The Vestals wore a headdress consisting of the suffibulum, a short, bordered veil; the infula, a woollen fillet wrapped several times around the head; and multiple vittae, woollen strands hanging down from the fillets.

Vittae were also worn by priests, brides, maidens, asylum-seekers, and sacrificial victims. Speculating on their symbolic function in The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Roberto Calasso writes:

“Vittae dictae sunt, quod vinciant”: “The woollen ties are so called because they bind.” But what was this bond? It was the momentary surfacing of a link in that invisible net which enfolds the world, which descends from heaven to earth, binding the two together and swaying in the breeze. Men wouldn’t be able to bear seeing that net in its entirety all the time: they would get caught in it at once and suffocate. But every time someone achieves or is subjected to — but every achievement is subjection, and every subjection achievement — something that uplifts him and generates intensity and meaning, then the woollen strips, the ties, come out. [...] All these woollen strips, these vain, winged tassels, were nerves of the nexus rerum, the connection of everything with everything else, which alone gives meaning to life.

Appeals were infrequent during the Republic. Applications were occasionally made to tribunes or praetors to interpose a veto that would delay the execution of a sentence. The sentence itself was rarely overturned (Burdick, 670). A formalized system of appeal, in the modern sense of the word, was introduced by Augustus (Suet. Aug. 33) and later developed by Nero (Suet. Nero 17).

Given the relative novelty of the process, the Vestal’s second attempt to secure an acquittal may very well be seen to convey a sense of impudentia – to use Argentarius’ word – towards the judgment of the pontifical college.

A girl selected to serve as a Vestal virgin had to be the daughter of living, freeborn, Romans whose reputations were beyond reproach. As Tacitus notes, the divorce of Fonteius Agrippa from the girl’s mother was enough to exclude his daughter from the priesthood (Ann. 2.86).

Additional qualifications for a prospective Vestal virgin included being mentally sound, physically unblemished, and between the ages of six and ten.

As Albucius Silus demonstrates, accusations of unchastity were invariably supported using circumstantial evidence. This owes both to the furtive nature of the crime and a general reluctance on the part of the Romans to address sexual matters directly in a court of law. Livy describes how the Vestal virgin Postumia was suspected of incestus on account of her attractive appearance and relaxed manner (Liv. 4.44.11). Likewise, a careful attention to dress was used as evidence of unchastity at the trial of the Vestal Minucia (Liv. 8.15.7).