Vesta

Another thing that I thought was pretty interesting.

So Aeneas gets the figure of Vesta from a temple.

So Vesta is Hestia in Greek mythology.

She's the goddess of the hearth and home.

So in Rome, she was very significant.

She had a whole temple and she had these priestesses who were called the Vestal Virgins.

They were daughters of Rome.

I got very interested in them for a little while.

Pallas, dear grandson mine, depose those arms Yet why depose? A glorious death hath charms, And conquered Troy, forth from thine ashes rise, Revenge thyself on hearths of enemies, Consume Neptunian Pergamos, consume, And rise again more glorious from thy doom.

Pious Aeneas here shall bear his sire, And gods of Ilion and the Vestal fire Receive them, Vesta, here.

The time will be A man shall rule the world, thy votary, Himself a god, and guard thy rites and fane.

The house of the Augusti shall maintain The guardianship of Rome: 'tis Heaven's decree That they shall hold the reins of destiny.

Lucaria.

Now to the grove asylum All Rome goes where far in Tiber denizens Down flows.

Vesta and Jupiter Tonans.

Now to the highest citadel they move, To Numa's fane and Capitoline Jove To slay abidant.

Lucaria Now to the grove asylum all Rome goes, where foreign Tiber denizen'd down flows.

Vesta and Jupiter Tonons now to the highest citadel they move to numa's fane and capitoline jove to slay abydant oft the south winds blow in drizzling rains or coating earth with snow lyra and leo set when tightened next in the hesperian main undoes of stes purpurean the rain man marvelling shall ask where is to-day the lyre that shone so brightly yesterday and looking for the lyre shall further lack the lion semimerged unto his back delphin sets and the next night the dolphin that you saw bedecked with stars he also will withdraw he or the index was of secret loves or else he lesbian lyre supporting roves with its great lord what sea what shore that doth not know arion who of yore arrested running waters with his strains oft times the wolf his appetite restrains and spares the lamb oft times the hound and hare couch in the selfsame shade the strain to hear that strain the lioness and hind allures and bird of pallas taciturn endures the crow loquacious by her side the dove sits by the hawk and cynthia from above hears and is spell-bound for she deems that strain to be her brother's cities of the main sicilian and ursonian own and claim the lyric numbers and arion's fame twas thence returning with his golden hoard fruit of his art arion went on board oh did he fear the wind or fear the wave safely the bark denied the ocean gave for when the pirate captain and the crew with drawn swords in their hands assaulted you and you demanded wherefore do ye stand with the drawn sword and not the helm in hand and said unwitting what you said my fate i do not shun i do not deprecate but let me take my lyre once more i pray and chant a little while and laughing they granted the asked delay he bound his brows bright as thine phoebus with the laurel boughs he donned the pallor bright with tyrian dye and with his thumb awoke chords bright and high like to the swans what time the feathered shaft through the grey temples pierces to the haft and so he leapt into the azure wave and there the dolphin with curved back to save arose and him unwonted freight received tis so recorded and tis so believed sedent he holds the lyre and calms the sea and pays with song and strain his passage fee the gods beheld that pious deed and jove assigned the dolphin a bright seat above nine stars are his and unto him augustus caesar called pater patriae o for a muse of thousand trumpet tongue like thine maonides like thine that sung the great achilles for our sacred nones i celebrate in alternating tones which culminate in grace my calendar but than thy muse the subjects higher are to-day of all in all pre-eminent o my poor elegy tis evident that i am crazy to impose on thee so great a theme heroics these should be o pater patriae to thee divine the roman plebs and corei assign that appellation and we further hail thee but in thy wake we sail and gather up the titles thou dost win the father of the world thou long hast been another title dost thou share with jove father of man as he of gods above O Romule, concede, concede the palm to him who guards thy walls from scathe and harm, which Remus overleapt.

Yes, Romule, Tatius, Canina, Cures fell to thee, but by this chieftain all the world is one, all that the circling sun doth gaze upon.

Small was thine empire, universal his.

Do the like as she.

Depose the spear, there else is to be done.

Unarmed you were when Vestal Priestess won.

On her was Rome's progenitor begot.

Though so fierce in warfare, Mars was as susceptible to love as were all the immortals, for he was not only the chosen one of the golden-haired Venus, but was also the devoted lover of the vestal Rhea Silvia.

This maiden, being dedicated to the goddess Vesta, did not dare to listen to any words of love until her time of service in the temple was over, for the penalty of breaking her solemn vows would be the terrible one of being buried alive.

But Mars was not to be denied.

So at last the vestal yielded, but kept her marriage secret and continued to live in the temple until the birth of her twin sons, Romulus and Remus.

When her parents learned that she had failed to keep the sacred promise made at the altar fire of Vesta, they demanded that she should suffer the prescribed punishment.

She was therefore taken at night into an underground room of the temple and enclosed in the wall which had been built to allow for just such a tragic event.

As her children were declared outcasts, they were taken into the forest and left to perish by the teeth of wild beasts.

This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

I hold a PhD in Classics and Ancient History from the University of Sydney.

And my special area of research interest is the Vestal Virgins and particularly the way those priestesses interacted with the political and religious landscape of the Roman world.

And over time, that has morphed into me also being a podcast co-host.

And from 2013 onwards, I've I have co-hosted the Partial Historians podcast with my colleague and great friend, Dr. Fiona Radford.

So yeah, I'm all things history, but mostly ancient Rome.

Check out Partial Histories if you haven't already.

But for now, let's talk Vestal Virgins.

My first question is, we're often under the impression that Rome's gods and goddesses were kind of stolen from Greeks, given a bit of a makeover and a new name, but they're copy pastes.

Hercules is another one born of like a virgin birth.

So Vestal virgins were priestesses of Rome's oldest goddess matriarch, Vesta, who was the same as Greeks Hestia, who was like a hearth goddess.

Yeah, an ancient order of the holy women who guarded the public hearth and altar.

The Vestals were entrusted with keeping alight the perpetual fire that was the mystic heart of the empire at the time.

So Vestals were virgins, so V-I-R-G-I-N-E-S, i.e., women who vowed never to marry because they were brides of the spirit of Rome, in the same sense that Christian nuns were brides of Christ.

So Vestals underwent the same ceremony that later applied to nuns to limit their magic female powers.

They had their hair shaved off.

In an earlier era, however, they were not so restricted.