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.

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.

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).

Arellius Fuscus’ extensive description of the Tarpeian Rock has a romantic flair that hearkens back to his reputation, as noted by Seneca (Suas. 2.10), for delivering poetic declamations. He frequently imitated the language of Virgil, and this passage has previously been likened to an epic description of the Underworld (Bradley, 111).