Editing Vestal Virgin (section)

=== Duties and festivals ===
[[File:Temple of Vesta - Hearth 01.jpg|thumb|The most prominent feature of the ruins that were once the [[Temple of Vesta]] is the hearth (seen here in the foreground).]]
Vestal tasks included the maintenance of their chastity, tending Vesta's sacred fire, guarding her sacred {{lang|la|[[Penates|penus]]}} (store-room) and its contents; collecting ritually pure water from a sacred spring; preparing substances used in public rites, presiding at the Vestalia and attending other festivals.<ref>[[Mary Beard (classicist)|Beard, M.]], [[John North (classicist)|North, J.]], Price, S., ''Religions of Rome'', Volume I, illustrated, reprint, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 51–53, {{ISBN|0-521-31682-0}}</ref> Vesta's temple was essentially the temple of all Rome and its citizens; it was open all day, by night it was closed but only to men.<ref>Parker, Holt N. "Why Were the Vestals Virgins? Or the Chastity of Women and the Safety of the Roman State". ''The American Journal of Philology'', vol. 125, no. 4, 2004, p. 568. {{JSTOR|1562224}}. Accessed 16 December 2022.</ref> The Vestals regularly swept and cleansed Vesta's shrine, functioning as surrogate housekeepers, in a religious sense, for all of Rome, and maintaining and controlling the connections between Rome's public and private religion.<ref>Wildfang, R. L. (2006), ''Rome's Vestal Virgins: A Study of Rome's Vestal Priestesses in the Late Republic and Early Empire'', Routledge, p.17 {{ISBN|9780415397964}}</ref><ref>[[Mary Beard (classicist)|Beard, M.]], [[John North (classicist)|North, J.]], Price, S., ''Religions of Rome'', Volume I, illustrated, reprint, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 51 {{ISBN|0-521-31682-0}}</ref> So long as their bodies remained unpenetrated, the walls of Rome would remain intact. Their flesh belonged to Rome, and when they died, whatever the cause of their death, their bodies remained within the city's boundary.<ref>Parker, "Why Were the Vestals Virgins?" 2004, p. 568.</ref>

The Vestals acknowledged one of their number as senior authority, the {{lang|la|Vestalis Maxima}}, but all were ultimately under the authority of the {{lang|la|[[pontifex maximus]]}}, head of his priestly college. His influence and status grew during the Republican era, and the religious post became an important, lifetime adjunct to the political power of the annually elected consulship. When Augustus became {{lang|la|pontifex maximus}}, and thus supervisor of all religion, he donated his house to the Vestals. Their sacred fire became his household fire, and his domestic gods ([[Lares]] and [[Penates]]) became their responsibility. This arrangement between Vestals and Emperor persisted throughout the Imperial era.<ref>Lott, John. B., ''The Neighborhoods of Augustan Rome'', Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 14,15, 81–117, 230 (note 127) {{ISBN|0-521-82827-9}}</ref><ref>[[Mary Beard (classicist)|Beard, M.]], [[John North (classicist)|North, J.]], Price, S., ''Religions of Rome'', Volume I, illustrated, reprint, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 191, 382 {{ISBN|0-521-31682-0}}</ref>

The Vestals guarded various sacred objects kept in Vesta's {{lang|la|penus}}, including the [[Palladium (mythology)|Palladium]] – a statue of [[Pallas Athene]] which had supposedly been brought from [[Troy]] – and a large, presumably wooden phallus, used in fertility rites and at least one triumphal procession, perhaps slung beneath the triumphal general's chariot.<ref>Beard, Mary. ''The Roman Triumph''. Cambridge, Massachusetts & London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007, pp. 223–224. {{ISBN|978-0-674-02613-1}}</ref><ref>[[Mary Beard (classicist)|Beard, M.]], [[John North (classicist)|North, J.]], Price, S., ''Religions of Rome'', Volume I, illustrated, reprint, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp.53–54 {{ISBN|0-521-31682-0}}</ref>

==== Festivals ====
Vesta's chief festival was the Vestalia, held in her temple from June 7 to June 15, and attended by matrons and bakers. [[Servius (grammarian)|Servius]] claims that during the Vestalia, the [[Lupercalia]] and on September 13, the three youngest Vestals reaped unripened {{lang|la|far}} ([[spelt]] wheat, or possibly [[emmer]] wheat). The three senior Vestals parched the grain to make it edible, and mixed it with salt, to make the {{lang|la|[[mola salsa]]}} used by priests and priestesses to consecrate (dedicate to the gods) the animal victims offered in public sacrifices. The Vestals' activities thus provided a shared link to various public, and possibly some private cults.<ref>Wildfang, R. L. (2006), ''Rome's Vestal Virgins: A Study of Rome's Vestal Priestesses in the Late Republic and Early Empire'', Routledge, p.14 {{ISBN|9780415397964}}</ref>

The [[Fordicidia]] was a characteristically rustic, agricultural festival, in which a pregnant cow was sacrificed to the Earth-goddess [[Terra (mythology)|Tellus]], and its unborn calf was reduced to ashes by the senior Vestal. The ashes were mixed with various substances, most notably the dried blood of the previous year's [[October horse]], sacrificed to [[Mars (mythology)|Mars]]. The mixture was called {{lang|la|suffimen}}. During the [[Parilia]] festival, April 21, it was sprinkled on bonfires to purify shepherds and their flocks, and probably to ensure human and animal fertility in the Roman community.<ref>[[Mary Beard (classicist)|Beard, M.]], [[John North (classicist)|North, J.]], Price, S., ''Religions of Rome'', Volume I, illustrated, reprint, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p.53 {{ISBN|0-521-31682-0}}</ref> On May 1, Vestals officiated at [[Bona Dea]]'s public-private, women-only rites at her Aventine temple. They were also present, in some capacity, at the Bona Dea's overnight, women-only December festival, hosted by the wife of Rome's senior magistrate; the magistrate himself was supposed to stay elsewhere for the occasion. On May 15, Vestals and pontiffs collected ritual straw figures called [[Argei]] from stations along Rome's city boundary and cast them into the [[Tiber]], to purify the city.<ref>{{cite book |author=Dionysius of Halicarnassus |title=Roman Antiquities |at=i.19, 38 |url=https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Dionysius_of_Halicarnassus/1B*.html#38.2 |publisher=University of Chicago}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author=William Smith |title=A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities |publisher=John Murray |location=London |year=1875 |url=https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Argei.html |via=University of Chicago}}</ref>