2 FIRE AND STATE

Shiva dancing the Cosmic Dance of destruction and renewal, a gift from the Indian Government to Cern, on the laboratory campus near Geneva

Outside the headquarters of CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research, near Geneva, the Hindu god Shiva dances in a perpetual circle of fire. Many visitors to this place of rational scientific inquiry are disconcerted to be greeted by the statue of a god. But nothing could be more appropriate than this god in this place, and not only because India has long worked closely with CERN on many projects: in Hindu tradition Shiva’s fire creates and sustains us, yet it also destroys us. Like nuclear energy, fire ultimately eludes human understanding or human control.

It is not, of course, just the Hindu tradition which finds the divine in the dangerous flickering of fire. Prometheus in classical mythology had to steal it from the gods themselves to allow humans to use it for their purposes. For the Jews, Moses encountered god in the flames of the burning bush, and for Christians the Holy Spirit came upon the apostles in tongues of fire. Visible yet ungraspable, powerful but immaterial, fire is for many societies the most obvious, intrinsic emblem of the divine.

It is also profoundly human. Indeed it has been argued that it is fire that made human society possible. Once our remote ancestors learned how to use it, probably around a million years ago, it not only provided heat and safety, while keeping dangerous animals at bay; it was round the fire that the community cooked and ate. Cooked food allowed more calories and protein to be consumed, and, over tens of thousands of years, for human brains to grow. And as the community sat round the fire, they shared their stories. Fire as the focus of society: the idea ought not to surprise, for ‘focus’ is the Latin for hearth, and every time we use the word, we pay unconscious tribute to the incomparable gathering power of fire. The community that imagines itself gathered round a fire may be a family, a village or even a nation. For two of the greatest empires in history – Rome and Persia – fire became, in radically different ways, the divine emblem of the essential unity of the state.

The goddess Vesta, seated with her head covered, and four Vestal Virgins. Roman, first century CE

The two empires that in the third century CE fought for dominance in the Middle East today face each other in the British Museum coin room: from Persia, a gold image, about the size of a ten-pence piece, showing a Zoroastrian fire-altar with two male attendants. From Rome a dark bronze coin, with a view of the temple of Vesta, and, in it, a group of the famous Vestal Virgins.

Vesta was for the Romans the virgin goddess of fire, protectoress of the peace of home and hearth. She was a completely domestic goddess. Unlike other goddesses such as Venus or Juno, there are no rollicking tales of her amorous or military adventures: she simply stayed at home, by the fireside, keeping the household safe. Yet in one sense she was the most important deity in Rome. Unlike the others, she had for most of Roman history only one temple, in the heart of the Forum, and, unusually, it had no statue of the presiding goddess: Vesta was to be found only in the perpetual flame of her hearth. But that hearth, her temple, was the hearth of the whole city and of the empire, and their success and survival ultimately depended on Vesta’s flame. The domestic fire of Vesta was the central symbol of the Roman state. Her flame had to be kept perpetually burning, and in consequence it required constant and specialized attention.

The rounded Temple of Vesta in the centre of the Roman Forum – the ‘hearth of the empire’

We can see this clearly on our coin, struck sometime around the year 200 CE. On one side there is a round temple, with the words Vesta Mater – Mother Vesta. The virgin goddess – it is a paradox found in many societies – is also the quintessential mother figure. There is, as usual, no image of the goddess, but on either side of the flaming cauldron stand three women. These, explains Mary Beard, Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge, are the Vestal Virgins:

They were the priestesses of Vesta, and they had one absolutely central job: tending the sacred flame of the city. In the middle of the Roman Forum, in the Temple of Vesta, was the hearth that we see on this coin. It was supposed to be kept burning permanently, and the job of the Vestal Virgins, as the priestesses of the goddess Vesta, was quite simply to keep that fire alight.

A fire of this spiritual and political significance could be properly tended only by the irreproachably pure young girls selected specially for the purpose – there were generally six of them – who throughout their time of service must remain virginal. Mary Beard continues:

If the fire ever went out, it was a sign that the established relationship between the Romans and their gods had been disrupted. And when that kind of disruption occurred, you had to do something to put it right. The finger of suspicion might well be pointed at one of these priestesses – with the doubt that she was no longer a virgin.

The punishment for a Vestal Virgin convicted of such a failing was a fearful death – being buried alive. The sentence was, we know, occasionally carried out. So why would anyone want a job like this? Mary Beard explains that one of the reasons was the status that it conferred:

Black bronze Roman coin, c.200 CE, showing the Temple of Vesta with six Vestal Virgins (*above*) and a bust of the empress Julia Domna draped (*below*)

Like almost all Roman priesthoods, this was an elite job. But it was very unusual because it was a female elite job, which guaranteed the Vestal and her family a place at the very heart of Roman religion – and so at the very heart of the Roman political world too, because this temple and this hearth lay right at the centre of Roman public space. These women had many privileges – they got the best seats at the theatre, and so on – because although they were tending a fire, they were not just guarding a barbecue. They were guarding and looking after something which stood for Rome itself.

The specifically female nature of this link between the temple of Vesta and the very idea of the state becomes clear when we turn the coin over. Here you see not, as you would expect, the emperor, but the bust of a woman, with the inscription Iulia Augusta: this is Julia Domna, wife of Emperor Septimius Severus, who ruled from 193 to 211. The emperors had established a second temple of Vesta in the imperial palace, so the empress is here being advertised as fulfilling the Roman womanly ideal: tending to the hearth of both family and state. By being linked to the fire of Vesta, she can claim to share some of the high political responsibilities of a Vestal Virgin, while also being the mother of the nation.

As Mary Beard points out, this rare example of female power in the otherwise overwhelmingly male world of Roman politics had a long and fascinating after-life:

Vestal Virgins have remained powerful symbols in the cultural and political imagination of the West. You find later European aristocratic and monarchical women trying to pick up on some of their unique kind of authority – on this quintessentially Roman version of what female power could be.

Not surprisingly, one of the canniest manipulators of this useful bit of history was Elizabeth I of England. As the Virgin Queen, whose legitimacy had been denied by the Roman Catholic church, Elizabeth must have relished the opportunity to show herself heir to an even older Roman institution, and one that affirmed the central role of an unmarried woman in the great affairs of the nation. One falsely accused Roman Vestal had proved her virginity by carrying water in a sieve: so in this portrait (and there is more than one such picture) Elizabeth too carries a sieve, affirming both her virginity and her unique fitness to guarantee the survival of the state. (It must have been a pleasing reflection for Elizabeth that while Mary Queen of Scots might be the Catholic candidate for the throne, nobody would ever associate her with chastity.) Two centuries later, as Marie Antoinette of France tried to assert her role as model wife and mother, with a proper place in the political sphere, she too had herself painted as a Vestal. Understandably, she discards the sieve of virginity and is shown standing by the sacred fire, the emblem of the nation, to which she will devote herself. Here were two women, like the empress Julia Domna hundreds of years before them, showing they could be trusted with that most civic, even existential of tasks: tending the flame of the state.

*Elizabeth I of England holding the sieve of a Vestal Virgin*, 1583, by Quentin Massys the Younger (*left*) and *Marie Antoinette of France as a Vestal*, circle of Jacques-Fabien Gautier d’Agoty (*right*)

There is a last, pleasingly democratic chapter to this tale of the astonishing longevity of the idea of the sacred hearth – from the first autumn of the Great War. It very quickly became clear that to wage a conflict on this scale, not just the fighting men, but the whole population would have to be engaged. In October 1914, the Welsh composer Ivor Novello set one of the First World War’s most enduringly popular patriotic songs:

Keep the Home Fires Burning,

While your hearts are yearning,

Though your lads are far away

They dream of home.

Every woman in Britain in 1914 – a state that, like ancient Rome, allowed most women virtually no political role – was now summoned, as wife, mother or sister, to do her bit to save the state by tending the flame. Every hearth was, like the temple of Vesta, the hearth of the nation.

One of the other great superpowers of the third century, and the only one with which Rome had serious foreign policy relations, was the Sasanian Empire in neighbouring Persia (modern Iran). And here too fire played a central role as the focus of the community. But the femininity of Rome’s sacred hearth was exchanged in Persia for an idea of holy fire which is male from start to finish.

The Sasanian Empire, controlling most of the territory between the River Indus and modern Egypt – and sometimes very much more – endured for roughly 400 years, from around 230 CE until the Islamic invasions of 650. It was effectively Rome’s only rival, and more than a match militarily: in 260 the Roman emperor Valerian was not just defeated by the Persian forces, but humiliatingly taken prisoner by them.

The predominant faith of the Sasanians was Zoroastrianism, a monotheistic code of ethics and rituals based on the teachings of the prophet Zoroaster – better known in Europe as Zarathustra – who may have lived around 1000 BCE. It is centred on the worship of one invisible supreme being, Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord, who requires of his followers truth, good thoughts, good words and good deeds: the consequence will be a just society. Ahura Mazda may not be seen, but one of the ways he may in some measure be apprehended is through fire. Purifying and immaterial, warming but destructive, the sacred fire of the Zoroastrians is not an object of worship in itself, but the focus of utmost reverence, serving to help those near it to concentrate on the purity of god and his truth.

Our gold dinar from the Sasanian Empire, struck between 273 and 276, clearly demonstrates the central political significance of this holy fire. On one side is the Sasanian Shah, with long flowing locks, wearing crown and diadem. He is Bahram I, who eventually negotiated with his counterpart in Rome a peace settlement in Syria: in 274 CE, Persian envoys processed through the streets of Rome, not as captives but as honoured guests in the Triumph of Emperor Aurelian. On the other side of our coin, two armed male attendants, elegant and elongated, lean on their tall staffs and respectfully look away from a central altar, on which the fire of Ahura Mazda burns. As in Rome, religious and political power meet and merge in a flame.

But the Iranian fire is radically different from the Roman one. Where Vesta’s single hearth stands symbolically for the whole Roman state, the highest form of Zoroastrian fire comes – literally, physically – from every part of its community. In a brilliantly conceived ritual, Zoroastrian priests take and combine different kinds of fire, from the hearths of bakers and metal-workers, priests and warriors, and so on: in all, fires from fourteen sectors of the community, combined and purified, until the whole of society is emblematically brought together in one shared flame. But to achieve the sacred fire, two further fires are needed. First, from a cremation pyre, so that the dead are joined to the living in reverence of Ahura Mazda; and lastly lightning, fire from the sky, binding earth to heaven. The whole process of constructing such a fire may take over two years and can require as many as thirty-two priests. The result is a sacred flame, known as Atash Behram, the fire of victory, to which everyone has symbolically contributed, a powerful emblem of a united society, linking past and present, human and divine. The fire we see on the back of Bahram I’s golden dinar is a tour de force of social theology.

The Sasanian Empire, with Zoroastrianism as its state religion, continued to flourish, while in Western Europe Rome stumbled, and for the three centuries after our coin Persian culture shaped much of the Middle East. But in the 640s, in the face of the Arab invasions, the empire collapsed with astonishing speed, and Islam became the new religion of the state. The sacred fire did not, however, disappear: it moved.

A group of Zoroastrians fled from Iran to settle in Gujarat in north-west India. Coming from Persia, they were known as Parsis, and, although small in number, the community still plays a significant part in modern India, especially in the commercial capital, Mumbai. According to tradition, the Parsis brought with them from Iran ash from a sacred fire, and in their new home set about consecrating, and then tending, a new holy flame. It is said that this flame has been unextinguished since 721, and it burns today in Udwada, in Gujarat.

Gold dinar of the Sasanian shah Bahram I, c.275 CE, with Bahram wearing a radiate crown (*above*), and a Zoroastrian fire altar with two armed attendants (*below*)

Entrance to the Zoroastrian fire temple, the Iranshah, at Udwada, in Gujarat. The fire is said to have been burning for over a millennium.

When you visit this remote, rather run-down seaside town a few hours’ drive north of Mumbai, in many ways reminiscent of a faded English coastal resort, it comes as something of a shock to see outside the Parsi fire-temple the sign ‘Iranshah’, announcing that this is the abode of a monarch, the king of Iran. As the high priest explains:

We always call fire ‘king’, or ‘shah’. The name Iranshah was given to it because after we left Iran, when we came to India as refugees, we knew that we would not be able to establish our kingdom here. There would be no physical, political king: instead the sacred fire became our king.

This, then, is a spiritual rather than a political kingdom, at the centre of which stands a sovereign in exile, a sacred fire, that continues its ancient purpose. The high priest goes on:

People say that we are fire worshippers, but we are not. Instead, fire is a medium through which we try to relate ourselves to Ahura Mazda, the Lord of Wisdom. Without fire, people can’t survive. Without heat, people can’t survive. Fire is everything.

The important thing is to live your life in such a way that you bring out the best in your spirit. If your thoughts are good, your words will become good. And if your thoughts and words are good, your deeds will become good. That is our religion.

Non-Zoroastrians are never permitted to enter the precinct of the Iranshah, or to see the Atash Bahram, the sacred fire. It really is treated very much like a king. In the centre of a square, railed-off precinct stands the dais for the silver urn which holds the flame. Overhead – as above a throne – hangs a silver crown, and above that a silver canopy. On the wall behind hang shield and swords: the Iranshah, the king of Iran, as befits his royal status, has his canopy, his guards and his throne. This sovereign fire is, as in all Zoroastrian fire-temples, carefully kept burning by priests, dressed in the purity of white, who wear masks to avoid inadvertently polluting the flames, which they feed with sandalwood and other noble aromatic woods offered by the faithful.

Zoroastrian priests encircling and tending fire in a temple in London

A set of six glazed ceramic tiles, made in Mumbai in the 1980s showing the sacred fire of the Parsis, with the tongs and ladle used for tending it. On the right is Zoroaster, on the left is the shah Lohrasp, traditionally believed to have been his patron. The architectural framework is clearly inspired by the ancient Persian capital, Persepolis.

But here the similarities to a conventional court end, because in front of this fire, in which all society is symbolically present, all society stands equal before Ahura Mazda. The high priest tells us:

When people come to pay their respects, there are no separate corners for men and women, for the rich and the poor, for the different strata of society. This is a universal community, drawn from across society. The main aim of this fire is to be communal and peaceful, with every class of society gathered around it. That is its basic purpose.

A particularly striking illustration of the possibilities of Parsi fire as the rallying point of the community was given a few years after the British left south Yemen in 1967. As the Parsis who had followed the British there in the nineteenth century began to move out, many of them to Mumbai, there were concerns about what would happen to the holy Atash Bahram fire, housed in the city of Aden, if there was nobody to tend it. In 1976, after much religious debate and international diplomacy, a Boeing 707 was specially kitted out to be able to carry a live fire. The plane was crewed only by Parsis, and it was sent to Aden by Air India, a company founded by a Parsi family, the Tatas. The Holy Atash landed safely in what was then Bombay. A migrant fire for a migrant community had once again moved on.

For Parsis, as for all Zoroastrians, fire still plays essentially the same religious and social role as it has throughout the centuries. In Rome, reverence for Vesta proved impressively resilient in the face of the Christianization of the empire, after Constantine’s conversion around 312: it was a symbol too deeply embedded in the mind, and the heart, of the people to be quickly cast aside, and for some decades even Christian emperors continued to honour and support the cult. But in 391 Emperor Theodosius ordered the closure of the temple in the Forum, and Vesta’s flame was finally extinguished. The last Vestal Virgin stood down in 394. Only a generation later, the Goths sacked Rome.

If Vesta’s flame has long been dead, its distant daughter is nonetheless burning brightly – in a state which has ostentatiously shorn itself of all religious identity, but still venerates a sacred fire. Under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris burns a flame of ultimate national significance, which is tended daily by a group dedicated to ensure that it never dies. First lit on 11 November 1923, and inaugurated by the Minister of War, General Maginot, it honours an unknown soldier of the First World War. Significantly, the association set up to look after it refers to it officially as La Flamme de la Nation, the ‘Flame of the Nation’, explaining that it not only honours the dead, but embodies the state’s confidence in its future. Like the fire of Vesta and the Atash Bahram, it must never go out. In a startling survival of a deeply embedded ritual, every evening, at 6.30 p.m. a small group performs the public ceremony of Le Ravivage de la Flamme, ‘the Keeping Alive of the Flame’ – former soldiers and schoolchildren together doing the duty of Vestal Virgins.

Inauguration of *La Flamme de la Nation* by General Maginot, 11 November 1923

As in Rome, the French flame quickly came to be seen as a symbol of national identity, uniting everybody in the nation, and the daily tending of it became so charged with meaning that it continued even under the German occupation in the Second World War. The first official public ceremony of the new President Macron in 2017 was to join his predecessor in paying tribute in front of La Flamme de la Nation.

The spirit of any community is hard to pin down and define, but there is, I think, a disconcerting aptness in this identification of the flourishing of a society with the survival of an insubstantial, flickering flame. Just as any fire will perish if it is not carefully tended and fed, so the institutions of a society will crumble if not constantly repaired and renewed. There is perhaps in the cult of the flame, as embodying the life of the state, a symbolic recognition of the fragility of all political institutions, and our obligation to be vigilant in keeping them in good repair.

Alongside fire lies a second element, also mysterious, essential to our survival, and also perilously difficult to manage – like fire with the potential for great destruction, but also for purity and new life. We shall encounter it next, as we find out how nature and faith, in their deepest patterns, seem not just to flame but to flow.