Rome's Vestal Virgins

Rome's Vestal Virgins examines one of the most important state cults in ancient Rome and the role of the virgin priestesses in ancient Roman religion and society. It analyses the rituals these priestesses enacted, both the public rituals performed in connection with official state rites and festivals, and the private rites associated only with the order itself.

Wildfang argues that the Vestals did not participate in Rome’s family structure and that this was done to ensure that the Vestals could represent Rome as a whole in the religious sphere without any risk of pollution from a family cult. She contends that the rituals the Vestals performed on behalf of the Roman state were neither fertility rites nor reflections of traditional female activities. Instead they were rites concerned with purification, storage and the preparation of harvested grain for food use, or sometimes a combination of all three areas at once.

This exploration of the function of the Vestal Virgins in the changing Roman world, exposed to new and different cultures through the expansion of the Roman Empire, provides a new and penetrating investigation of a cult which was at the very centre of ancient Roman religion.