This is John Bachelor, a Rome of one's own.

This is the new book by Emma Southon,

the subtitle The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire,

forgotten no longer.

Here, Emma tells the story of a Vestal Virgin who sacrificed her name is

Opie in 483 B.C. sacrificed by the city of Rome. Why? Because there's been an omen. Who knows what kind.

The river flooded, the river drought, a plague, a fire. There's been an omen. and what happens to the Vestal Virgins how do they use

the Vestal Virgins the centerpiece of the republic's religious worship here explains, it's both bizarre and tribal and at the same time reveals

what Rome represented when it calls itself a civilization, superstition.

A Rome of one's own, Emma Southon to explain.

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 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.

Note here.

More of this later.