Note 63 — 8. DEATH BY EXPOSURE TO COLD.

Starving to death was a punishment inflicted by the people of Aragon, some years ago; and it is reported by Tavernier, that the chief ladies in the kingdom of Tonquin, are at this day starved to death for adultery. The severity of the Roman law on an unchaste Vestal has often exercised the pencil of the artist. An account of its execution on Rhea, marked as it always was by circumstances of peculiar horror and solemnity, is to be found in Plutarch’s Life of Numa; the offender, conducted by a mute procession across the Forum to the place of her interment near the Colline gate, was made to descend a ladder into the sepulchre, and left there with a lamp, a loaf of bread, and a cruse of water, the opening being immediately closed with earth and stones.