Coelia Concordia: The Last Vestal Virgin of Rome
The seventh in a sequence of novels about the Vestal Virgins, from their founding until the end of Rome, Coelia Concordia opens in 380 CE and covers the adult life of the last of the Vestales Maximae, in a moment when history’s tide had turned against the millennial religion of Rome and toward the intolerant new cult of Christianity. The consecrated handmaids of the goddess of the hearth, who served for thirty years and then returned to civilian life, were the liberated women of their day. They could own businesses, were legally independent of male relatives, and were given privileges that hardly anyone save the emperor enjoyed—at the price of remaining virginal during their service and carrying out the rites of the hearth that symbolized the Roman state. By the late 4th century, Christian emperors had gnawed away at those privileges, although the city of Rome remained quietly pagan. And that city was a shadow of its former glorious self, no longer even one of the four capitals of the empire. In this dying world, Coelia has to face off against the emperor Theodosius, who decrees the shutdown of all pagan temples.
Intrigue and power struggles on the religious and political field reveal a woman of intelligence and courage, even though she doesn’t have a spotless conscience. The book paints a well-researched picture of the troubled years of Rome’s slow collapse, when the army is run by barbarians and the old patricians kowtow to influential bishops. Coelia Concordia succeeds well at the primary duty of a historical novel: to put a human face on history and make us feel as the people of ancient times must have felt. Recommended.
