This is John Bachelor, conversation with the author Emma Southon, her new book A Rome of One's Own, The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire.

The Profiles of Women through the kingdom, the republic, the empire, and then the late

antiquity when the Christianity shows up and changes the Roman Empire completely. This episode that Emma narrates is

from the Republic, early Republic, about 5th century

b c. 5th to 6th century b c. and it's the deliberate

sacrifice human sacrifice of a Vestal Virgin named Opia.

What's significant here is that Opia has done no wrong.

Opia's sacrifice is because something bad has happened.

Perhaps lost a battle, perhaps there's been a plague, perhaps the flood of the Tiber.

And Emma narrates how it is that they decide that Opia must die and how she dies.

Emma Southon, the book of Rome of one's own, forgotten women of the Roman Empire the death of opia of

vesta virgin 483 b.C. much more of this tonight.

So they effectively sacrifice her to the gods but without actually sacrificing her.

It's necessary the way they find out that a Vestal virgin has lost her virginity and stopped being a virgin is generally that something

terrible will happen and there will be signs and omens from the gods and they need to placate the gods so they make what is effectively a human

sacrifice and but without having to get their own hands dirty because they

don't technically like human sacrifice.

So they hold a funeral for her where they parade her through the city

as though she is already a body.

And then they take her to a cave that has been dug out just inside the walls of Rome and they wall her inside that hole in the ground with some milk, some bread and an oil lamp,

and they leave her in there to either suffocate or starve to death, which is a very slow and

very horrible way to kill somebody.

...