The forlorn painting above by Jean-Frédéric Schall depicts the fate of a Vestal Virgin found guilty of breaking her chastity vow—live burial in an underground chamber, with a small amount of food and water. The chastity of the priestesses of Vesta was thought to safeguard the peace and prosperity of Rome. An unchaste Vestal was deemed guilty of treason, a crime punishable by death.

But Roman law did not permit violent execution of a Vestal, for fear of angering the gods. Justice was served instead by the slow death of starvation, in a cell beneath ground near the Colline Gate.

The execution of the Vestal Virgin Oppia in 483 BC was one such instance. But Oppia’s real sin may have been the crime of being plebeian. She is thought by many to have been the first Vestal of plebeian origin—the gens Oppia was a well-known plebeian family at that time.

The patrician elite would no doubt have seen a plebeian keeper of Vesta’s flame as a pollution of sacred ritual. Moreover, the year of 483 BC was not a happy one for Rome. Poor harvests, prodigies, and military losses abounded. The gods were offended—and someone had to pay. Oppia’s execution benefited the ruling class in two ways: it shifted blame for the food shortages and wars to Oppia’s betrayal of her vow, and it purged the priesthood of a woman with common blood.

The struggle between the social classes of Rome, known as the Conflict of the Orders, would be a centuries-long battle for justice and equality. In the early years of the Republic, the fight for land reform lay at the heart of Rome’s civil strife. Plebeians sought the redistribution of ager publicus (public land) that had been illegally appropriated by wealthy patricians.

By diverting public attention to an impure Vestal and her subsequent execution, the Senate temporarily quieted protests for agrarian reform. Her death served as a stark reminder of the danger that came with seeking entry into patrician-dominated religious institutions like the College of Vesta.

Not all sources agree on who the first plebeian Vestal was. Some name Minucia, executed in 337 BC for the same crime of incestum as Oppia. The latter lived in a time when myth and legend were difficult to separate from fact, whereas Minucia’s later era was better documented.

Schall’s The Torture of the Vestal Virgin captures the panic and claustrophobia of the deaths that Vestals like Oppia and Minucia were forced to endure. And though Schall was a contemporary of the French Revolution and the social upheaval of that much later historical period, his painting movingly evokes the fate of ancient Rome’s condemned Vestals.

Whether Oppia was truly unchaste or a political scapegoat, there is no dispute about the kind of ending she suffered.

Cruel and unusual punishment.