sacrifices the
lictor
would formally exclude strangers, prison- ers, women and virgins.
94
And although in all cases there is no spe- cific evidence for sacrifice, we have seen that in ritual the categories would sometimes remain separate, sometimes mingle. Roman ritual taken as a whole was an ever-shifting pattern of different permuta- tions and combinations of categories. But
mola salsa,
made ceremo- niously by the Vestal Virgins, was an indispensable component of every sacrifice, regardless of who participated and who was excluded. Its function was to make every sacrifice, however exclu- sive in other respects, nevertheless representative of the collectivity. To put it another way,
mola salsa
symbolically included the ritually excluded.

The Vestals were supremely qualified to prepare
mola salsa
. They, being unable to represent any individual ritual category, could without ambiguity or equivocation represent the state as a collectivity. Their ritual relationship to
mola salsa
was similar to their relationship to the sacred fire and the palladium.
Mola salsa,
the sacred fire, the palladium, were all endowed with the same ritual significance
—
they represented Rome, as did the Vestals.
95

By means of the
mola salsa
the Vestals symbolically participated in every sacrifice in Rome. Analogous to the use of
mola salsa
is their symbolic participation in the rite of the Parilia.
96
The Parilia, which celebrated among other things the founding of Rome, consisted not of a single central rite, but a series of celebratory rituals held

throughout the city. What unified these individual rituals was the
suffimen
which was provided by the Vestals and which was central to the sacrifice.
Suffimen
were the ashes of unborn calves which had been ceremoniously burnt by the
Virgo Vestalis Maxima
at the Fordicidia. A little of this ash, possibly sprinkled on the fires, was an important element of the individual rituals.
97

There were other rituals where the Vestals participated actively rather than symbolically. Here too the Vestals
’
presence served to legitimate the rite, to make it essentially Roman. An example is their participation in the rite of Bona Dea. The Vestals
’
presence at the festival was further legitimation of a rite that did contain potentially subversive elements.
98
The paradox of a rite that was secret and noc- turnal and held in a private house rather than in a temple also being
pro populo
was manifestly weakened by the participation therein of the Vestals. Although space is insufficient here to examine all such examples of the Vestals
’
duties, I suggest that the model constructed in this chapter would be a fruitful approach to the problem of their ritual functions within apparently disparate cults.

The temple, the
aedes Vestae,
also conformed to the symbolic pat- tern that I have been tracing throughout this chapter. It was per- ceived to be of extreme antiquity, but it was not a consecrated
templum
. The chief significance of this fact was that decrees of the senate could not be made there. According to Varro decrees of the senate might lawfully be made only in a place which had been specif- ically marked out as a
templum
by an augur. Areas of the
curiae
Hostilia, Julia and Pompeia had to be so marked because they were not consecrated places. On the other hand all sacred places were not necessarily
templa
. Varro
’
s specific example for such a place is the temple of Vesta.
99
It is not possible to recover all the implications of the
aedes Vestae
not being consecrated as a temple, but I would like to suggest a reason, in terms of my model of the Vestals, as to why a decree of the senate might not be made there. On the face of it the
aedes Vestae
might well appear to have been a pre-eminently suit- able place for the issuing of senatorial decrees. For I have argued that the Vestals were the perfect embodiment of Rome. However, the Vestals derived that status from their freedom from the poten- tially divisive categories of which Rome consisted. Evidently this included the senate. It is an interesting commentary on the senate that even on the level of ritual ideology they were not perceived as unequivocally representative of the collectivity. That was the unique function of the Vestals.

Finally this analysis provides a plausible explanation for the pres- ence of a Vestal Virgin within the complex structure of the myth of the birth of Romulus. It made him simultaneously Roman and non- Roman: non-Roman for all the reasons I suggested in
chapter 2
; Roman because although Rhea Silvia was a Vestal of Alba Longa, yet the fact that she was a Vestal would necessarily evoke everything a Roman Vestal connoted. Conversely, the fact that a Vestal was the mother of Rome
’
s founder played its part in the structuring of a fig- ure that was the embodiment of Rome.

CONCLUSION

It is helpful to approach Roman religion as a system, as an interde- pendent network of meaningfully related cults. The richness and complexity of meaning with which each individual cult is endowed can best be appreciated when it is seen in the context of the religion as a whole. Meaning is generated not only from within each cult but also from the way in which it is related to other cults in the system. The cults of Ceres, Liber and Flora are particularly good examples of this process. Le Bonniec (1958) and Bruhl (1953) in particular have demonstrated the significance of the cults of Ceres and Liber respectively, as independent entities. But seen in relationship to each other and to the cult of Flora the meanings thus independently gen- erated acquire a new dimension, a greater depth and complexity. Ceres, Liber and Flora are of course easy cases. The way in which they were structured invites comparison. Ceres, Liber and Libera for example, occupied the same temple. Flora
’
s temple stood next door, in Tacitus
’
words in the very same place,
eodem in loco
. The other easy case for us, because the ancient commentators themselves pointed the way, was Bona Dea and Venus. Why was myrtle, Venus
’
plant, not used at the festival of Bona Dea? It was Plutarch
’
s ques- tion before it became ours. But most of the time the interconnections need to be teased out in a process fraught with difficulty. For one thing we are in danger of missing relationships within cults that might have been intuitively acknowledged in antiquity. But more damaging perhaps is the risk of over-zealously creating relation- ships which perhaps never existed. There are no easy answers. Gaps, inadequacies and over-simplifications are inevitably a part of writ- ing ancient history. But I have tried to suggest two ways in which to