page_title: Vesta (mythology)
section_title: Temple
hierarchical_section_title: Vesta (mythology) / Temple
caption_attribution_description: According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the Romans believed that the Sacred fire of Vesta was closely tied to the fortunes of the city and viewed its extinction as a portent of disaster.
context_page_description: Vesta is the virgin goddess of the hearth, home, and family in Roman religion. She was rarely depicted in human form, and was often represented by the fire of her temple in the Forum Romanum. Entry to her temple was permitted only to her priestesses, the Vestals, who tended the sacred fire at the hearth in her temple. As she was considered a guardian of the Roman people, her festival, the Vestalia, was regarded as one of the most important Roman holidays. During the Vestalia matrons walked barefoot through the city to the sanctuary of the goddess, where they presented offerings of food. Such was Vesta's importance to Roman religion that hers was one of the last republican pagan cults still active following the rise of Christianity until it was forcibly disbanded by the Christian emperor Theodosius I in AD 391.
  The myths depicting Vesta and her priestesses were few, and were limited to tales of miraculous impregnation by a phallus appearing in the flames of the hearth—the manifestation of the goddess. Vesta was among the Dii Consentes, twelve of the most honored gods in the Roman pantheon.
context_section_description: Where the majority of temples would have a statue, that of Vesta had a hearth. The fire was a religious center of Roman worship, the common hearth (focus publicus) of the whole Roman people. The Vestals were obliged to keep the sacred fire alight. If the fire went out, it must be lit from an arbor felix, auspicious tree, (probably an oak). Water was not allowed into the inner aedes nor could stay longer than strictly needed on the nearby premises. It was carried by the Vestales in vessels called futiles which had a tiny foot that made them unstable.
  The temple of Vesta held not only the ignes aeternum ("sacred fire"), but the Palladium of Pallas Athena and the di Penates as well. Both of these items are said to have been brought into Italy by Aeneas. The Palladium of Athena was, in the words of Livy: "fatale pignus imperii Romani" ("[a] plegde of destiny for the Roman empire"). Such was the Palladium's importance, that when the Gauls sacked Rome in 390 BC, the Vestals first buried the Palladium before removing themselves to the safety of nearby Caere. Such objects were kept in the penus Vestae (i.e. the sacred repository of the temple of Vesta).
  Despite being one of the most spiritual of Roman Shrines, that of Vesta was not a templum in the Roman sense of the word; that is, it was not a building consecrated by the augurs and so it could not be used for meetings by Roman officials. It has been claimed that the shrine of Vesta in Rome was not a templum, because of its round shape. However, a templum was not a building, but rather a sacred space that could contain a building of either rectangular or circular shape. In fact, early templa were often altars that were consecrated and later had buildings erected around them. The temple of Vesta in Rome was an aedes and not a templum, because of the character of the cult of Vesta – the exact reason being unknown.
caption: Temple of Vesta in a 2009 photo
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