BRINNARIA found that, with Almo definitely and permanently out of the
way, she did not worry about Calvaster. She also found that she did
not worry about Almo and that her glimpse of him had rather calmed
her feelings. She confessed as much to Aurelius when she had a third
audience with him before he left for the Rhine frontier, and she thanked
him for his insistence.
With her mind at peace Brinnaria settled more and more into the routine
of her life and enjoyed it more and more.
She came to feel keenly the spiritual significance of every detail of
the ritual observances in which she took part. Besides the maintenance
of the sacred fire, the Vestals had many obligatory duties. Every
sacrifice of the Roman public worship involved the sprinkling of the
sacred meal upon the head of the victim, if a live animal was offered,
or upon the fire, if the sacrifice was bloodless. Early in each ceremony
one of the small boys assisting the priest carried around to all the
participants in the act of worship a maple-wood box containing the holy
meal; from it each worshipper ladled a small portion into the palm of
his right hand; at a specified point in the course of the ceremonial
each participant sprinkled the meal as prescribed.
The holy meal was made of very coarsely ground wheat, a sort of
grits, salted and toasted. It was prepared by the Vestals according
to immemorial custom. They were supplied with a sufficient quantity of
heads of wheat, the best of the produce of two of their estates, one
near Caere, the other near Lanuvium. These wheat ears were packed in
baskets and stored on the farms in dry, airy barns. There they were
kept drying and hardening their grains until the next spring. Then the
allotted baskets were brought into Rome. On the seventh of May, after
a ceremonial of prayer, the three elder Vestals began going over these
wheat-ears, sorting out those entirely perfect, and placing them in
larger baskets shaped like the big earthen jars in which the Romans
commonly tored wheat, olives, oil, wine and other similar supplies.
On the next day the wheat from the first day’s selection of ears was
separated from the straw, beards and chaff, was roasted and coarsely
ground. The resultant groats were then put away in great earthen jars in
the outer storeroom of the temple. On the third day they again selected
wheat ears, on the fourth they again prepared wheat-grits, and so on
alternately for eight days. By the evening of the eighth day they had
stored enough groats to make the sacred meal for one year’s ceremonies
of the entire Roman ritual.
The salt with which they salted the holy meal was prepared with similar
invariable formality. Crude salt, obtained from evaporated sea-water
out of the sand-pits on the seashore near Lavinium, was conveyed to
the Atrium in small two-handled earthenware jars. This coarse, dirty,
dark-colored salt was dissolved by the three younger Vestals in boiling
water, which water might not be obtained from the lead pipes which
connected the Atrium with the general water-supply of the city’s
aqueducts, but must be drawn by the Vestals themselves and carried by
them in the earthenware jars from the famous fountain of Jaturna, at
which Castor and Pollux were fabled to have watered their white horses
after bringing to Rome the news of the victory at Lake Regillus. The
solution was purified by repeated boilings, the impurities being gotten
rid of by successive careful decantings of the liquid from one vessel
into another, so that the sediment might be left behind as the top
part was poured off. When sufficiently boiled down the solution was
recrystallized in shallow earthenware pans. The resulting slabs of
salt were harder than the pans and were freed from them by breaking the
earthenware with an ancient stone hammer, said to have been captured by
AEneas himself from a king of Ardea. The slabs of salt were sawed into
pieces with an iron saw, the pieces were pounded in a mortar, the fine
salt was thrown into an earthenware bowl and dried out in a kiln. When
dried a little powdered gypsum was stirred through it to prevent it from
again becoming moist. It was then stored in a tall jar with a tight lid,
which was kept in the outer storeroom of the temple, along with the jars
of meal. Three times a year, on the ninth of June, on the thirteenth
of September and on the fifteenth of February, with solemn prayers the
Vestals mixed the prepared salt with the prepared grits, the resultant
mixture being the sacred meal.
On each First of March the fire in the temple was allowed to go out and
was solemnly rekindled by the friction of maple wood on apple wood, as
when the fire went out by accident. The temple was then decorated with
fresh boughs of green laurel, after the boughs put up the year before
had been removed.
On May fifteenth the Vestals were the chief figures in a solemn
procession of the entire Roman hierarchy to the Sublician bridge, from
which the Vestals threw into the Tiber thirty dolls made of rushes,
fifteen representing men, fifteen women, each about two feet high.
This offering to the river of effigies of men and women commemorated the
primitive human sacrifices by which the river was each year placated,
that it might not drown more by floods.
On June fifth the inner storeroom of the temple was opened and its
treasures inspected by the Pontifex wearing his antique vestments. With
him entered always also the Chief Vestal clad in her austere habit with
all her badges of office. They were attended by the other Vestals, who
went through traditional pacings, haltings and prayers. The Temple of
Vesta was an enclosure from which all men were rigidly excluded.
The only exceptions to this immemorial taboo were a few of the more
important Pontiffs, and they might only enter on specified festal days,
and then must be in their full regalia. Also, in general, the temple was
closed against all women except the Vestals and their assistants. It was
open, however, from sunrise on the morning of each seventh of June until
sunset on the evening of the fourteenth of June. During this period
it was incumbent upon every Roman matron to visit the temple. And each
worshipper must walk the entire distance from her home to the temple and
must leave her house barefoot, barefoot she must walk from the temple to
her home. Only illness excused a Roman woman from this religious duty.
Few ever omitted it from indifference.
During these eight days the temple was thronged.
During these eight days also fell the great yearly festival of Vesta,
on the ninth of June, on which day also all millers kept holiday, with
processions and picnics to which the mill-donkeys were led decorated
with wreaths of flowers and strings of tiny, crisp-baked rolls.
On June fifteenth the temple was ceremonially cleaned and the sweepings
and the ashes collected from the sacred fire for the year past were
solemnly carried in a stately procession to a prescribed spot on the
slope of the Capitol where a great pit was closed by a heavy maple-wood
door. In this pit the ashes were reverently buried.
Besides these observances of their special cult the Vestals took part in
nearly every important sacrifice, procession and festival of the public
worship of Rome. They were busy women and among them Brinnaria was
anything but idle. She never found time hang heavy on her hands.
So busied with her duties she passed three peaceful years, contented and
happy. There was but one drawback to life in the Atrium from Brinnaria’s
point of view. That drawback was Meffia. Meffia was never ill but never
well. Everything tired her. It tired her to walk upstairs, to stand for
any length of time, to do anything. She was forever sitting down to
rest or lying down to rest. Excitement exhausted her totally. She was a
perpetual worry to the other Vestals.
Otherwise Brinnaria was very happy. Through Flexinna she had frequent
news of Almo. Ancient Rome had no institution, public or private, in any
way corresponding to our post office. But routes of trade and travel by
land and sea were well defined and traffic along them fairly regular, on
the most used routes almost continual. There were private organizations,
vaguely resembling our modern express companies, which forwarded
merchandise along the main-travelled routes and even into remote
regions. Their messengers took charge of bales, boxes and packages of
all sizes and also of letters. The service on the roads of Africa,
from Bescera, Nepte and Putea along the frontier of the desert, through
Lambese, Capsa and Thysdrus, to Carthage, by well-built vehicles with
frequent relays of horses on the excellent highroads was fairly
good. The ships from Sicily plied with almost the regularity of our
ocean-liners. Roads and road-service in Sicily were of a high quality of
excellence. The transit to Italy at Messina was a sort of ferry. Italy
was served by a network of roads always busy. Almo’s letters to Flexinna
were fairly regular and Vocco heard frequently from his friends among
Almo’s brother officers and sometimes from his military superiors.
Almo was an immediate and brilliant success as a leader of scouting
expeditions, cavalry dashes, and, within a year, of raids in
considerable force. His men adored him at once; his fellow-officers
found him excellent company, unassuming and companionable, his
commanders came early to rely on him. He won an excellent reputation and
was universally regarded as a young officer of great promise, likely to
rise to high position and not unlikely to become famous.
This kind of news delighted Brinnaria and promoted her peace of mind. In
great contentment she went about her duties, loving them more and
more from month to month, preparing the blessed salt, assisting at
sacrifices, participating in processions.
Also interest in music and enjoyment of music came to play more and more
a part in her spiritual life. As a child she had hated music and had
been in continual conflict with her musical governesses. Even after she
entered the Atrium her aversion to learning anything about music had
given Causidiena a great deal of trouble. Later Brinnaria was docile,
but the reverse of enthusiastic. Only after Almo’s departure for Africa
did music begins to mean anything to her.
But one keyed instrument was known to the ancients. That was a form of
organ, in effect and appearance not very dissimilar to a small portable
modern organ, with one bank of keys. Its mechanism, however, was very
different in respect to the construction of the pipe stops and bellows.
In particular, the steady flow of air to the pipes was obtained from
the pressure of water, and a receptacle partly filled with water was an
essential part of every Roman organ. From this feature it was called
the water-organ. The Emperor Nero had been a notable performer on the
water-organ and had interested himself in some improvements in its
mechanism.
As with the modern organ, so with the Roman water-organ, the sonorous,
sustained and resonant notes lent themselves naturally to the expression
of religious emotion.
Religious emotions, Brinnaria, at this period of her life, felt to an
overwhelming extent. She expressed them in long colloquies with Numisia
and Causidiena, in a tendency to be unnecessarily careful about her
duties, to pet her daily routine, as it were; and in an awakening to
the charms of music in general and of organ music in particular. She
developed into a capable performer on the water-organ, bought for
herself the finest to be found in all Rome, had it set up in the Atrium
in place of the old one which had belonged to the order of Vestals, and
sat before it for hours at a time.
Her solitary communings with her favorite instrument became her chief
solace when she was: low-spirited, which was seldom, and her favorite
diversion when she was high-spirited, which was often. Moreover, her
rendition of well-known airs and he improvisings came to be a great
pleasure to all the inmates of the Atrium, most of all to Causidiena.
Besides her many duties and her indoor amusements, Brinnaria found
time for much activity outside the Atrium. She had kept up her girlish
friendship for the sieve-maker Truttidius, and saw him occasionally,
sometimes ordering her litter halted before his shop and leaning out to
ask after his health and that of his family. Truttidius had an ailing
household, though he himself was always well and never seemed to get any
older.
From her talks with Truttidius she came to take a personal interest
in the welfare of the countless tenants in her many properties in the
poorer quarters of the city. She visited some of them-a sort of approach
to modern slumming by the philanthropic rich. Such actions on the part
of a landowner and such an attitude of mind from any rich person toward
the poor was very unusual in the ancient world. Her behavior in this
regard won Brinnaria a sort of fame among the poor, as if she were a
live goddess moving among them.
She had a healthy love of mere enjoyment too. Except when she happened
to be on duty watching the sacred fire, she never missed a theatrical
performance, a gladiatorial display or an exhibition of chariot-racing
in anyone of the vast race-courses flanked by tiers of stone-seats,
which the Romans called circuses. At all shows, whether of scenic
artists, fighting men or speeding horses, the Vestals had specified
seats, as good as the best.
Besides these formal pleasures, she took great delight in mixing in
society merely for society’s sake. Moderns are likely to imagine that
the Vestals of ancient Rome were nuns or something like nuns. They were
nothing of the sort. They were maiden ladies of wealth and position
whose routine duties brought them into familiar association with all the
men important in the Roman government, hierarchy, nobility and gentry
and with their wives and daughters. They were women of such importance
in their world that their acquaintance was sought by all who had any
pretensions to being entitled to meet them and by shoals of social
bounders who had none. Their influence was so powerful that they were
unremittingly sought, waylaid, pursued and besieged by persons who hoped
to enlist their interest in the appointment or promotion of this, that
or the other connection or relative; by the same persons they were
continually overwhelmed with presents of flowers, fruit, delicacies,
dainties, ornaments, laces, garments, pieces of furniture, horses,
slaves, and of anything and everything capable of being made a present
of in the Roman world; likewise with social invitations-chiefly to
dinners, banquets and feasts. Invitations to banquets and dinners
Brinnaria seldom declined, unless her duties made acceptance impossible
or the invitation came from people beneath her notice. As she had
said to Aurelius, she had an excellent appetite. She had an epicurean
tendency from her early years and was fond of oysters, sweetbreads,
eels, thrushes, turbot and other articles of food esteemed as delicacies
by the Romans. But she was a hearty eater and consumed generous portions
of roast meats, particularly of pork, which even in late imperial times
was the staple of Roman diet. She never lost her childish relish for
boiled pork and cabbage, for bacon, for ham, hot or cold. She was by
no means a glutton, ate deliberately and daintily, and while she ate,
joined in the general conversation or even led it. She had a quick wit
and a sharp tongue and her sallies were acclaimed. She was sought after
as a guest not merely because she was a Vestal, but for herself, for her
gaiety and her unexpected utterances.
On the whole she preferred informal dinners to formal banquets and
liked better to dine with her friends than with the most luxurious
entertainers in Roman society.
With Vocco and Flexinna she dined frequently, three times a month
at least and generally oftener. Brinnaria loved children,
especially babies, and there was always a baby in the Istorian
household--Flexinna’s babies were all healthy and grew famously. Of the
six children, Brinnaria could not have told which she loved or which
loved her most. Her arrivals were always heralded with shouts of glee,
her romps with the children always put her in a good humor, her swim
with Flexinna sharpened an appetite which needed no edge, while the
cosiness and informality of Flexinna’s dining-room, where each of the
three had undivided possession of one entire sofa, made it certain that
nothing marred her enjoyment.