Eschewing documentary zeal, Ms Negroni quickly snares readers in the minds of her vestal protagonists as they journey from Cornwall down the Rhine to Rome and back to Cologne.
In the lowest section, or podium, the emperor and his retinue had a special box; on the opposite side of the amphitheatre, but still in the podium, the vestal virgins, consuls, praetors, ambassadors, priests, and other distinguished guests were seated; the rest of the first gallery contained senators and those of the equestrian rank.
It's a vestal shrine to minimalism and frictionless efficiency.
The hot autumn also saw a huge influx of migrant moths from southern Europe with exotic species such as the crimson speckled and vestal moths recorded into October.
Angie's Dover sole arrived sans head and skin, but still on the bone; a thing of startling visual purity, like a cooked vestal virgin; its mash companion was very buttery and garlicky and delicious.
To have these touchstones – these vestal assistants to the man in sacerdotal white, playing out a precious midsummer rite – builds faith among those inclined to superficial mistrust or censure.
Milford punctuates the narrative with frequent asides in the form of an ongoing dialogue — a tug-of-war — with her patron and primary source, Norma, the poet's vestal and the biographer's Nemesis, who dropped cryptic hints about deeper mysteries that remained unsolved and let slip that she had destroyed certain overly revealing or unseemly materials, including pornographic photographs.
The rape of a vestal virgin by Mars produced Romulus and Remus, who founded Rome.
In ruminative asides, she wishes to impress us with her life's "antinomies": privacy and exposure; solitude and plurality; confinement and escape; propriety and transgression — the conflict between the vestal and the bawd who shape her character.
In the past, he has offered up space cadets, vestal virgins rising from coffins, and — my personal favorite — revelers at a sapphic-flapper cocktail party.
"A Tornado is a perfectly reliable commercial drink," he says, "but this... this is almost... is the word vestal?" Well, if it wasn't the word before, it is now.
