Here, close under the Palatine, is the site of the famous _Temple of Vesta_, in which the sacred fire was preserved, with the palladium saved from Troy. On the altar of this temple, blood was sprinkled annually from the tail of the horse which was sacrificed to Mars in the Campus-Martius. The foundation of the temple was attributed to Numa, but the worship must have existed in Pelasgic times, as the mother of Romulus was a vestal. It was burnt down in the fire of Nero, rebuilt and again burnt down under Commodus, and probably restored for the last time by Heliogabalus. Here, during the consulate of the young Marius, the high priest Scævola was murdered, splashing the image of Vesta with his blood,--and here (A.D. 68) Piso, the adopted son of Galba, was murdered in the sanctuary whither he had fled for refuge, and his head, being cut off, was affixed to the rostra. Behind the temple, along the lower ridge of the Palatine, stretched the sacred grove of Vesta, and the site of the Church of Sta. Maria Liberatrice was occupied by the _Atrium Vestæ_, a kind of convent for the vestal virgins. Here Numa Pompilius fixed his residence, hoping to conciliate both the Latins of the Palatine and the Sabines of the Capitoline by occupying a neutral ground between them. "Quæris iter? dicam, vicinum Castora, canæ Transibis Vestæ, virgineamque domum, Inde sacro veneranda petes palatia Clivo." _Martial_, i. _Ep._ 70. "Hic focus est Vestæ, qui Pallada servat et ignem. Hic fuit antiqui regia parva Numæ." _Ovid, Trist._ iii. _El._ 1. "Hic locus exiguus, qui sustinet atria Vestæ, Tunc erat intonsi regia magna Numæ. Forma tamen templi, quae nunc manet, ante fuisse Dicitur; et formæ causa probanda subest. Vesta eadem est, et Terra; subest vigil ignis utrique, Significant sedem terra focusque suam. Terra pilæ similis, nullo fulcimine nixa, Aëre subjecto tam grave pendet onus. Arte Syracosia suspensus in aëre clauso Stat globus, immensi parva figura poli; Et quantum a summis, tantum secessit ab imis Terra. Quod ut fiat, forma rotunda facit. Par facies templi: nullus procurrit ab illo Angulus. A pluvio vindicat imbre tholus." _Ovid, Fast._ vi. 263. "Servat et Alba, Lares, et quorum lucet in aris Ignis adhuc Phrygius, nullique adspecta virorum Pallas, in abstruso pignus memorabile templo." _Lucan_, ix. 992. Close to the temple of Vesta was the _Regia_, where Julius Cæsar lived (as pontifex maximus)--where Pompeia his second wife admitted her lover Clodius in the disguise of a woman to the mysteries of the Bona Dea--whence Cæsar went forth to his death--and from which his last wife Calpurnia rushed forth with loud outcries to receive his dead body.