Vestal Virgin

Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because the Vestal Virgin was so safeguarded by the Republic.

And another thing, once you know a bit of Roman history as well, the amount of riots and, in fact, killings that went on in that forum one way or another.

Many, many times have the Roman people burnt down the forum, destroyed the forum.

The twins, Romulus and Remus, weren't immediate descendants of Aeneas.

They were born centuries later to a woman named Rhea Silvia, who was a Vestal Virgin and the daughter of a king in Alba Longa.

To further bolster their claim to destiny, the twins were allegedly sired by the Roman god of war, Mars, who was crucially important in the early Republic.

When the twins were infants, their usurping great uncle, King Amulius, had them abandoned.

That changed in the early 390s when Theodosius issued a series of decrees that effectively banned pagan worship altogether.

Public sacrifices were outlawed and temples were closed and converted into churches.

The eternal flame of the Vestal Virgins, which had been tended continuously for over a thousand years, was extinguished and the Vestals were disbanded.

This was the period that saw the destruction of the Serapium in Alexandria, one of the ancient world's most magnificent pagan temples, reportedly demolished by a mob in 391.

The chief of the pontifices, the pontifex maximus, had the duty of expounding and interpreting the divine will, or rather of directing sacred rites, not only being in charge of public ceremonies, but also watching over private sacrifices and preventing any departure from established custom, as well as teaching whatever was requisite for the worship or propitiation of the gods.

He was also overseer of the holy virgins called vestals, for to Numa is ascribed the consecration of the vestal virgins, and in general the worship and care of the perpetual fire entrusted to their charge.

It was either because he thought the nature of fire pure and uncorrupted, and therefore entrusted it to chaste and undefiled persons, or because he thought of it as unfruitful and barren, and therefore associated it with virginity, since wherever in Greece a perpetual fire is kept, as at Delphi and Athens, it is committed to the charge not of virgins, but of widows past the age of marriage.

And if by any chance it goes out, as at Athens during the tyranny of Aristion, the sacred lamp is said to have been extinguished, and at Delphi when the temple was burned by the Medes, and as during the Mithridatic and the Roman civil wars, when the altar was demolished and the fire extinguished, then they say it must not be kindled again from other fire, but made fresh and new by lighting a pure and unpolluted flame from the rays of the sun.

The story goes that while the people were disheartened by this, a bronze buckler fell from heaven, which came into the hands of Numa, and a wonderful account of it was given by the king, which he had learned from Egeria and the Muses.

The buckler came, he said, for the salvation of the city, and must be carefully preserved by making eleven others of like fashion, size, and shape, in order that the resemblance between them might make it difficult for a thief to distinguish the one that fell from heaven.

He said further that the spot where it fell, and the adjacent meadows where the Muses usually had converse with him, must be consecrated to them, and that the spring which watered the spot should be declared holy water for the use of the vestal virgins, who should daily sprinkle and purify their temple with it.

Moreover, they say that the truth of all this was attested by the immediate cessation of the pestilence.

I don't know.

I was literally 15 being a, I don't know, what was I, a Spanish dancer or a Vestal Virgin or all of the kind of tropes that you are in an opera production.

My first professional gig, I used to do a whole lot of things as dancers do when they're kind of coming up, you know, you do a lot of commercial stuff and TV stuff and TV ads and things.

And then I got this gig at Opera Australia dancing, no, as an extra, I think, and then dancing.

Samaith, yes.

And he wanted this character, who's essentially like a Vestal Virgin slash bard, Laika, to fall in love with him.

Who doesn't exist.

She's a fictional character.