Talk:Vestal Virgin

Earlier Problems

 * Virgins and other classical period priestesses etc on the Women as theological figures page (or equivalent page if title updated).

Jackiespeel 21:05, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Whoever had their filthy hand in writing this page should not "put a few details of the vestal virgins and other classical period priestesses etc on the .... page" as Jackiespeel requested above.

I read what is on this article and I have become nauseaus. Absolutely disgusting. Awfull. There is an inference that the Roman Mob created vestal Virgins as their toys. This page is so gruesome, but true only because thats what the Romans Empirerers did when they roamed around and smashed up antiquity.

Everything that is there right now needs to be put into brackets of how the Romans treated Anciently Established Centers of Culture and Wisdom. This needs to be fixed quick. As it is, it is as though the Emporer of Rome created the Senate and then closed down the Senate: Huh?

'''So, if some one gets to this space nauseaus as I have and things aren't straightened out yet: Mothers, young women, wives, grandmothers were all keepers of the Flame and they came and went as they felt called. They didn't have to be 'sexual-virgins'. If the Emporers were sadists fine, but that is going to have to be boxed into a 'destruction of the order of devotees of The Virgin, the keepers of the Holy Fire of The Virgin' section.'''

I would fix this now, but I am made woozy from what I have seen while reading that. *excuse me for my strong reaction: I do not want to offend whoever put the page up, I am not impugning your efforts, and the material is all verifiable as it comes out of Smith's, and so on... kylconnors@yahoo.com 2,11,06


 * Kylconners - I don't really understand what you're saying. First and foremost, which article are you talking about? Vestal Virgin? Or Women as theological figures?


 * What are the "Anciently Established Centers of Culture and Wisdom?" The Vestal Virgins? Is that your own terminology?


 * What do you mean "put in brackets?" To denote that it's unsure?


 * Who is Smith? A classicist of some kind?


 * More importantly, I believe you're mistaken when you say that "Mothers, young women, wives, grandmothers were all keepers of the Flame and they came and went as they felt called." The code of the Vestal Virgins was extremely strict - Plutarch, I believe, in one of the early Roman lives (I bet Romulus, but I haven't read it recently enough to be able to tell you for sure) says that if a Vestal broke her vow of chastity before her thirty-year term was up, she could be buried alive, and there's an example there too. If you can give ancient sources that say otherwise - i.e. that there were given some kind of sexual license - I'm sure we'd be happy to hear.


 * Also, note that Augustus - arguably the first emperor - died in 14 B.C., and the flame was put out in 391 A.D. That's more than 400 years, longer than the amount of time from the founding of Jamestown to the present day. The Emperors were not exactly running around helter-skelter trying to ruin antiquity, as you seem to imply. Or at least not all of them.


 * A few spelling notes: nauseous, awful, and Emperor(s).

--Dd42 05:44, 15 March 2006 (UTC) - - "Some speculate" That's sounds POV. How about some references. Indeed, the Catholic Church would say that ritual celibacy was already known to the Jewish people before the birth of Christ- that the Virgin Mary may have even been one herself. Hardly a Roman invention then.
 * "Roman Catholic practise of celibate nuns stems from Rome's Vestal Virgins." This seems a pat and naive oversimplification. Can this sentence be made more useful? --Wetman 02:12, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Several of the privileges listed in the privileges section are direct quotes from http://www.angelfire.com/va2/vestalvirgins. I don't feel qualified to fix this, since my first instinct would be to reword them, but I doubt the credibility of the source enough that I fear rewording them would make it seem as if they were verifiably true. Help, please? VanillaCreem 14:53, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The only course I can see is to remove the offending sentences. Does anyone have another idea? (I must say I find it disturbing that blatant plagirism can go unnoticed for so long...) Jim whitson

Problem with sources in History section
There are currently some citations in the History section do not have sources in the References section. The edit goes back to olid 12064349 (See http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vestal_Virgin&direction=next&oldid=12064088), "Vestal Virgin" Revision as of 21:18, 8 April 2005 by Ccson (talk | contribs). CcSon removed the added the following website http://www.suppressedhistories.net/secret_history/patriapotestas.html. The edit after that one, removed this source.

When you match the side by side, you can tell it is plagerism. In the original source, the full citations are not given. This is not even verifiable plagerism. I will also mark the History section of the page dubious until this matter is resolved. I find bad that this has remained in the article for this long without being detected. -- MicahDCochran 20:37, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Speculation
On a 2005 BBC documentary about life in ancient Rome, they stated that "Vestal Virgins" were considered to be joined to the family of Rome by marriage and that sex with them was considered incest. They also claimed that the emperor was considered the high priest of the Cult of Vesta. Upon hearing I started to think about the similarities between vestal virgins and Roman Catholic nuns. Just a bit of speculation on my part. --Neilrieck 15:44, 17 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Consecrated, not "married". The Pontifex Maximus was their appointed guardian: the emperors assumed that title, as did the Bishops of Rome. --Wetman 01:00, 18 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for that clarification. Still, some of the similarities between ancient Rome and the modern Roman Catholic church seem more than accidental. --Neilrieck 12:22, 18 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, clues in the name, I suppose- the Roman Catholic Church did evolve, more or less directly, from pre-existing Roman religious system. Its not a stretch of the imagination to assume that the new Catholic Church's founders were influenced, in terms of structure, by what they already had and did. Patch86 22:31, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

That is absolutely correct. Religions, in general, borrow from each other. That is why some central beliefs are so similar or the same. Where do you think the concept of a cross comes from? Egypt. There should not be speculation over the matter of the Vestal Virgins. As it is, we are often left in the end of the Vestal was brought upon by the rise of Christianity. (Jen) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.44.248.160 (talk) 15:16, 19 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Rome is particularly known for taking religious 'borrowing'/subsumation to somewhat extreme levels, too. Both with their own native religion and later with Christianity...deliberately and systematically in both cases, but in the case of paganism this was nothing scandalous - the various polytheistic cultures had no religious contention with one another, and it was nearly universal in the polytheistic world to view the different cultures as merely having variable names and traditions for the same gods...


 * The case of Christianity was very different...but like you all have correctly noted, the existing religious infrastructure was kept in tact - but with a radical revision of the narrative and doctrines, etc.. if I'm not mistaken, in Athens they even kept the same statues of the great goddess Athena as Virgin Mary statues, after they turned her temple into a church (before it was later turned into a mosque). Firejuggler86 (talk) 06:51, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Human Sacrifice
An article on Human Sacrifice says that Vestal Virgin's were sacrificed, but this article clearly says that they were just punished for not staying a virgin, which is not the same at all... Which article is right? were they punished, or really sacrificed in the name of gods? Bojan Grgurov (talk) 01:26, 28 May 2008
 * Well the later Romans rejected the ritual of human sacrifice, though killing them as a result of punishment would of been used. I guess maybe what denotes as "human sacrifice" could be debated. I think they meant human sacrifice in a ritualistic manner. Just my thoughts.JanderVK (talk) 15:01, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Under the Care of the Pontifex Maximus
Wow! Sounds like best example I've ever heard of letting the fox guard the henhouse, short of actually letting a fox guard a henhouse. I mean, wasn't this one of the rolls of the emperor? It sounds fishy to me. Is there any scholarship on whether this was actually a successfull way of keeping them virgins? And we should be careful that this notion of being married to the state doesn't somehow end up meaning that sex with the emperor doesn't count. Amulekii (talk) 00:36, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Voting Vestals
In the "Privileges" section of the article, it is stated that Vestals had the right to vote. NO woman in Rome had the right to vote. ```` —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.190.129.118 (talk) 02:29, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

The Picture
The picture description says " modern vestals'. But there are no mention about modern vestals anywhere in the article! And there is no need to use nude pictures to describe virgin priestesses. Basically the picture have no relevance to article. Salbazier (talk) 14:48, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Selection
It says in Suetonius, 12 Caesars, chapter on Augustus, part XXXI, that the vestal virgins were elected, not drawn by lots. And that it was apparently not very popular to be elected one, as people tried to have their daughters removed from the list of candidates. Staffansvensson (talk) 01:15, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Use of upper case
The term "vestal virgin" should be lower case; see, for example, http://www.onelook.com/?w=vestal+virgin&ls=a WolfmanSF (talk) 20:01, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Although I've seen it lower case, I wonder why. In English, it's a proper adjective from the proper noun "Vesta", like "Italian" from "Italy," or "Augustan" from "Augustus." Here's a general search of Google Books, where you'll see it both ways in a broad range of source; but here are also the search results from my personalized Google library, which has about 300 hundred volumes mostly dealing with ancient Rome, nearly all of them capitalizing "Vestal." See in particular two scholarly books from the last coupla decades that focus largely on the Vestals here and here. Perhaps if the term "vestal virgin' is used in some general sense (like in "A Whiter Shade of Pale"), without specific reference to the ancient Roman priestesses, lowercase would do. But Vestalis mean "of Vesta."Cynwolfe (talk) 18:06, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

G&R Project rating
Feeling perhaps uncharacteristically generous, I rated this article a B on behalf of the Classical Greece and Rome Project. I may be unduly influenced by the fact that it's pleasantly readable, decently copyedited, and not burdened with defensive pedantry; a reasonably motivated 15-year-old could read it and grasp the subject. So a more dedicated G&R project member should feel free to challenge this. Cynwolfe (talk) 13:36, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

To scourge or not to scourge?
It's contradictory in this article to say that Vestal Virgins were scourged if the Sacred Fire went out but that injuring them was punishable by death. It says that even when they were convicted of immorality, they were taken to a place to die and clearly not actively harmed. Can anyone clarify this because either than they were not whipped or it was allowable in some instances to do them harm. 64.134.103.56 (talk) 19:14, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Added an image
I added an image of the hearth at the Temple of Vesta to the section on punishments. Frankcjones (talk) 02:50, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Ancient Thracian and Troyan families connection with Vesta and Vesta virgins cult.
At the time Roma was founded by its "mythical" founders, there were a strong Thracian influence over all East Mediterranean countries. In Present Bulgaria (Moesia, Thracia, Macedonia) and Romania (Dacia) the centuries old cultures were spread over the present Greece. It is known that the Roma was founded by Troyan royals after the war of Troy. - That is enough strong path to follow if one need to know the Truth. More: "Vesta" in present Bulgarian (the "old Bulgarians were that time the "Thracian people" - Moesians, Getae etc.), means simple "News" or a "News-bearer". "Vesta virgins" in present Bulgarian is called "vestalki", that means simple - "News-telling-girls". There are any sources and evidences for these connections, and if some one needs to have them, we may help. Here is the simplest one: http://kbedic.sourceforge.net/online/index_en.html --79.100.49.49 (talk) 20:09, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

College?
Is there any evidence that the Vestals were referred to as a collegium, as this article frequently calls them (with the English "college", though linked to collegium, which conspicuously does not include the Vestals)? I don't find any. Unless there is, I suggest we remove the term. - Eponymous-Archon (talk) 16:34, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Use of language in the body of the text
Is it best practice to use language like “paramour” and “expiation” and “…Helvia, a virgin girl of equestrian family…”?

It comes across as a bit pompous and intimidating language that’ll put non-academics off the subject matter. TTFTAKM (talk) 08:59, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

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