A candidate for the Vestal order was chosen as a young girl, and from that day her whole life belonged not to a household but to the city itself

Selection legally transferred authority over the girl from her father to the state religious office, a permanent change of status under Roman law, not merely a change of address.

Roman accounts describe Vestal candidates as girls typically between six and ten years old, selected from eligible families by the Pontifex Maximus, sometimes narrowed by lot among several qualifying candidates. Selection removed the girl from her father's patria potestas, the near-absolute authority a Roman father held over his children, and placed her instead under the Pontifex Maximus and the college of Vestals. This transfer was not merely ceremonial: it changed her legal status for life, since a Vestal answered to the state's religious office rather than to a husband or father as other Roman women did. The principle names something structurally unusual for the ancient world — a woman's whole civic identity reassigned, at a young age, from family property to public trust.