Roma - Saylor Steven - Страница 56
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“Magnificent!” declared Foslia. “There can be no other image of Juno to rival it. Even the statue made by the great Vulca for the Temple of Jupiter can’t compare. This one is so much larger—three times the size of any mortal! The look on the goddess’s face is truly sublime! And that giant peacock, with its wings spread—did you ever see such a riot of colors?”
While they watched, a boy, egged on by his friends, darted from the crowd. He grabbed hold of the loincloth of a captive priest, yanked it off, and ran back into the crowd, whooping and waving the loincloth like a trophy. The priest, a middle-aged man already stumbling from exhaustion, turned red and wept from shame, unable to cover himself because his hands were shackled to the rope across his shoulder. Pinaria gasped, and Foslia raised an eyebrow, but neither looked away.
“I wonder what the goddess thinks of that?” said Pinaria.
“Keep watching. She might speak at any moment!”
“Are you serious?”
“Why not? You know the story: When Camillus sent soldiers to take the statue from her temple in Veii, one of the men, just to be funny, bowed and asked the goddess if she would like to be taken to her new home. What a shock those fellows had when the statue actually nodded—and then spoke out loud! They thought someone was pulling a prank, so they asked her again, and, as clearly as I’m speaking to you now, she said, ‘Yes, take me to Roma at once!’ They say she sounded angry; Juno Regina doesn’t like to repeat herself. Of course she wanted to come here. If she hadn’t lost affection for the Veiians, they would never have been conquered. Camillus has ordered the building of a new temple on the Aventine especially to house the statue. Veiian wealth will pay for materials. Veiian slaves will supply the labor. That naked priest can stop blushing. A slave doesn’t need clothing to dig a trench or carry bricks.”
“Do you think the Greeks treated the Trojans this way, after they conquered them?” asked Pinaria. Among the Vestals, there had been many discussions of late comparing the fall of Veii to the fall of Troy, a tale that the Romans had learned from the Greek colonists to the south. Just as the siege of Troy had lasted for ten years, so had the siege of Veii. Just as the Greeks finally took the city by guile—using the famous Trojan horse devised by Odysseus—so too had the Romans finally triumphed by a clever stratagem, tunneling under the walls so that Roman soldiers could steal inside by night and open the gates.
“Of course they did,” said Foslia. “The Trojan women, including Queen Hecuba and the princesses, were taken as slaves. So were the men, at least the ones who weren’t killed. No city is conquered unless its people have offended the gods; for the conquerors to kill or enslave the inhabitants is pleasing to the gods. The people of Roma have always known this. The humiliation of our enemies is one of the ways by which we please the gods, and by pleasing the gods, we continue to prosper.”
As usual, Foslia’s religious logic was irrefutable, and Pinaria gladly deferred to her, yet the sight of the disgraced Veiian priest disturbed her. She turned her head and looked instead at the triumphal chariot, which was now receding from them in the direction of the Capitoline. Camillus, turning this way and that to wave to the crowd, happened to look over his shoulder. His gaze abruptly settled on Pinaria. He ceased waving, tilted his head at a quizzical angle, and flashed an enigmatic smile.
Foslia grabbed her arm and squealed with delight. “Pinaria, he’s looking straight at you! And why not? You’re so lovely, even with your hair cut short. Oh, if he should look at me that way, I think I would die!”
Pinaria’s face turned hot and she lowered her eyes. When she dared to look up again, the chariot had rounded a corner and was no longer in sight.
She heard a sudden burst of laughter and applause from the crowd. Following the statue of Juno Regina came a flock of geese. The white birds strutted forward, stretching and flapping their wings, craning their necks and honking. These were the sacred geese of Juno, captured from the Veiians along with her statue, objects of religious veneration but also of good-natured humor. The pampered creatures seemed to understand their exalted position; they gazed back at the crowd with haughty heads held high. One of the geese suddenly raced forward, toward the priest who had been stripped naked, and bit the man on the ankle. The priest let out a plaintive howl.
“Getting back at her former keeper for some transgression, I have no doubt,” whispered Foslia.
The crowd roared with laughter.
In the last hour of daylight, after the sacrifice of a white ox upon an altar before the Temple of Jupiter and the ritual strangulation of high-born captives in the Tullianum, as the feasting and dancing in the streets began to die down, the Vestals convened at the Temple of Vesta.
While the others had watched the triumph, one of their number, as always, had been left to tend to the sacred hearthfire within the round temple. Now her five sister virgins rejoined her for the recitation of evening prayers, led by the eldest of them, Postumia, the Virgo Maxima. The keeping of the sacred hearthfire was the primary obligation of their order. Should the fire ever go out, catastrophe and misfortune for Roma would surely follow.
The keeping of their vows of chastity was an equally important obligation. Should a Vestal ever break that vow, she might conceal the crime from other mortals but never from the goddess. Vesta would know, and in consequence the hearthfire would sputter and dwindle. Only a pure virgin could maintain a steady flame in Vesta’s hearth.
The Vestals linked hands and stood in a circle around the flame. While the others swayed gently and hummed in harmony, the Virgo Maxima intoned the evening prayer. “Goddess Vesta, hear us. We have kept your flame for another day, and now another night descends, its darkness illuminated, as always, by your undying light. You warm us. You light our way. The same unwavering fire that comforted the baby Romulus at his birth comforts us here in your temple.”
Postumia was the eldest, but her short gray hair still had strands of black in it, and her voice was strong, without a quaver. She hummed and swayed with the other virgins for a moment, gazing at the flame, then recommenced the prayer. “For thirty years, each of us vows to serve you, goddess Vesta. We come to you before the age of ten; for ten years we learn; for ten years we perform the public rites; for ten years we teach the newcomers. Then we are free to go—or stay.
“Bless me, goddess Vesta! My thirty years passed years ago, but I chose to remain in your service. Permit me to stay, goddess, as long as I have eyes to witness the holy flame and strength to tend it, as long as I have words and wisdom sufficient to teach the younger virgins.
“Bless us all, goddess Vesta, but especially open your embrace to the youngest of us, Pinaria. Seven years she has been among us. Now that Foslia has entered her tenth year, Pinaria is the only novice. She still has much to learn. Give her special guidance, goddess Vesta.”
Pinaria, who had entered a kind of trance while humming and watching the flame, gave a tiny start at the mention of her name. It was not often that the Virgo Maxima mentioned the Vestals by name in her prayers. Why was she doing so now, and why for Pinaria? What she said next unsettled Pinaria even more.
“We pray, goddess, that you will remember all the Vestals who have come before us, going back to the days of King Romulus, who named the first four Vestals in Roma, and King Tarquinius the Elder, who raised our number to six, and who, in his wisdom, imposed a punishment far more terrible than simple death for any Vestal who should break her vows—the punishment that remains in force to this day.”
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