Because the Romans were so taken with the idea of family, it is no surprise that the Vesta’s presence was an absolute necessity. It was not in Roman custom to go against familial bonds. If the fire was tended by the Vesta of ages prior and all Rome’s ancestors kept it burning, then mos maiorum, the “ancestral custom,”dictated a constant feeding of the flames. It was not in Roman sensibility to go against the hundreds of years of history written and practiced by their fathers. If the fire was the sacred heart of Rome, the life and soul of the city, then Roman survival depended on the work of the Vesta. It was rarely in the tendency of Romans to initiate their own demise, and much less to deny divine forces.
