ABSTRACT
When a girl became a Vestal Virgin, she underwent a religious ritual whose procedure can hardly have reassured a nervous, young Vestal candidate.1 Seated on her father’s lap,2 she awaited the approach of the Pontifex Maximus, who seized her by the hand and took her away ‘as if’, Aulus Gellius remarks, ‘she had been captured in war’.3 At the same time as he took charge of her, the Pontifex solemnly recited:
I take you thus, Amata, as a Vestal priestess, who will perform the rites, which it is right that a Vestal priestess perform on behalf of the Roman people, on the same terms as she who was a Vestal on the best terms.
