The Scipionic age: domestic humanitas

The period also displays a high regard for domestic human rights, that is, those which were not involved in external relations. The most striking example concerns the punishment of Vestal Virgins guilty of unchastity.

The Second Punic War saw the traditional penalty being relaxed and revived in rapid succession. In 217 an unusually large number of prodigies was reported, but instead of immolating an unchaste Vestal, a more humane method of expiation was tried. It was decided to organise animal sacrifices and a supplication, with offerings to the gods. But this abandonment of benighted superstition did not last, for the following year brought the disaster of Cannae and a return to superstition. Two Vestals were condemned; one was buried alive and the other killed herself. For good measure a Gaul, a Greek and their wives were buried alive.

The wheel turned again in the closing decade of the war, as the Carthaginian danger receded and Scipio’s influence burgeoned. The year 207 was a particularly bad one for prodigies; the birth of a hermaphrodite as big as a child of four caused special concern. The pontifical college, headed by Scipio’s close collaborator Licinius Crassus, decreed that the prodigy be drowned, and that twenty-seven girls sing a hymn composed by the poet Livius Andronicus, by way of expiation.²²