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Updated: June 21, 2025
Her colts, sold at well-advertised auctions, were sought after, were competed for, brought fancy prices, won many races, came to have a reputation that spread beyond the city, over all Italy, even into the provinces. Her career as a stock farmer was brilliant, meteoric, phenomenal. Between her duties, her music and her horse-breeding Brinnaria's mind was pretty well occupied.
"No, my daughter," said Bambilio, "no more." "You have quite done beating me?" she demanded. "Quite done," he replied. Then, unexpectedly to herself, Brinnaria's wrath boiled over. "Then," she fairly yelled at him, "I'm going to begin beating you. Shut your eyes. I'm going to pull down the curtain!" Numisia made a horrified grab at Brinnaria and missed her.
She was the Vestal, the others were only her assistants and in training to succeed her. But as Causidiena became less and less able to see, all matters which could be attended to by others devolved more and more upon Numisia. Among her colleagues Numisia had greatest confidence in Brinnaria, so that Brinnaria's duties occupied her insistently.
Through it all the six remained hale and sound. But when the plague abated, only Manlia had any living relations left her. The other five had lost every kinsman and kinswoman, to the ninth and tenth degree. Brinnaria's parents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts and cousins were all among the victims. This left her grave and sobered with grief, with no trace of her girlish wildness apparent.
"Are you fit to be taken as a Vestal, my daughter?" "I believe so," came the answer. "Have you any blemish or defect of body, any impediment of speech, any difficulty of hearing?" Brinnaria's awe was wearing off, and the irritating pomposity of Faltonius was producing its usual effect of arousing antagonism, as it generally did in those he talked to.
"Your Majesty," he said, "I doubt whether that will confute Brinnaria's enemies or even convince the majority of the Pontiffs." "What does it signify?" the Emperor demanded, "whether anybody else is convinced, if I am satisfied?" "Nothing whatever, your Majesty," said Lutorius, "if you take that view of the matter." "Perhaps," Commodus admitted, "there may be something in your suggestion.
After an interval of some days the Pontiff hinted that the Emperor desired to see her. Brinnaria's disposition to stand upon ceremony and to insist on her full rights as a Vestal had waned as she grew to maturity. In her dealing with Aurelius she had long laid it aside altogether and likewise with Lutorius, both were so unassuming, so manifestly actuated by the sincerest regard for her.
The obstinacy faded from Brinnaria's handsome, regular face. She looked merely reflective "In the first place," she said, "because I despise him and hate him worse than any young man I ever knew; I would not marry Calvaster if he were the only man left alive.
There was but one drawback to life in the Atrium from Brinnaria's point of view. That drawback was Meffia. Meffia was never ill but never well. Everything tired her. It tired her to walk upstairs, to stand for any length of time, to do anything. She was forever sitting down to rest or lying down to rest. Excitement exhausted her totally. She was a perpetual worry to the other Vestals.
She won Brinnaria's heart at once by telling her that she herself, when she had first entered the Atrium of Vesta, had found it difficult to learn the etiquette of the order, had wanted to shout and sing and laugh out loud, to run up and down stairs instead of walking, to skip and jump.
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