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The Vestal and the Fasces

The fasces symbolized the majesty of Roman law. It was an axe attached to a bundle of sticks. Consuls, emperors, and other high-ranking officials were escorted in public by lictors bearing the fasces as the visible representation of the enforcement powers of the state.^[1] Offenders could be mercifully flogged with one of the sticks or justly executed with the blade.

The Vestals symbolized the sanctity of the Roman family.^[2] These priestesses of the goddess Vesta guarded the sacred hearth of Rome,^[3]

[1] Mary Beard, The Sexual Status of Vestal Virgins , 70 J. Roman Stud. 12, 17 (1980); Sarah B. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity 213 (1975).

[2] There were six Vestals at any given time, at least in historical times. (According to legend, in the earlier periods there were fewer Vestals.) Pomeroy, supra note 1, at 211; J.P.V.D. Baldson, Roman Women: Their History and Habits 235 (1962). They were chosen as little girls from the most respected families. Originally only patricians could be Vestals. Later, when it became increasingly difficult to recruit families willing to dedicate their daughters, the eligibility was expanded to other respectable, but non-noble, children. Id . at 236; Pomeroy, supra , at 213–14.

[3] "The hearth with its undying flame symbolized the continuity of both family and community." Pomeroy, supra note 1, at 210. As is true in America today, the Romans saw a close link between private familial morality and public ethics. "The Vestal Virgins were the emblem of the State's morality and the guarantee of its economic well-being." Baldson, supra note 2, at 14.

ensuring the continuing warmth, intimacy, fertility, and order of the families of individual Romans.^[4]

During their thirty years of service,^[5] the six Vestals were required to maintain the strictest chastity. Impurity was punishable by premature burial.^[6] But unlike the holy virginity of Christian nuns,^[7] the Vestals' chastity was not a more perfect, spiritual form of life or a reproach to matrons. Their maidenhood was not exemplary but extraordinary—a form of ritual purity. It emphasized, through contrast, that matrimony and maternity were the norms.^[8] The Vestals dedicated themselves so that others could marry.^[9] They were guardians of the family. They officiated at fertility

[4] As well as that of the state. When public calamities occurred, such as the loss of an important battle, suspicion of the Vestals' chastity was raised. Pomeroy, supra note 1, at 210–11; Baldson, supra note 2, at 239.

[5] The initiate was required to be between the ages of 6 and 10. Pomeroy, supra note 1, at 211. See also Beard, supra note 1, at 14 n.19; Baldson, supra note 2, at 236.

[6] Not "live burning" as asserted in a denunciation of feminist scholarship. Kenneth Lasson, Feminism Awry: Excesses in the Pursuit of Rights and Trifles , 42 J. Legal Educ. 1, 11 n.43 (1992).

It seems that only ten (or some say twenty) Vestals were punished in the traditional manner throughout Roman history. The corespondents were executed by being whipped to death. This may have been more efficient than being buried alive, but perhaps was more humiliating. Death by whipping was generally limited to slaves. Only a Vestal was buried. Some see this extraordinary mode of execution as uniquely related to her sacred status. She was not executed like a criminal who needed to be punished, but hidden away as a sacred vessel which had been polluted.

It has been suggested that the Vestal might have been the symbolic wife of the state or of the Pontifex Maximus. This might at first blush suggest that the unfaithful Vestal's crime might have been considered parallel to adultery. But this would ignore the fact that Roman adulteresses were not punished in such a bizarre fashion. In fact, the charges made against the unchaste Virgin were incest and high treason. Because the Vestal's purity was ritual in nature, her defilement impacted on her ability to approach the goddess on behalf of the people. This endangered the welfare of society. Baldson gives detailed descriptions of the execution ceremony. Baldson, supra note 2, at 240–41. See also Beard, supra note 1, at 16; Pomeroy, supra note 1, at 211; The New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology 104 (F. Giraud ed. & R. Aldington & D. Ames trans., 1968).

[7] Jeanne L. Schroeder, Feminism Historicized: Medieval Misogynist Stereotypes in Contemporary Feminist Jurisprudence , 75 Iowa L. Rev. 1135 (1990) [hereinafter Schroeder, Feminism Historicized ].

[8] Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity 8–9 (1988).

[9] Upon the expiration of their official term, they could leave the temple and marry. Few did so. Beard, supra note 1, at 14 n.21. This may have been because at the end of their official thirty-year term they would have been somewhat old (i.e., between 36 and 40 years) to begin childbearing, or because Roman superstition held that it was unlucky to marry a Vestal. Perhaps it was simple disinclination. Why would a woman who had such unique legal privileges and prestige choose to leave this life to become subject to a man?

There has been considerable debate among classicists as to whether the Vestals symbolizeda royal wife or daughter. Their virginity and some of their ritual tasks were filial in nature. Yet other functions, such as the keeping of the hearth, the baking of the sacred cake, and their prominent roles in fertility rights, were matronly. Their dress was ambiguous. They wore the stola of Roman matrons, with the veil and distinctively plaited hair of Roman brides. Beard, supra note 1, at 13–16.

rights.^[10] They guarded a ritual phallus which may have symbolized the ineffable goddess herself.^[11]

The Vestals' isolated world of women may have been less a convent than a seraglio without a visible sultan. The Vestals may have been symbolically married to the state. The Vestal did not dress as a maiden but wore the headdress of a Roman bride, and the stola , or dress, of a Roman matron. The Vestal's investiture ceremony—the captio , or "capture"—was reminiscent of a Roman wedding. The state's high priest, the Pontifex Maximus, roughly seized the initiate from her father in a mock abduction in memory of the legendary rape of the Sabine women by the followers of Romulus.^[12] He called her Amata , a mysterious name that implied she was both captured matron and invincible maiden.^[13]

[10] Baldson, supra note 2, at 237–38. See also Beard, supra note 1, at 13; Pomeroy, supra note 1, at 211.

[11] Unlike other classical deities, Vesta was rarely represented by a cult image. There were few statues of her, although her visage occasionally appeared on coins. New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, supra note 6, at 205. Instead of the customary cult image, Vesta's temple housed a sacred fire and a phallus called the fascinus . Vesta was the flame itself. The phallus might relate to Vesta's function in fertility cults (in which a sacred, phallic ass played a noted role), but it might also have invoked the goddess herself because it was related to the fire stick used to start the holy fire. The goddess of the hearth was sometimes considered a personification of this fire stick which was inserted in a hollow in a piece of wood and rotated, in an obviously phallic matter, to light her flame. Vesta was also associated with the worship of such phallic masculine gods as Mars and Bacchus. In many of the myths surrounding the cult of Vesta, a penis appeared within her flame and impregnated a virgin. The first Roman king and perhaps Romulus himself were believed to have been conceived by a union between such a Vestal phallus and a Vestal Virgin. Beard, supra note 1, at 12, 19, and 24–25. See also New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, supra note 6, at 214.

[12] The symbolism of the captio (like everything else regarding the Vestals) is ambiguous. Scholars debate whether or not the Vestal's seizure was intended as a mock abduction representing the more ancient form of marriage by rape. It was similar to, but not identical with, a Roman wedding. In a wedding, the bridegroom seized the bride from the arms of her mother. The Vestal was snatched from her father. The cut of the Vestal's vestments was that of the traditional bridal veil, but the Vestal wore the pure white of a priest rather than the passionate flame red of the bride. By historical times, Roman marriage had become consensual and rape was no longer a legal way of entering into a marriage. Marriage by rape was, however, recognized by Germanic law well into the Middle Ages. Schroeder, Feminism Historicized, supra note 7, at 1165. See also James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe 129 (1987).

[13] It is unclear what this title means. Amata might have been an archaic form of"Beloved" (from amare , to love), reflecting her status as wife. On the other hand, it may have meant "unconquered" in the sense of virgin and forever unmarried. Beard, supra note 1, at 13–15. See also Baldson, supra note 2, at 182–84.

The Vestals were guardians of the private yet lived a paradoxically public existence. Unlike other priests, they lived at the temple they served.^[14] The temple of the goddess was built to look like an ancient Roman house, yet it was located in the center of the marketplace.^[15] It was every Roman's right freely to enter this temple by day, although men were strictly barred from the house of the virgins at night. The Vestals attended and blessed most important government functions.^[16] They were the repositories of the Sibylline books containing the prophecies of Rome's future periodically consulted by the consuls and emperors.^[17] They had reserved boxes at the arenas and theaters.^[18]

Most mysteriously, upon their investiture these priestesses, who were paradoxically both symbolically raped virgins and unviolated wives, were also elevated to the legal status of men.^[19] The Vestals, alone of all women, were escorted by the fasces.^[20]

[14] The other major priests, such as the Pontifex Maximus, had "official" residences in the forum, but actually lived in private homes like other citizens. The Vestals actually lived in a house next to the temple during their entire tenure. Baldson, supra note 2, at 235.

[15] Properly speaking, this building was referred to as aedes Vestae and was not augurated as a temple in the strict sense. Beard, supra note 1, at 13 n.9.

[16] Baldson, supra note 2, at 238. The sacredness of the Vestals was so great that it was thought that no one would dare invade their house. Accordingly, they served as holy repositories of state treasures.

[17] They also guarded other treasures such as the Palladium, believed to have been brought by Aeneas from Troy, as well as official documents, such as the wills of the emperors and other important officials.

[18] Augustus gave the Vestals the privilege of sitting in the imperial box. Other women were relegated to less prestigious seats. Pomeroy, supra note 1, at 214; Beard, supra note 1, at 13. They also had other unique privileges denied to other women, such as the right to travel through the streets of Rome in two-horse carriages (other women being confined to litters and sedan chairs). Baldson, supra note 2, at 238; Pomeroy, supra note 1, at 213. The Vestals' privileges were so great that occasionally women of the imperial family were granted the rights of honorary Vestals, rather than Vestals being granted the rights of princesses. Pomeroy, supra note 1, at 214; Baldson, supra note 2, at 116.

[19] The Vestals had many attributes of Roman men. Upon her investiture, the initiate's father lost his dominion (manus ) over her, in the same way a father loses his dominion over his daughter upon marriage. But unlike the case of a married woman, her manus did not vest in their symbolic spouse (the state, or the Pontifex Maximus). Rather, unlike daughters or wives, but like a pater familias , the Vestal held her own manus . She could write wills, and give testimony, like male citizens but unlike wives (at least in the earlier period; women were apparently granted similar testamentary rights later in the empire). See Pomeroy, supra note 1, at 213.

[20] Id .; Baldson, supra note 2, at 238.

The seeming paradox posed by the juxtaposition of the symbolizations of the private and the public as well as its eventual explanation is suggested by true and folk etymologies of the terms the Romans used to describe them. The virgin is virgo . The rod bound to form the fasces is virga. Vir is man. A woman who has the virtue of a man—like a Vestal—is a virago. Fasces means "bound." Fas is divine law—that which binds man to god? The Vestal's ritual phallus is fascinus , which means not merely the male organ but also enchantment and the evil eye. It is the source of the English "fascination" and is obviously related to the fasces , but how? Clearly, we are fascinated with the phallus. When we are fascinated, are we spellbound ?

From the standpoint of the political philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel and the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, the public and the private serve complementary functions and are mutually constituting. Both the law and the virgin served as the representation of the Other, the external object by which the Roman man was able to define himself as an acting subject—a Roman citizen. The Vestal and the fasces cannot be separated because they are one and the same: virgo is virga is vir ; Vesta is fascinus is fasces is fas .