Sul, also, was a fire deity. According to the kindred mythology of Scandinavia, the goddess was so beautiful a being that she had been placed in heaven to drive the chariot of the Sun from which she took her name--that glorious sun, the rays of which were now illuminating the city of Sulcastra. Sul, in the eyes of the Romans, was more exalted than Soma, daughter of the Moon, though in the East Soma was held in the highest reverence as the mother of Buddha. Soma was the sovereign goddess of plants and planets. In the Vedic hymns she was identified with the moon-plant which a falcon had brought down from heaven. Its juice was an elixir of life. To drink it conferred immortality on mortals, and even exhilarated the gods themselves. But even greater virtue and miraculous power did the Romans attribute to the waters of Sul, and with better evidence of their potency. For here, in Sulcastra, century after century, and ever at the same temperature, the magical, unfathomable well had poured forth its mystic waters for the healing of the people. The Temple of Sul, like that of Vesta, was circular, to represent the world; and in the centre of the temple stood the altar of the sacred flame, ever burning to symbolise the central fires of Mother Earth, just as the sun was deemed to be the centre of the universe. There were nothing strange or unusual in freedom of conversation between the Priestess and the Sculptor--who, in former years, had added many decorations to the Temple. The virgin priestesses were permitted to receive the visits of men by day; by night none but women were suffered to enter their apartments, which adjoined the sacred building in which they ministered. Each priestess was pledged to continence for thirty years. During the first ten they were employed in learning the tenets and rites of their religion. During the next ten they engaged in actual ministrations. In the final ten years they were employed in training the younger vestals, and after the age of thirty they might abandon the functions of the temple and marry. Few exercised that option. Custom, when such an age was reached, had become ingrained, the impulses of youth frozen, and the honour paid to their office became more valued than the prospects of marriage. The reverence shown to them was very great, but so also was the punishment that followed a lapse from the letter or the spirit of their duties. The least levity in conduct, the smallest neglect of ministerial duty, was dealt with by the Pontifex or the Flamens, and visited with great severity. The loss of virginal honour, or the failure to maintain the sacred fire, involved a penalty of inexpressible terror. The condemned priestess, placed in a litter, shut up so closely that her loudest cries were scarcely audible, was carried through the city in the order, and with the adjuncts, of a funeral procession, a journey of death in life--its goal the niche or narrow vault in which the living vestal was to be immured.