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THE ROSICRUCIANS.
The Prytaneia were the atria of the temples, wherein a fire was kept that was never suffered to go out. On the change in architectural forms from the pyramidal (or the horizontal) to the obeliscar (or the upright, or vertical), the flames were transferred from the altars, or cubes, to the summits of the typical uprights, or towers; or to the tops of the candles, such as we see them used now in Catholic worship, and which are called “tapers,” from their tapering or pyramidal form, and which, wherever they are seen or raised, are supposed always to indicate the divine presence or influence. This, through the symbolism that there is in the living light, which is the last exalted show of fluent or of inflamed brilliant matter, passing off beyond into the unknown and unseen world of celestial light (or occult fire), to which all the forms of things tend, and in which even idea itself passes from recognition as meaning, and evolves —spiring up, as all flame does, to escape and to wing away. Vesta, or the fire, was worshipped in circular temples, which were the images, or the miniatures, of the “temple” of the world, with its dome, or cope, of stars. It was in the atria of the temples, and in the presence of and before the above-mentioned lights, that the forms of ceremonial worship were always observed. It is certain that Vesta was worshipped at Troy; and Æneas brought her into Italy : “manibus vittas, Vestamque potentem, Æternumque adytis effert penetralibusIgnem.” Æneid, ii. 296.
Numa settled an order of Virgin Priestesses, whose business and care it was constantly to maintain the holy fire. And long before Numa’s days, we find it not only customary, but honourable, among the Albans to appoint the best-born virgins to be priestesses of Vesta, and to keep up the constant, unextinguished fire. When Virgil speaks (Æneid, iv. 200) of Iarbas, in Africa, as building a hundred temples and a hundred altars, he says “vigilemque sacraverat Ignem, Excubias Divûm seternas,”—