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Citizens of ancient Greece and Rome were expected to reproduce, whereas violators of this guideline were penalized by governmental legislation. An exception was made for the Vestal Virgins and the eunuch‐priests of the Cybele cult because of their religious office. The obligation to reproduce hides a cultural conviction that sexual pleasure was potentially dangerous and antisocial because orgasm was associated with epilepsy and loss of vital spirit.

This chapter focuses on the Vestal Virgins. The six Vestal Virgins belonged to the pontifical college (collegium pontificum), the largest and one of Rome's most prestigious religious orders. Chosen for their role between the ages of six and ten, they were committed to serve the cult of Vesta for a minimum of thirty years. They were synonymous with the continued welfare of the city and inseparable from the Roman's view of themselves. In addition to guaranteeing Rome's future, the Vestal priesthood was cherished as one of the most ancient religious institutions in the city. The chapter then considers the social profile of prospective priestesses and explains how they were chosen for their extraordinary role in Roman society. It also outlines their legal status, which set them apart from ordinary Romans, and the privileges they were granted in exchange for their service to the state.

This chapter analyzes the ritual obligations of the Vestal Virgins. The extensive ritual program assigned to the Vestal order further emphasizes the connection between these priestesses and the wellbeing of the community. They participated in various rites designed to cleanse the city of ritual impurity. At the Fordicidia, the October Horse, and the December rites of Bona Dea, they played a role in guaranteeing the fertility of the fields and flocks. They were also involved in rites concerned with the preservation of the food supply, on which the security of the city depended, and with the transformation of raw grain into a substance suitable for consumption. Perhaps most significantly, the Vestals prepared mola salsa, the salted grain used to consecrate sacrificial victims and thereby to maintain Rome's relationship with the gods.

This chapter points out that official sanctions against the memory of women did not exist in the public sphere of Roman life during the Republic. It notes that women were not subject to accusations of treason maiestas during the Republic and that only holders of high office could be charged under this law—and they were all men of the senatorial class. The chapter specifies that there is only a single exception, which is provided by the Vestal Virgins; they were the only college of public priestesses in Rome, and infractions against their religious duties, particularly loss of virginity, affected the whole community. It further specifies that the Vestals were subject to the authority of the pontifex maximus, who acted as pater familias in their case and had the power to punish or execute them.

This paper provides a detailed discussion of the fragmentary evidence for the scandals in which Catiline, Crassus, and the Vestal Virgins were implicated in the years preceding the conspiracy of Catiline. The family backgrounds of the Vestals that were implicated in the case receive close consideration, as well as the consequences of the case for the political career and standing of Crassus. Some speculation is offered about the identities of the prosecutors. Their motives are identified with the aim to launch an attack on sectors of the Sullan faction.

Late in 384, a leading pagan senator and priest, Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, died shortly before he was to take up the consulship. Senatorial aristocrats produced epigraphic and literary monuments that reveal the continued vitality of pagan religious discourse after the final separation of the traditional cults from Roman imperial power. As urban prefect, Symmachus negotiated one commemorative campaign between the Senate and Valentinian’s court, upholding Praetextatus as a model of non-sectarian civic virtue. This stance brought Symmachus into disagreement with the Vestals and Praetextatus’ wife, Paulina. As an initiative of an ancient Roman priesthood, the Vestals’ now-lost commemoration likely highlighted Praetextatus’ involvement in the civic cults. For Paulina, religion had indeed been her husband’s most important pursuit, but it aimed, beyond the well-being of Rome, at immortality. Attacking Paulina, Christians such as Jerome promoted an alternative aristocratic devotion focused on ascetical humility, rather than on the religious virtuosity, paralleled by political success, of which both pagan and Christian senators boasted. In his first book of Epistles, which was likely published some years later, Symmachus foregrounded Praetextatus’ expertise as a pontifex but ignored his private religious pursuits. For Symmachus, public religion was vital to Praetextatus’ legacy and to the aristocratic world they had shared.

Chapter 4 explores the meaning of “pagan” in late antiquity, debates over its use today, and the meaning and progress of Christianization. Recent controversies over “conversion” and the pace of Christianization, especially among the senatorial aristocracy, have called into question mid-twentieth-century claims that there was an ardent “pagan revival” among aristocrats at the end of the fourth century. Some key elements in that controversy involved the removal of the altar of the goddess Victory from the senate house and the fate of the Vestal Virgins. The chapter details later imperial rulings against pagan practices from the 390s onward. Recent scholarship questions whether conversion to Christianity entailed a radical life change for upper-class Romans. The growth of the number and role of bishops is noted. Christianity’s charity operations were probably a factor in winning some to the new faith. Soon, “heresy” would become a more pressing concern to bishops and some emperors than the occasional “pagan” practitioner.

The controversy over the altar of Victory shows how pagans and Christians expressed competing ideas on the public role of religion in an increasingly Christian empire. In 382, Gratian revoked funding from the Roman state priesthoods and removed the altar from the Senate house. Following Gratian’s death in 383, the Senate appealed to his brother, Valentinian II, through the urban prefect, Symmachus, whose communiqué was successfully countered by Ambrose of Milan. Recent scholarship has favoured Symmachus’ account, which it sees as an appeal for religious tolerance, and argued that the affair was decided by the power politics of a child emperor’s unstable court. In response, this chapter argues that Symmachus was actually trying to exclude the emperor’s Christianity from public decision-making. All religions may, for Symmachus, lead to God, but the old cults are Rome’s divinely appointed defence, as well as the bond between Senate and emperors. Ambrose put Valentinian’s duty to God at the heart of his appeal. Ambrose’s Senate contained many Christians, and Ambrose was bound to resist an emperor who endorsed pagan sacrifices (the closest either work comes to explicit political gamesmanship). Together, their works show how malleable Rome’s public religion still was, more than seventy years after Constantine embraced Christianity.