As the heart and hearth of the city, the Temple of Vesta demanded an exceptional level of ritual purity. Servius describes how the water used for cleansing the temple had to be brought from a nearby spring in a container that did not touch the ground (A. 7.150), while the dirt swept from the floor was ritually discarded in the Tiber (Ov. Fast. 6.227). Iulius Bassus claims that the sacred purity instilled in this space by such rituals has been desecrated by the return of the unchaste Vestal.

The idea that a supernatural, polluting force could be transmitted through contact was certainly not unique to the Romans. James Frazer famously argues in The Golden Bough that this “law of contagion” is a governing principle of magic across all human cultures.