{
  "id": "a_vdf6pda5",
  "oid": 165668,
  "revision": 1,
  "revision_oid": 165669,
  "work": "orthodoxy",
  "edition": "pg16769-r1",
  "title": "The Vestals: honoured abstinence with a fixed term",
  "anchors": [
    {
      "unit": "CH09.P021",
      "oid": 241,
      "role": null,
      "edition": "pg16769-r1",
      "paragraph": "CH09.P021",
      "exact": "the Romans when they robed the vestals",
      "start": 992,
      "end": 1030,
      "prefix": "inity when they carved Artemis, ",
      "suffix": ", the worst and wildest of the g",
      "url": "/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH09.P021#char=992,1030"
    }
  ],
  "body_markdown": "The Roman example supplies an institution, rather than merely an admired image. In Plutarch's *Life of Numa* 9.5–10.4, the Vestals guard the perpetual sacred fire. Their obligation lasts thirty years, divided between learning, service and teaching; afterwards they may marry. They receive exceptional public and legal privileges, but breach of chastity brings burial alive. The inspected English witness is the 1914 Loeb edition reproduced by LacusCurtius; Plutarch wrote in the Roman imperial period, centuries after the king whose institutions he describes. [Plutarch, *Numa* 9–10](https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Numa%2A.html).\n\nThis supports Chesterton's limited point that sexual abstinence could command religious honour outside Christianity. It does not establish identical motives across religions, universal Roman approval of celibacy, or a requirement imposed on everyone. The fixed term also differs from lifelong consecration. His movement from several admired examples to 'the best human experience' is therefore an evaluative inference; the historical example supplies evidence for the existence of esteem, rather than proving the whole inference.",
  "sources": [
    {
      "url": "https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Numa%2A.html",
      "title": "Plutarch, Life of Numa, Loeb Classical Library vol. I (1914), LacusCurtius transcription",
      "locator": "9.5; 10.1–4, especially pp. 341–343",
      "exact": null
    }
  ],
  "citations": [],
  "external_references": [
    {
      "url": "https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Numa%2A.html",
      "title": "Plutarch, *Numa* 9–10"
    }
  ],
  "limits": [
    "Plutarch is an imperial-period literary witness to Roman institutional tradition, not a contemporary witness to Numa.",
    "This identifies the Roman parallel, not Chesterton's direct reading source."
  ],
  "metadata": {
    "run": "chapter-09-restart-2026-11-07",
    "paragraph_investigator": "P021",
    "task": [
      {
        "approach": "Assumed knowledge and unusual language",
        "question": "What does the example of the Vestal virgins establish, and what does it leave out of the comparison with Christian celibacy?"
      },
      {
        "approach": "Theological contextualization",
        "question": "How does the distinction between admiring celibacy and being required to practise it compare with Augustine's account of consecrated virginity?"
      }
    ],
    "model": "gpt-6.1-sol"
  },
  "content_sha256": "sha256:90419ed3acaf2f81fbb4a5bc3c05d837ba043ba1db3fd3c0377d4a79eb33a673",
  "created_at": "2026-11-07T18:51:19Z",
  "is_current": true,
  "url": "/a/a_vdf6pda5",
  "revision_path": "/a/a_vdf6pda5/r/1",
  "cited_by": [
    {
      "id": "a_x37jsdlc",
      "revision": 1,
      "title": "Learning to trust the garden: authority, evidence, and the recovery of joy",
      "url": "/a/a_x37jsdlc"
    }
  ]
}