Word Finder - vestal

definition

A virgin consecrated to Vesta, and to the service of watching the sacred fire, which was to be perpetually kept burning upon her altar; a vestal virgin.

definition

A female virgin; a woman who has never had sexual relations.

definition

A nun.

definition

Of or pertaining to Vesta, the virgin goddess of the hearth.

definition

Pure; chaste.

Then those sixteen vestal virgins would surely be mine.

I have lately read "Wilhelm Tell" by Schiller, and "The Lost Vestal."...

According to Plutarch she urged her husband to take vigorous action against Catiline, who had compromised her half-sister Fabia, a vestal virgin; also to give evidence against Clodius, being jealous of his sister Clodia.

Branding (perhaps the equivalent of degradation to slavery) was the penalty for slander of a married woman or vestal.

The Vesta of the state is in fact the king's hearth, standing in close proximity to the Regia, the king's palace; the Vestal Virgins, who have charge of the sacred fire, are the "king's daughters," and as such even in republican times were in the manus of the pontifex maximus, who was the successor of the king on the legal side of his religious duties, as the rex sacrorum was on the sacrificial side.

If he did not, on his death the brothers were bound to do so, giving her a full child's share if a wife, a concubine or a vestal, but one-third of a child's share if she were a hierodule or a Marduk priestess.

As chief pontiff he inquired rigorously into the character of the vestal virgins, three of whom were buried alive; he enforced the laws against adultery, mutilation, and the grosser forms of immorality, and forbade the public acting of mimes.

Levi Coffin (1798-1877), a native of North Carolina (whose cousin, Vestal Coffin, had established before 1819 a "station" of the Underground near what is now Guilford College, North Carolina), in 1826 settled in Wayne County, Ohio; his home at New Garden (now Fountain City) was the meeting point of three "lines" from Kentucky; and in 1847 he removed to Cincinnati, where his labours in bringing slaves out of the South were even more successful.

One of these groups is certainly of non-Jewish origin, as it conceives Mary as living in the temple somewhat after the manner of a vestal virgin or a priestess of Isis.

In 1759, when captain of the "Vestal" (32), he captured the French "Bellona" (32) after a sharp action.

His career was soon after interrupted by the triumphant return of Sulla (82 B.C.), who ordered him to divorce his wife, and on his refusal deprived him of his property and priesthood and was induced to spare his life only by the intercession of his aristocratic relatives and the college of vestal virgins.

After the invasion of the Gauls in 390 B.C., the vestal virgins and the sacred objects in their custody were conveyed to Caere for safety, and from this fact some ancient authorities derive the word caerimonia, ceremony.

He was believed to have made away with his wife and his son to win the profligate and wealthy Aurelia Orestilla; it was even suspected that he had been guilty of an intrigue with the Vestal Fabia.

Included in the collegium were also the rex sacrorum, the flamines, three assistant pontifices (minores), and the vestal virgins, who were all chosen by the pontifex maximus.

The daughter was not only in her father's power to be given in marriage, but he might dedicate her to the service of some god as a vestal or a hierodule; or give her as a concubine.

Religion is like the pure vestal flame, which, if it went out, was to be kindled only by a sunbeam.

Vestal virgins were not supposed to have children, yet they could and often did marry.