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Vesta (Classical Latin:) is the virgin goddess of the hearth, home, and family in Roman religion. She was rarely depicted in human form, and was more often represented by the fire of her temple in the Forum Romanum. Entry to her temple was permitted only to her priestesses, the Vestal Virgins. Their virginity was deemed essential to Rome's ...
2nd-century AD Roman statue of a Virgo Vestalis Maxima (National Roman Museum) 1st-century BC (43–39 BC) aureus depicting a seated Vestal Virgin marked vestalis. In ancient Rome, the Vestal Virgins or Vestals (Latin: Vestālēs, singular Vestālis [wɛsˈtaːlɪs]) were priestesses of Vesta, virgin goddess of Rome's sacred hearth and its flame.
In Greek myth, Hestia was one of the six children of Cronus and Rhea, the first of their three daughters, and thus the eldest of the twelve Olympians. [i] [1] She was the elder sister of Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Hera, and Demeter, and was revered as goddess of the hearth and of domestic life. [2]
The sculpture is a marble representation of a veiled Vestal Virgin, the priestesses of Vesta, goddess of hearth and home, whose duty it was to keep a sacred fire burning in her temple in Ancient Rome. The Vestal Virgins were a popular subject of the time following the discovery of the House of the Vestals in Pompeii in the previous century. [1]
Articles relating to the goddess Vesta and her cult. She was the virgin goddess of the hearth , home , and family in Roman religion . She was identified with her Greek equivalent, Hestia .
Domestic and family life in general were represented by the festival of the goddess of the house and of the spirits of the storechamber — Vesta and the Penates — on Vestalia. [1] On the first day of festivities the penus Vestae ( sanctum sanctorum of the temple of Vesta which was usually curtained off) was opened, for the only time during ...
The sacred fire of Vesta was a sacred eternal flame in ancient Rome.The Vestal Virgins, originally numbering two, later four, and eventually six, were selected by lot and served for thirty years, tending the holy fire and performing other rituals connected to domestic life—among them were the ritual sweeping of the temple on June 15 and the preparation of food for certain festivals.
Vesta, a goddess of chastity usually conceived of as a virgin, was honored as Mater. A goddess known as Stata Mater was a compital deity credited with preventing fires in the city. [31] From the middle Imperial era, the reigning Empress becomes Mater castrorum et senatus et patriae, the symbolic Mother of military camps, the senate, and the ...