I’m a finalist in the Signal Awards! Do me a favor and vote for me in listener’s choice round: Signal Awards. It is 100% free.
Find it in your favorite podcast app.
The Founding of Rome
A Roman writer named Livy, writing at about the time of Christ, tells us that there once was an ancient kingdom named Alba. Alba was ruled by King Proca, and he had two sons, Numitor and Amulius. When Proca died, Numitor inherited the throne, but Amulius was treacherous. He seized throne, banished his brother, and murdered his brother’s sons.
But Numitor also had one daughter, named Rhea Sylvia. Amulius wanted to show mercy to his niece, but he also wanted to be sure that his brother could have no male heirs whatsoever. So he bestowed a great honor on Rhea Sylvia: he dedicated her to the goddess Vesta. Not coincidentally, such a dedication included an ironclad 30-year commitment to virginity. There would be no heirs.
But the gods had other ideas. As Rhea Sylvia tended the sacred flame of Vesta, Mars, the god of war, came down into the fire and in that form deflowered Rhea by force. Nine months later, she gave birth to twin boys. That is to say, she gave birth to two potential heirs of the rightful king. The enraged Numitor ordered his niece bound and imprisoned. Her sons were thrown into the river Tiber.
But the river carried them away to safety, where they were found and suckled by a she-wolf. These boys, named Romulus and Remus, grew up to be strong and warlike. The kingdom of Alba should have been theirs, but because they had been forced out of it, they founded the great and glorious city of Rome.
Historical Doubts on the Founding of Rome
If any elements of this story caused you feel just a little skeptical, you are not alone. Livy had doubts too. Even as he tells this story, he points out that the word for wolf was also used to describe a prostitute, which sounds more anatomically possible. He also suggested that Rhea Sylvia was either deluded or just plain lied about the paternity of her sons. Even so, he assures us that in his opinion “the origin of so great a city, and the establishment of an empire next in power to that of the gods, was due to the Fates” (Livy, chapter 1, p 7-8; the story is also in Dionysus, Book 1, 76).
In Livy’s time, the Roman republic had ended, and the Roman empire was expanding rapidly. They had recently crushed Cleopatra and annexed the incredibly rich kingdom of Egypt. Livy had every reason to flatter Emperor Augustus with this next-in-power-to-that-of-the-gods stuff. It also means he was writing this down about seven and a half centuries after any such persons as Proca, Numitor, Amulius, Rhea Sylvia, Romulus, and Remus would have lived. As history, it is not a good source.
But I am recounting it because, true or not, the Vestal Virgins were deeply embedded in the foundational origin stories Romans told about themselves. As befits a hero on the hero’s journey, Romans had mysterious origins. They were born of a sacred virgin and the god of war. No wonder they were so militarily mighty!
It also means that Rome’s only female priesthood, the Vestal Virgins, actually predated Rome. (Or at least later Romans thought it did.) We have no contemporary written sources to confirm that, but the scholars I’ve read seem to agree with Livy on that part. There’s archaeological evidence to suggest that other ancient Italian towns had Vestals. They weren’t originally exclusive to Rome (Beard, Religions of Rome, 52).
The Goddess Vesta and Her Temple
The word Vestal comes from the Roman goddess of hearth and home, named Vesta. Her Greek counterpart is Hestia, firstborn of the titans Cronus and Rhea, older sister of Zeus and one of the Twelve Olympians.
If you don’t remember learning about Vesta or Hestia in school or even much in modern retellings, that’s because there isn’t much to tell. She’s a virgin. She represents stability, the end of the journey, coming home after a long day. She’s incredibly important. Incontestibly valuable. And a little bit boring, some would say.
There’s no drama with Vesta. She doesn’t wage war against her fellow Olympians. She doesn’t kill humans, or seduce them, or assault them, or curse them. She doesn’t insist that mortal men compare her beauty with that of the other goddesses, so what was there for an ancient storyteller to talk about? Those were their favorite plot points, and Vesta’s got no interest in any of them.
Even so, the Romans liked Vesta. She was very, very important to them. The god of war led them out to glorious conquests, like that against Cleopatra (ep. 2.2). Or that against the descendants of Salome Alexandra (ep. 12.1), or Boudica (ep. 12.3), or Zenobia (ep. 12.4). But while they were doing the daily grind of murdering, raping, looting, and plundering, Romans could rest assured that their home was warm, safe, and waiting for them because the home fire was tended by Vesta and her Vestal Virgins.
According to Livy, it was Numa, the second king of Rome, who established the Roman Vestal Virgins. He selected them, paid them salaries out of the public treasury, and “by enjoining virginity, and other religious observances, he made them sacred and venerable” (Livy, chapter 1, p 20).
The writer Dionysus claims that some say it was Romulus himself who built Vesta’s temple, saying that it was an “inconceivable thing that, when a city was being founded by a man skilled in divination, a public hearth should not have been erected first of all.” Dionysus himself does not subscribe to this view because—I’m not kidding here—Romulus could not, in good conscience, have followed the law and punished virgins for being defiled, knowing what happened to his mother. And therefore he could not have appointed virgins to serve Vesta, he must have just done a public hearth tended by men. It must have been Numa who built Vesta’s temple and stocked it with virgins (Dionysus, Book 2, 64).
The idea that Romulus could have appointed women and decided not to fret so much about whether they were virgins seems not to have occurred to Dionysus, but more about that later.
Regardless of who founded it, we now have a women’s organization that purportedly lasted for about 1,000 years, which is a pretty impressive run for any organization.
Since our sources come mostly from the middle of that 1000 years, it is always possible that some of the things I’m going to say were not universally true throughout, but this is what we’ve got.
How to Be a Vestal Virgin
If you wanted to become a Vestal, you’d better hope your father was on board with the idea because it was he who had to present you as a candidate. The candidates were between the ages of 6 and 10. If you were brought forward for consideration, you sat on your father’s lap, and the chief priest, or pontifex maximus decided your fate.
There was quite a difficult list of required credentials:
- You must have both parents living.
- You must not have any physical problems such as deafness or lameness.
- You must not be a slave. Not even an emancipated one, and your father cannot have been a slave ever either.
- Your father must have a home in Italy. No foreigners here, if you please.
- Also, he can’t have worked in a low, sordid profession, such as the theater (Wildfang, 41-46).
If your resume passed muster on these points, you still might not get the job because there were only ever six Vestals at a time. If there was no opening while you were the right age, tough luck. If you were so lucky as to be chosen, you were taken from your father’s lap. All your rights and responsibilities as a member of his family were formally severed because now you served Vesta. From now on, the state itself was your family.
As a Vestal, your primary and ongoing duty was to make sure that the sacred flame on Vesta’s hearth never went out. Just as a private home was doing well if the family hearth was clean, warm, and well-tended, the city of Rome was doing well if Vesta’s hearth was clean, warm, and well-tended.
Also, the Vestals guarded the storeroom of the state. Just as a private home had a store room, hopefully well stocked, Vesta’s temple did too. This storeroom was called—now don’t laugh—the penus, and the contents were both sacred and secret. Supposedly, there was a statue of Athena which Odysseus stole from the city of Troy. It was later brought to Rome, and the safety of the city depended on that statue’s wellbeing. But if so, no one but the Vestals ever saw it because the storeroom was forbidden to everyone else (Dionysus, Book 1, 69).
Guarding it was among the most important duties of the Vestals. So much so that when Rome was under attack from the Gauls, the Vestals gathered up their treasures and ran, aided by a local man who dumped his wife and kids out of his wagon in order to make room for the Vestals and their sacred objects instead (Livy, chapter 5, 40). He was a hero to the Romans. Personally, I’m on the side of the wife and kids.
The Religious Calendar
In addition to caring for the sacred fire and guarding the sacred objects, Vestals had other duties throughout the calendar year.
- The Roman New Year began in March and on that day (and only that day), the Vestals deliberately extinguished the flame and ritually restarted it (Wildfang, 22-23).
- In April of every year, Vestals participated in the Fordicidia, which were fertility rites meant to bless the coming year’s crops. The male priests sacrificed thirty pregnant cows during this ceremony and the Vestals’ role was to burn the unborn calves and save the ashes for the purification rites a week later (Wildfang 25-26). This is unsavory to modern ears, but really not unusual in pre-modern societies when animals were your livelihood, not your pets, when death and blood were nothing unusual, and when life was precarious and mysterious. The Fordicidia also had Vestals making mola salsa, which is not a tasty garnish with tomatoes and hot peppers. Neither of those plants were known to the Romans. Mola salsa was a comparatively boring dish of bread baked from spelt flour and two kinds of salt. Again, its preparation was a ritualized prayer for a good harvest this year (Wildfang, 30-31).
- In June of every year, Romans celebrated the Vestalia, the festival specifically dedicated to Vesta. They ceremonially cleaned the temple then (Wildfang, 23), but there was also a procession through the city. It featured donkeys with bread hung around their necks. According to Ovid, this was in memory of one of the few tales told about Vesta. Here’s the story:
The goddess Vesta was one day lying on the grass during a picnic of the gods. Priapus, the god of livestock, gardens, and male fertility snuck up on her with intent.
(Remember, Vesta’s a dedicated virgin, so any so-called romantic encounter would not have been consensual, and that’s exactly what Priapus had in mind.)
Vesta was not on the alert, but a nearby donkey was. His loud braying sounded the alarm, Vesta looked up in time and fled.
She was saved by a donkey from the fate of almost every female character in Greek and Roman mythology. Hence the donkeys in Vesta’s procession. It was in memory of that donkey’s services to her (Beard, Religions of Rome, 7).
There were few other festivals later in the year, but the only one of interest to me is the Bona Dea in December, and that was because it was the festival for Rome’s women. In the house of a high magistrate, all the men were kicked out. All women gathered to decorate the home, feast, make music, make merry, and sacrifice to the goddesses. Our sources here are a little unclear about whether it was the Vestals or the lady of the house who actually performed the sacrifice of a pig, but certainly, the Vestals were there enjoying the party (Wildfang, 31).
Privileges of the Vestal Virgins
So much for the official duties of the Vestal Virgins. In exchange for their service, Vestals were rewarded with privileges unavailable to most Roman women: They could buy and sell property. They could buy and sell slaves. They could also make a will. Ordinarily, Roman women were always under the guardianship of some man or other, but the Vestals were specifically cut out of family ties, so they acted as their own guardians. (What a thought!)
They could also pardon a condemned criminal just by looking at them. They could testify in court. You could lodge your important documents with the Vestals for safekeeping. Julius Caesar left his will with the Vestals, and so did many others. The Vestals were trusted to keep it safe and produce it when needed.
Vestals weren’t locked in their temple. They could go about the city, and people made way for them. After the time of Augustus, they also got special ringside seats at the gladiatorial games and at the theater. Augustus added this as an incentive because apparently in his time the high-class Roman men were reluctant to offer their daughters for service. This was meant as an inducement, and apparently it worked. Sure, you’re cut off from your family and committed to thirty years of virginity, but VIP seating at some really good shows makes it all worthwhile? I guess?
Vestals in Trouble
Speaking of the virginity clause, therein lay a problem. Periodically, I see someone complaining online that Christianity invented an obsession with the chastity of women and imposed on billions of people. This is an unfair accusation. As far as I can tell, it’s male-dominated societies who are obsessed with women’s chastity. Christians are one example, and pre-Christian Romans are another example. Still another were the Inca, who also had sacred virgins (bonus episode on that coming out tomorrow). They were all obsessed with women’s chastity. Or at least with some women’s chastity.
For a Vestal Virgin to serve Vesta without actually being a virgin was a very serious crime against the state. Treasonous, even. Vesta would be angry about the service provided by a polluted woman, disaster would strike, Rome would fall, blah, blah, blah.
Rhea Sylvia got away with it because the man involved was a god. Later Vestals had trouble taking that loophole.
In the year 483 BCE, the people of Rome were at war (not surprising), but they also saw portents in the skies (details left unspecified, at least by Livy) and faced daily threats within the city (details again left unspecified). A soothsayer looked at the entrails of some unfortunate animal and decreed that Rome’s religious duties were not being carried out appropriately. And it turned out that the problem was Oppia, a Vestal Virgin, had lost her virginity (Livy, Book 2, page 42). <gasp>
The multiple male writers who recorded this don’t include things like: Did Oppia consent? How was it discovered? How was it proved? What age was she? These details seem relevant to me, but all that mattered at the time was that Oppia had committed sacrilege by being a Vestal Nonvirgin. The city of Rome was in danger until this was taken care of.
According to Dionysus, Vestals who “have suffered defilement” are “delivered up to the most shameful and the most miserable death” (Dionysus, book 2, 67). That means that Oppia’s sentence was a funeral. She wasn’t dead, but they dressed her in funeral clothing, chained her to a funeral bier, and staged a funeral procession. At the end of it, they put her down into a cell in the ground, provided her with water, bread, milk, oil, a lamp, a bed, and a blanket and sealed her in (Southon 32-33). The fact that Vesta did not intervene to save her was just proof of Oppia’s guilt.
Oppia was the first recorded Vestal condemned, but not the last. For hundreds of years, this was the only circumstance that prompted anyone to record a Vestal’s name. The list of Vestals we know reads like criminal court proceedings:
- Postumia, acquitted in 420 BCE (yes, there were some acquittals, but don’t get too excited because ⬇️)
- Minucia, guilty 337 BCE
- Sextilia, guilty 274 BCE
- Caparronia, guilty 266 BCE
- Opimia, guilty 216 BCE
- Floronia, guilty 216 BCE (Wildfang, 142).
This is not a complete list. I’m just getting bored with listing them.
See what I mean about obsessed with virginity? It’s only when their virginity is in question that Romans think it’s worth discussing the Vestals as individuals.
Evolving Vestals
Later in the late Republic there is a slightly a different narrative. In 143 BCE, a general wanted to hold a triumphal procession and the Senate said no. When officials tried to drag the general from the chariot, a Vestal named Claudia threw herself onto the chariot. Since she was obviously untouchable, the procession proceeded. This is the first hint that Vestals might have had political power (Wildfang, 92).
Still later in the really, really late Republic, the entire body of Vestal Virgins, all six of them, intervened to obtain pardon for Julius Caesar. Caesar’s offense was that he had dumped his wealthy well-connected wife to marry another woman (probably younger and prettier, he hadn’t yet met Cleopatra). The authorities at that time did not approve of dumping wealthy well-connected women on these grounds, so they stripped him of many of his privileges until he obtained a pardon “through the intercession of the vestal virgins” (Suetonius, 1.2). In my opinion, this got recorded because it was Caesar, not because it was Vestal Virgins . Vestals may have interceded in many other cases, but it didn’t necessarily get written down.
Soon thereafter, Vestals intervened for the benefit of Cicero, and they also got several of their members acquitted when accused of—you guessed it—losing their virginity (Wildfang, 97-98). These are mere fragments that show up in the record, but their increasing rapidity suggests that the Vestals were growing in power during the late Republic. They were influencing the direction Rome went.
In the early empire period, the ties between the emperor and the Vestals were strengthened. They helped each other. When Augustus returned triumphant from capturing Cleopatra and Egypt, it was the Vestals who led the welcoming committee. Augustus also built a shrine to Vesta in his own house, after declaring himself pontifex maximus, chief priest. The religious symbolism could not have been more clear: Augustus was Rome, his hearth was Rome’s hearth and vice versa (Wildfang, 101).
All of his successors continued to strengthen those ties, granting the Vestals extra privileges, presumably in return for their unwavering support.
We know more of the Vestals’ names from this later period, sometimes because sometimes we’ve got a statue with a name at the bottom. Occasionally because the chroniclers give us a tidbit of information, like when Vestal Urgulania refused to testify in court and insisted that the prosecutor come to her house to hear her testimony. We also hear that Emperor Nero, among other crimes, raped a Vestal named Rubria (Wildfang, 103).
Still later there’s a hint of suggestion that none of the Vestal Virgins were virgins any more, and everyone was just fine with that, until suddenly emperors weren’t fine with that, and the Vestals were stunned to find themselves charged and condemned, just like their predecessors had been (Wildfang, 105).
To be honest, my source on this last bit seems to me to reading a lot into very scant evidence, but while I think it’s unproven, it would not surprise me if it were true. Later and better documented religious history proves over and over again that the rules stay roughly the same across generations, but how (and if) they are enforced and interpreted changes a lot.
The End of the Vestals
The Vestals continued to exist until 382 CE, when Emperor Gratian revoked their privileges and confiscated their property. It’s a little interesting that it took Rome this long to do that, when Christianity had been the state religion for decades by then, but apparently no one earlier had wanted to disrupt Rome’s sacred hearth.
In 394 CE, one writer claims that the emperor’s niece Serena visited Rome and stole the jewelry off a statue of Rhea, mother of Jupiter. An aged woman, the last living Vestal, tried to stop Serena, but failed. Instead, she cursed her, and Serena was afterwards plagued day and night with visions that predicted her death, until she submitted herself to justice and died (Zosimos, 5.38).
Not everyone believes that this really happened, which means we have come full circle with the Vestals, from Rhea Sylvia, who probably was legendary, to the unnamed, cursing Vestal, who might also be legendary. But in between those two, there were hundreds of living, breathing women who spent their lives as the religious heartbeat of Rome for a thousand years.
I have a special thank you today to James, maybe Jim, who signed up as a supporter on Patreon. If you can be as awesome as Jim, sign up on Patreon or on Substack, both of which will get you access to that bonus episode on Sacred Virgins of the Inca. If you’d rather do a one time donation on Buy Me a Coffee, that’s much appreciated too.
Selected Sources
Beard, Mary, et al. Religions of Rome. 1 : A History. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Beard, Mary. SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome. New York, Liverlight Publishing Corporation, 2015.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus. The Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus : In Seven Volumes. Translated by Earnest Cary, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1937, https://dn760109.eu.archive.org/0/items/romanantiquities01dionuoft/romanantiquities01dionuoft.pdf. Accessed 22 Sept. 2026.
Livy (Titus Livius). The History of Rome: Books One to Eight. Project Gutenberg, 2026, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19725/19725-h/19725-h.htm#a22. Accessed 22 Sept. 2026.
Matyszak, Philip. Rome Before Rome. Thames & Hudson, 3 Apr. 2025.
Southon, Emma. A Rome of One’s Own. Abrams Press, 7 Nov. 2023.
Suetonius. “Divus Julius, Chapter 1.” Www.Perseus.Tufts.Edu, https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3atext%3a1999.02.0132%3alife%3djul. Accessed 22 Sept. 2026.
Tripolitis, Antonia. Religions of the Hellenistic-Roman Age. Editorial: Grand Rapids, Michigan, William B. Eerdmans, 2007.
Wildfang, Robin Lorsch. Rome’s Vestal Virgins : A Study of Rome’s Vestal Priestesses in the Late Republic and Early Empire. London, Routledge, 2006.
Worsfold, Thomas Cato. The History of the Vestal Virgins of Rome. S.L., S.N.], Ill. ; 26 Cm. 160 P, 1932.
Zosimos. New History. 2025. London: Green and Chaplin (1814), https://topostext.org/work/740, urn:cts:greekLit:tlg4084.tlg001. Accessed 22 Sept. 2026.