In an article of great interest in the _Journal of Philology_ for 1885[599], Mr. J. G. Frazer first placed the origin of the cult in a clear light for English scholars. By comparing it with similar practices of existing peoples still in a primitive condition of life, he made apparent the real germ of the institution of the Vestal Virgins. Helbig, in his _Italiker in der Poebene_[600], had already recognized that germ in _the necessity of keeping one fire always alight in each settlement_, so that its members could at any time supply themselves with the flame, then so hard to procure at a moment’s notice; and Mr. Frazer had only to go one step further, and show that the task of keeping this fire alight was that of the daughters of the chief. This step he was able to take, supported by evidence from Damaraland in South Africa, where the priestess of the perpetual fire is the chief’s daughter; quoting also the following example from Calabria in Southern Italy: ‘At the present day the fire in a Calabrian peasant’s house is never (except after a death) allowed to die quite out, even in the heat of summer; it is a bad omen if it should chance to be extinguished, and the girls of the house, whose special care it is to keep at least a single brand burning on the hearth, are sadly dismayed at such a mishap.’ The evidence of the Roman _ius sacrum_ quite confirms this modern evidence; the Vestals were under the patria potestas of the pontifex maximus, who represented in republican times the legal powers of the Rex, and from this fact we may safely argue that they had once been the daughters of the primitive chief. The _flamines_ too, or _kindlers_, as being under the potestas of the pontifex, may be taken as representing the sons of the primitive household[601]. But from various reasons[602] the duties of the _flamines_ became obsolete or obscure; while those of the Vestals remained to give us an almost perfect picture of life in the household of the oldest Latins. From the first, no doubt, the tending of the fire was in some sense a religious service, and the flame a sacred flame[603]. There must have been many stages of growth from this beginning to the fully developed Vesta of the Republic and Empire; yet we can see that the lines of development were singularly simple and consistent. The sacred fire for example was maintained in the aedes Vestae, adjoining the king’s house[604] (_regia_); and the penus Vestae, which must originally have contained the stores on which the family depended for their sustenance, was always believed to preserve the most sacred and valuable objects possessed by the State[605]. We return to the Vestalia, of which the ritual was as follows. On June 7, the penus Vestae, which was shut all the rest of the year, and to which no man but the pontifex maximus had at any time right of entry, was thrown open to all matrons. During the seven following days they crowded to it barefoot[606]. Ovid relates his own experience[607]: