The glorification of virginity in the Vestal order must have helped to sustain the high moral tone which prevailed among the women of early Rome. They constantly beheld, in the very centre of the civic life, a group of maidens who held a position of surpassing honor as a reward for absolute purity of character. Although celibacy was not esteemed for its own sake, nor in any instance save that of the votaries of Vesta and Ceres, in them it could but be effective as an example of virtue. And when to the sanctity essential to the office was added the personal reputation of those virgins whose fame for holiness was augmented by many years of devotion, the influence must have been all in favor of good morals. What need, it may pertinently be asked, had the Roman women to worship at the shrine of the goddess of chastity, when they had Occia, who, as Tacitus informs us, presided over the Vestals for fifty-seven years with the greatest sanctity? That such an example was not more effective than it really was must be attributed to the fact that the maids and matrons of Rome considered, as is quite consistent with human wont in all times, that the supererogatory virtue of the Vestals atoned for any deficiencies in their own. It may be that this attribution of a vicarious character thereto partly accounts for the high valuation set upon Vestal virginity. And though a time came when an untarnished reputation was contentedly dispensed with elsewhere, it was still rigidly demanded in the house of Vesta.
Yet, despite all this care, the order was not entirely immune from the counteracting influence of the times. As Roman morals relaxed, it became a less infrequent thing for scandals derogatory to the reputation of the Vestals to be whispered through the city. Toward the close of the Republic, an intrigue with one of these maidens was considered by the young nobility as all the more attractive on account of the difficulty and danger accompanying it; and there is evidence to support the belief that the attempt was not always unsuccessful. When Rome became infected with the turpitude which marked its decadence, the college of Vesta did not escape. There were occasions, however, down to the latest pagan times, when the priestesses were violently brought to a consciousness of the requirements of their office; as when Domitian severely punished them for delinquencies which, strange to say, had been overlooked by Vespasian and Titus.