Editing Vestal Virgin (section)

===Privileges===
[[File:INC-2941-r Ауреус. Каракалла. Ок. 215 г. (реверс).png|thumb|Reverse of an [[aureus]] depicting the emperor [[Caracalla]] and Vestals before the Temple of Vesta (early 3rd century)]]

Vestals were lawfully {{lang|la|personae sui iuris}} – "sovereign over themselves", answerable only to the {{lang|la|pontifex maximus}}.{{efn|This might reflect his authority as {{lang|la|paterfamilias}} over the life and death of Vestals as "daughters of Rome", though this is inconsistent with their legal independence from their birth family's control.}}<ref>Andrew B. Gallia. "Vestal Virgins and Their Families". ''Classical Antiquity'', vol. 34, no. 1, 2015, pp. 74–120. {{JSTOR|10.1525/ca.2015.34.1.74}}. Accessed 13 December 2022.</ref> Unlike any other Roman women, they could make a will of their own volition, and dispose of their property without the sanction of a male guardian. They could give their property to women, something forbidden even to men, under Roman law. As they embodied the Roman state, Vestals could give evidence in trials without first taking the customary oath to the State. They had custody of important wills and state documents, which were presumably locked away in the {{lang|la|penus}}.<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. 51–54 {{ISBN|0-521-31682-0}}</ref> Their person was [[sacrosanct]]; anyone who assaulted a Vestal was (in effect) assaulting an embodiment of Rome and its gods, and could be killed with impunity.<ref>Beard, ''Religions of Rome'', Volume I,  pp. 51–54</ref> As no magistrate held power over the Vestals, the lictors of magistrates who encountered a Vestal had to lower their {{lang|la|fasces}} in deference.

The Vestals had unique, exclusive rights to use a {{lang|la|carpentum}}, an enclosed, two-wheeled, horse-drawn carriage; some Roman sources remark on its likeness to the chariots used by Roman generals in [[Roman triumph|triumphs]].<ref>Beard, Mary  (2007), ''The Roman Triumph'', Cambridge, Massachusetts & London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, pp. 223–224. {{ISBN|978-0-674-02613-1}}</ref> Otherwise, the Vestals seem to have travelled in a one-seat, curtained [[Litter (vehicle)|litter]], or possibly on foot. In every case, they were preceded by a [[lictor]], who was empowered to enforce the Vestal's right-of-way; anyone who passed beneath the litter, or otherwise interfered with its passage, could be lawfully killed on the spot.

Vestals could also free or pardon condemned persons ''en route'' to execution by touching them, or merely being seen by them, as long as the encounter had not been pre-arranged.<ref>Plutarch, [http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Numa*.html ''Life of Numa''], 10.5, translation, Loeb edition, 1914, University of Chicago</ref>

Vestals were permitted to see things forbidden to all other upper-class Roman women; from the time of Augustus on, they had reserved ring-side seating at public games, including [[gladiator]] contests, and stage-side seats at theatrical performances.<ref>Inge Kroppenberg (2010) "Law, Religion, and Constitution of the Vestal Virgins", ''Law & Literature'', 22:3, p. 420, {{doi|10.1525/lal.2010.22.3.418}}</ref>