Some indeed say that nothing is entrusted
to them except the eternal fire, which King Numa appointed to be
worshiped as the origin of all things. For fire has the liveliest motion
of anything in nature; and everything is produced by motion or with some
kind of motion. All other parts of matter when heat is absent lie
useless and apparently dead, requiring the power of fire as the breath
of life, to call them into existence and make them capable of action.
Numa therefore, being a learned man and commonly supposed on account of
his wisdom to hold communion with the Muses, consecrated fire, and
ordered it to be kept unquenched for ever as an emblem of the eternal
power that orders all things. Others say that, as among the Greeks, a
purificatory fire burns before the temple, but that within are other
holy things which no man may see, except only the virgins, who are named
Vestals; and a very wide-spread notion is, that the famous Trojan
Palladium, which was brought to Italy by Aeneas, is kept there. Others
say that the Samothracian gods are there, whom Dardanus brought to Troy
after he had founded it, and caused to be worshipped there, which, after
the fall of Troy, Aeneas carried off and kept until he settled in Italy.
But those who pretend to know most about such matters say that there are
two jars of no great size in the temple, one open and empty, and the
other full and sealed, and that these may be seen only by the holy
virgins.
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