Cornelius Hispanus speaks of the carnifex stepping back as he pushed the condemned woman off the Tarpeian Rock. The word carnifex literally means “maker of meat”, but according to the OLD it was not used of an ordinary butcher; its primary meaning is executioner.

The Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (John Murray, 1875) provides this definition:

CA′RNIFEX, the public executioner at Rome, who put slaves and foreigners to death (Plaut. Bacch. IV.4.47; Capt. V.4.22), but no citizens, who were punished in a manner different from slaves. It was also his business to administer the torture. This office was considered so disgraceful, that he was not allowed to reside within the city (Cic. Pro Rabir. 5), but he lived without the Porta Metia or Esquilina (Plaut. Pseud. I.3.98), near the place destined for the punishment of slaves (Plaut. Cas. II.6.2; Tac. Ann. XV.60;Hor. Epod. V.99), called Sessorium under the emperors (Plut. Galb. 28).

The information about the duties of a carnifex is not consistent with his presence at the execution of a Vestal. Since this information is drawn from Plautus, who lived in the late 3rd and early 2nd centuries BCE, it may be that the duties had changed by the time of Seneca. Indeed, in Epistle 4.11, Pliny, writing in the late 1st century CE, mentions that a carnifex was present at the entombment of a Vestal.

Cestus says this to Quintilius Varus, the son of the infamous general of the same name. The elder Quintilius Varus was in charge of the three legions stationed in Germany in 9 CE. He had as an advisor a German prince named Arminius who had been educated in Rome. As Varus was leading the legions from their summer to their winter camp he ran into an ambush in the Teutoburg Forest that had been planned by Arminius. 15,000-20,000 Roman soldiers were killed and many officers, including Varus, committed suicide; some soldiers were enslaved. Varus’ head was sent back to Rome. According to Suetonius, Augustus lamented “Quintili Vare, legiones redde!”

Archaeologists have found the remnants of a major battle between Romans and Germans that occurred during the reign of Augustus, with many Roman deaths, near Kalkreise Hill in Lower Saxony. This is generally accepted as the site of the defeat of Varus.

This is a technical term used when discussing a declamation. A color is “a line of approach to the case”. (Winterbottom, p. xviii) It may represent an attitude on which a concrete argument is based. Seneca reviews the colores used by the various speakers and occasionally expresses his own view about them. For example, in 3.11 he refers to a color of Junius Otho as stultus.

Grasping someone by the knees was a traditional gesture of supplication in Greece and Rome. For example, in the Iliad 1.493-510, Thetis, the mother of Achilles, supplicates Zeus by clasping his knees with her left hand and touching him beneath the chin with her right.

Cestius raised the question of “whether the immortal gods are concerned with human affairs“. This reflects the Epicurean doctrine that the gods exist, and are worthy of worship, but “they take no thought for this world or any other” (Oxford Classical Dictionary)

Several of the declaimers refer to the idea that the accused woman did not die because she was saved by the gods, perhaps specifically by Vesta. Although they do not mention it, there are precedents for this. Dionysius of Halicarnassus (a close contemporary of Seneca the Elder) relates two cases of Vestals who were unjustly accused of incestus and were saved by calling on Vesta to aid them. (Antiquitates Romanae 2.68 and 2.69)