FIRE, COOKING, AND VESSELS. 249 



the lightest and driest matters applied to it, the beams acquir- 

 ing by the repulsion a body and fiery stroke."^ Stories of 

 Numa's ordinances will hardly be claimed as sober history, 

 though it is possible that such a process as this may have been 

 used, at least in late times, to rekindle the fire of Vesta. But 

 there is in Festus another account of the way in which this 

 was done, having in its favour every analogy from the prac- 

 tices of kindhng the sacred fire among our Indo-European 

 race, both in Asia and in Europe. " If the fire of Vesta were 

 extinguished, the virgins were scourged by the priests, whose 

 practice it was to drill into a board of auspicious wood till the 

 fire came, which was received and carried to the temple by the 

 virgin, in a brazen colander." ^ 



The parallel passage to that in the life of Numa is to be 

 found in the account of the feast of Eaymi, or the Sun, cele- 

 brated in ancient Peru, according to Garcilaso de la Vega, 

 whose "^ Commentaries ^ were first published in 1609-16, the 

 Spanish discovery having taken place in 1527. He says this 

 festival was celebrated at the summer solstice. " The fire for 

 this sacrifice had to be new, given, as they said, by the hand 

 of the sun. For which purpose they took a great bracelet, 

 which they call GJiipana (like the others which the Incas com- 

 monly wore on the left wrist), which bracelet the high priest 

 kept ; it was larger than the common ones, and had as its me- 

 dallion a concave cup like a half orange, highly pohshed, they 

 set it against the sun, and at a certain point where the rays 

 issuing from the cup came together, they put a little finely- 

 carded cotton, as they did not know how to make tinder, which 

 shortly took fire, as it naturally does. With this fire, thus 

 given by the hand of the Sun, the sacrifice was burnt, and all 

 the meat of that day was roasted. And they carried some of 

 the fire to the Temple of the Sun, and to the House of the 

 Virgins, where they kept it up all the year, and it was a bad 



1 Plutarch, ' Vita Numae,' ix. 7. 



2 Festus. " Iguis Vestse si quando interstinctus esset, virgines verberibus 

 afficiebantui- a pontificibus, qiiibus mos erat tabulam felieis materite tamdiu 

 terebrare, quousque exceptum ignem cribro seneo virgo in sedem ferret." See 

 Val. Max., I. i. 6. 



