Vesta, a great Roman divinity, goddess of the hearth, identified with the Greek Hestia. The latter was one of the twelve great divinities of the Greeks, daughter of Cronos and Rhea. A virgin goddess, she watched over domestic life, and had her shrine in the inner part of every house, and in the prytaneum of every town considered as an aggregation of families. Here, as at a private hearth, the sacred fire ever burned in her honour, and from hence it was carried by colonists to their new home. Similarly the Roman Vesta, whose worship was introduced by Numa from Lavinium, whither Æneas bore the Penates and the sacred fire from Troy, had her round temple in the centre of the city, where she was worshipped under the symbol of the eternal fire, watched over by the Vestal virgins. This fire was renewed on the 1st of March, and if it went out a great national disaster might be looked for. It could only be rekindled by the primitive method of friction, or, as Plutarch says, by the use of the burning-glass. The duty of the six (at first four) Vestal virgins was to keep this sacred fire burning, every day to bring water from the sacred spring of Egeria for the purification and sprinkling of the temple, to make a sacrifice of salt cakes, to offer daily prayers for the well-being of the state, and to pour on the altar of sacred fire libations of wine and oil. They also preserved the Palladium (q.v.) and the six other mystic symbols of the welfare of the city. They were chosen by lot out of twenty selected by the Pontifex, when not more than ten years of age, and took a vow for thirty years, after which time they were free to return to the world if they chose. In the first ten years the Vestal virgin learned her duties, during the second she practised them, and during the third she taught them to the young vestals. A breach of the vow of chastity was punished by burial alive in the Campus Sceleratus. Their privileges were correspondingly great; they paid no taxes, owed obedience to the Pontifex Maximus alone, could will their own property, and drive in carriages through the streets, were attended by a lictor when they went abroad, and had places of honour at all public games. They gave evidence without oath, enjoyed the privilege of burial in the Forum, and had the keeping of many documents of state. If they met a criminal by chance on the way to execution he was free. Their house, the Atrium Vestæ, close to the temple, was large and magnificent, and they had public slaves appointed to serve them. It was excavated only in 1883-84 (Middleton's Anc. Rome in 1888). Their dress was entirely white; the chief characteristic feature being the infula, a coronet-shaped head-band with ribbons (vittæ) hanging from it, and covered at the time of sacrifice by a white veil (suffibulum). This was a white woollen hood, with a purple border, folded over the head and fastened below the throat with a fibula. The Vestalia or chief day of festival of Vesta was kept on July 9, after which the temple was closed for five days for cleaning.
See Preuner, Hestia-Vesta (Tüb. 1864); Maes, Vesta e Vestali (Rome, 1883); and J. G. Frazer in the Journal of Philology (vol. xiv.).