Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Vestales

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

VESTA'LES. Vestal virgins; the members of a sisterhood who dedicated themselves, under a vow of chastity, to the service of the goddess Vesta, in whose temple they ministered as priestesses, and watched by day and night the sacred fire kept burning upon her altar. Their costume consisted in the stola (Plin. Ep. iv. 11. 9.), with a short linen vest (carbasus. Val. Max. 1. 1. 7. Prop. iv. 11. 54.), put on as an indumentum over it (Dionys. ii. 68.); and, when engaged at the sacrifice, with the addition of an amictus, formed by an oblong-square sheet of white cloth bordered round the edge, and termed suffibulum, because it was put on the head, and fastened by a brooch under the throat (Festus, s. Suffibulum), under which the hair was confined closely to the head by a fillet of white wool (infula), tied by a riband (vitta). Most of these particulars are exemplified in the figures above (Vestales/1.1). The right-hand one is from an engraved gem, representing the Vestal Tuccia carrying water in a sieve from the Tiber to the temple, as a test of her chastity (Val. Max. viii. 1. 5.), and exhibits the stola, the carbasus or linen vest reaching to the knee, and the suffibulum carried in the left hand, and partially depending from the right shoulder. The left-hand figure, from a terra-cotta lamp, shows the Vestal as she appeared at the sacrifice, with the suffibulum put on. The brooch at the throat is omitted, but its position and use will be readily conceived, while the form of the drapery and border round it are distinctly apparent.

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  Vestales/1.1