A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

The Vestal
virgins.
Livy i. 20.
Plutarch,
Numa, 10.
The worship
of the dead.
Ovid, Fasti,
ii-
533 ff-
(The festival
to the dead
was celebrated
on
February
19. Styx, the
river which
bounds the
world of the
dead.)
340 Rome Under the Kings
are covered with earth at the foot of a fruit tree.
For him
all days are holy days. He is not allowed to go into the
open air without the apex (conical cap); and even as to
remaining bareheaded under his own roof, the pontiffs
have only quite recently decided that he may do so.
Numa also selected maidens for Vesta, to fill
a priesthood
derived from Alba and closely connected with the
family of the founder of Rome. That they might be constant
attendants in the temple, he appointed them salaries
from the public treasury; and by requiring them to remain
unmarried and to perform various religious rites, he
made them sacred and venerable.
He ordained that the Vestal virgins should continue
unmarried thirty years; during the first ten years they
were to learn their duties, during the next ten they were
to perform them, and during the last they were to teach
others. After this period any of them who wished might
marry and cease to be priestesses; but it is said that very
few took advantage of this privilege and that those few
were not happy. By their regrets and sorrow for the life
they had left, they made the others scruple to leave it
and prefer to remain maidens till their death.
Honor is paid also to the graves of the dead. Appease
the spirits of your forefathers, and offer small presents to
the pyres that have long been cold. The shades of the
dead ask but humble offerings: affection rather than
costly gifts pleases them; Styx below has no greedy divinities.
Enough for them is the covering of their tomb
overshadowed with the chaplets laid there, and the scattered
fruits and the little grain of salt, and corn soaked
in wine, and violets loosened from the stem; let these
gifts be placed in a jar in the middle of the way. I do
not forbid more costly offerings, but by these mentioned