ought the house of Hortensius on the
Palatine, and elected to dwell there instead; and was therefore given
over to the Vestal Virgins to increase their scanty accommodation. The
_Atrium Vestae_, or convent of the Vestal Virgins, adjoined the Regia,
and behind it, along the lower slope of the Palatine, stretched the
sacred grove of Vesta, which seems to have been used as a place of
privileged interment for the sisterhood, as a number of gravestones
with the names of vestal virgins upon them were found in digging the
foundations of the church of Sta. Maria Liberatrice in the
seventeenth century. The residence of the Pontifex Maximus and of the
Vestal Virgins, who were regarded as the highest and holiest
personages in the State, gave an air of great respectability to this
neighbourhood, and it became in consequence the fashionable quarter of
Rome. Close beside the house of the Vestal Virgins was the far-famed
Temple of Vesta, in which they ministered, whose podium or basement,
which is a mere circular mound of rough masonry, may be seen on the
spot.

The worship of Vesta, the goddess of the household fire, was one of
the most primitive forms of religion. It doubtless arose from the
great difficulty in prehistoric times of producing fire by rubbing two
sticks against one another. Such a flame once procured would be
carefully guarded against extinction in some central spot by the
unmarried women of the household, who had nothing else to do. And from
this central fire all the household fires of the settlement would be
obtained. A relic of this prehistoric custom existed in the rule that
if the sacred vestal fire was ever allowed to go out it could only be
kindled anew by the primitive process of friction. The worship of
Vesta survived an old world of exhausted craters and extinct
volcanoes, with which was buried a world of lost nations. The
Pelasgians brought to Italy the stone of the domestic hearth, the
foundation of the family, and the tombstone, the boundary of the
fields divided after the death of the head of the family, the
foundation of property; and upon this double base arose the great
distinctive edifice of the Roman Law, the special gift of Rome to the
civilisation of the world. Rhea Sylvia, mother of Romulus, was a
Vestal Virgin of Alba, which shows that the worship of Vesta existed
in this region long before the foundation of Rome. The origin of the
first temple and of the institutions of Vestal Virgins for its