June 15th, the Ides of June, was the last day of Vestalia. With great ceremony, the sanctuary of Vesta was cleansed and closed to the public for another year, the sustaining Vestal hearth-flame hidden behind walls that no man was allowed to pass.
This is a slack time, a time when heat is intolerable and the sun stands still. Next week, the year rolls past its midpoint. The Dog Days begin on July 3rd. In Rome it was a time of war and madness. Romans believed that the combined heat of Sirius, the Dog Star, rising and setting with the Sun at this time of year, drove men insane. It is still the time when conflict is most likely to escalate into violence, particularly in the home. Humans don’t bear the heat of midsummer with rational grace.
So, during the Midsummer season, I find myself thinking on the idea of sanctuary. How do we build it? How do we preserve it? What does it mean to each of us?
My sanctuary is, like that of the Vestals, my home. It is sacred space centered on the hearth and girded by the garden. I admit few into this realm, though my sanctuary is not closed. This is simply where I am safe and at peace, where I find the balance and order that is necessary to life. My home is holy. When I was younger I did not understand the desire to remain cloistered away from the world. I don’t know if I have changed or if it’s the world, but increasingly it feels like defilement whenever I allow entry to elements of the culture that crouches beyond the garden gate. I want to hide here in comfortable seclusion within this small place that means everything to me.
Unfortunately, I am not a Vestal and I do not have the luxury of remaining always in my sacred space tending to the holy flame of life. But I do well enough. And perhaps the going out is necessary to a true appreciation of the joy of returning.
What is your sanctuary? Where do you find inspiration and rest? What is sacred in your life and does that sanctity sit well with the wider world?
Today, I am sharing the more or less true tale of Oppia, one of only a handful of Vestal Virgins to be accused and convicted of violating her vows. All of these accused women shared similar stories. Innocent of the crimes that brought them condemnation, they were made scapegoats for the Roman state.
The Virgins had great power and high visibility. They also lived under a strict rule of chastity. If they were to lose virginity, which was broadly defined as “self-sanctity”, they were automatically punishable by death, which was traditionally live burial (immolation) in graves that were not to be tended. In other words, they lost all identity for all time.
This public punishment was a horrifying spectacle, not unlike the witch burnings of the Early Modern Era. When the Roman state needed to sway public opinion quickly and decidedly, there was no better target.
Immolation
They came for me as I was grinding the last of the roasted spelt. My sisters stood by with downcast eyes. I did not know who of them believed in my innocence. I found that I was troubled by this. I would go to my death willingly, but I was unwilling to let the ravenous Republic destroy my virtue in their eyes
I remain as I have always been, steadfast, beholden to no man, the eternal bride of Rome. I have not done these things that are put upon me. They know this. Yet my cousin, my supposed ravisher, lies dead and unburied outside the walls, and today I walk the path of no returning to the Evil Gate. It is the will of the Pontifex Maximus that I end my days of service in ignominy. I do not leave the sisterhood in grace. No retiring reward for these decades I’ve given them. No peaceful garden in which to rest these weary bones.
I am to die for the sins of the state.
It began with the hunger. Now it is said that Ceres withheld her blessings and Vesta turned her back on our homeland because of my impiety and incestuous comportment. They say I am the cause even as they fail to draw the line between me and the hunger I presumably created. They say the sibyls spoke of impropriety but were unheeded. For who would suspect a Vestal? Even the act of misgiving would be an affront to the goddess I serve. But, they say, the evidence became overwhelming; it was apparent that Vesta was chagrined. They determined to root out the offense and so arrived at my door.
But I remember those days. I do not remember any impious acts of my own, but I do recall theirs. I remember blackened fields and Coriolanus at the gates. I remember the siege engines groaning and fiery missiles shrieking in the night. I remember the terrible winter that followed in the wake of the Volsci. I remember the hands held out, the distended bellies, the empty eyes of the children. I remember the dead. So many more than the young men who defended the walls with their bodies. I too went hungry.
But there was no hunger in the halls of the Flamines. There was no dearth of offering given to the thundering gods of war and dominion. Indeed, the fires burned high on the alter of Quirinus even as we struggled to find salted meal to lay upon the sacred hearth. And now, like his mother, I am blamed for the famine that war wrought. Though unlike Rhea Silvia there is no evidence in my womb. Because there was no act. Nor did I quench the fire I tend. Rather I went without bread than betray my vows like that.
They did not go without bread.
When the second solstice passed with no harvest there was death in the streets. Yet the patricians had plenty. For they had well-defended estates far from the martial fields, and their wealth brought them grain from distant lands. They baked bread in great ovens while hunger stalked the children of lesser men. They feasted while I and my sisters starved. They brought no offerings to placate the deities of hearth and harvest. Yet they say I am to blame.
In those days, my cousin Cassius, the consul of Rome, saw the suffering. I do admit to swaying him in that respect. I opened his eyes, not through the dubious charms of my sex, but with words of woe. Our people were dying. Perhaps the deities were offended. Perhaps bread on the altars could remedy that. But not before hundreds more would die. Cassius was moved to intercede, not with the gods, but with men.
He simply asked that productive land be given to the needy plebeians. The patricians were enraged. But even the plebs turned on him as the fields recovered. His reforms were too generous. His belief that no person should want when there was abundance for some was too radical. He threatened the order with wanton benevolence. And so they needed to find other fault in him to silence this minacious kindness before it spread.
And so they came to me.
Cassius is my friend, my ally, my confidant, and my father’s nephew. He is not my lover. But Cassius is a virtuous man, beloved of many and friend of the rex sacrorum. He could not be falsely accused of something easily disproved without repercussion. So they needed a hidden offense, one that would strike to the heart of Rome and yet could not be seen.
It was the vicious wife of the Flamen Dialis who suggested our supposed infidelity. She often cut her eyes at me during the course of her duties. She envied my position of power tied to no man, though she could have led a similar life had her father given her to Vesta as mine did. I knew her mind. Yes, I could read it in her eyes alone, but I had confirmation from my chamber slaves.
So then when the time was ripe, she saw her chance to cause me harm. What better way to indict Cassius than to name him my illicit love. There need not even be proof — other than the woes of the state. And I would fall with him. Her poisoned words spread from her husband to the other flamines and thence to the rest of the patricians. Soon it was common knowledge that Cassius and I had caused the very hunger that his land reforms sought to redress. Of course this was his goal! It was his guilt that prompted such an outlandish distribution of wealth.
They came for him first. He likely spent his last days beaten and imprisoned. I do not know; they allowed no communication. My worried message to him after his incarceration was submitted as the only evidence of our liaison. I would not have written had I known that this letter would corroborate the accusations against him. He was rendered and thrown into the wilds, alone and unburied. His widow and children now go hungry in the streets. And I? I walk the path to my immurement.
I will go. And tomorrow a child will take my place grinding grain and salt at this altar. May she never stand as sacrifice for this insatiate state.
©Elizabeth Anker 2024
By My Solitary Hearth 
A good read as always. My home and my garden are my sanctuary.
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