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This goddess was the daughter of Uranus, being the sister and wife of
Saturn. As soon as she was born, she was exposed on a mountain, but being
preserved and suckled by some of the wild beasts of the forest, she
received the name of Cybele from the mountain where her life had been
preserved. She is called also the ancient Vesta, to distinguish her from
her daughter Vesta, who, with her mother, is also called Cybele. But the
Deity of whom we now write is the earth, and is easy to distinguish from
her daughter. In several temples of the ancients, the statues of Cybele
were only a piece of stone, meant to represent the stability of the earth.
This great Goddess saw and became enamoured of a shepherd, who repulsed her
affection, being in love with a mortal nymph; and rather than submit to the
tyrannical passion of Cybele, he is said to have destroyed himself, and the
goddess metamorphosed him into a pine-tree.
[Illustration]
In the mythology of every country, this Deity is found, though under
various names. She is represented with keys in her hand, her head crowned
with rising turrets, and sometimes with the leaves {14} of an oak. She is
also seen with many breasts, to intimate that the earth gives aliment to
all living creatures.
To her daughter, who presided over the fiery element, Numa Pompilius
consecrated an altar, where virgins, named Vestals, maintained perpetual
fire. At Delphi and at Athens the priestesses were not virgins, as at the
other temples, but widows who were past the time of marriage.
[Illustration]
It was the employment of the Vestals to take care that the sacred fire of
Vesta was not extinguished, for if it ever happened, it was deemed the
prognostic of great calamities to the state: the offender was punished for
negligence, and severely scourged by the high priest. The privileges of the
Vestals were great: they had the most honourable seats at the public games
and festivals, a lictor preceded them when they walked in public; they were
carried in chariots when they pleased, and had the power of pardoning
criminals if they encountered them on the way to execution, and the meeting
was declared to be purely accidental.
Such of them as forgot their vow, were placed in a large hole under the
earth, where a bed was placed, with a little bread, wine, {15} oil, and a
lighted lamp: the guilty Vestal was stripped of the habit of her order, and
compelled to descend into the subterranean cavity, which was immediately
shut, and she was left to die of hunger.
_Vestal._ Spare me! oh spare!
_Priest._ Speak not, polluted one.
_Vestal._ Yet spare me!
_Priest._ Thou pleadst in vain--thy destiny is fixed.
_Vestal._ Mercy--oh! mercy; tho' my sin be great,
Life is so beautiful I cannot die;
And earth seems smiling with intenser light,
And flowers give forth an odour ever new,
The stars look brighter still than when of old
I watched them fading from the mountain top:
Earth, sky and air, are all so beautiful,
I cannot, dare not, will not, think of death!
_Priest._ It is thy doom! thy living grave is near.
Thou hast despoiled the Goddess of her due,
The vow thou gavest to her thou hast broken,
And thou must pay the awful penalty!
_Vestal._ The grave--a living grave--thou meanst it not--
To ope my eyes in th' ever during dark,
To breathe a thick and frightful atmosphere,
Drawn from my sighs and dampened with my tears!
_Priest._ The Gods demand their victim!
_Vestal._ 'Tis blasphemy to think it;
Oh! if thou ever knew'st a father's love,
A mother's sigh, a sister's soft caress,
If but one human sympathy be left,
Pardon, oh! pardon!
_Priest._ Cling not around me, girl, touch, touch me not;
The power to pardon lieth not in man.
Thy hour hath come.
_Vestal, (clasping him)._ I will not quit thee;
Thou art a man with human sympathies;
Madness will touch my brain; I cannot, will not yield.
Grant me some other death: poison or steel,
Or aught that sends me suddenly from earth;
But to be wrapt in clay, and yet not of it,
To feel the earth crumbling around my brow,
To scent its foul and noisome atmosphere,
Is more than frail mortality can bear.