Note 605 — Chapter XIII · THE KINGS OF ROME AND ALBA

G. Boni, in Notizie degli Scavi, May 1900, pp. 161, 172; id., Aedes Vestae, p. 14 (extract from the Nuova Antologia, 1st August 1900). Copies of these and other papers containing Commendatore Boni’s account of his memorable excavations and discoveries were kindly given me by him during my stay in Rome in the winter of 1900-1901. That the fire in question was a sacrificial one is proved by the bones, potsherds, and rude copper money found among the ashes. Commend. Boni thinks that the charred remains of the wood prove that the fire was extinguished, probably by libations, and that therefore it cannot have been the perpetual holy fire of Vesta, which would have burned up completely all the fuel. But a new fire was annually lit on the first of March (Ovid, Fasti, iii. 143 sq.; Macrobius, Saturn. i. 12. 6), which may imply that the old fire was ceremonially extinguished, as often happens in such cases.