Thank you both for your excellent posts! Very interesting.

As it happens, Maria, your description rang a bell and I thought I must have read it some time during the last months (as I usually don't remember anything I have read earlier than during the last months *G*). So I checked and found it in William Smith's excellent (Victorian time) dictionary of Greek and Roman antiquities, which is available at Lacus Curtius.


"The first of the following cuts, copied from a gem (Montfaucon, Ant. Expense. i. pl.xxviii, Supplem. i. pl.xxiii), represents the Vestal Tuccia who when wrongfully accused appealed to the goddess to vindicate her honour, and had power given her to carry a sieve full of water from the Tiber to the temple (Val. Max. viii.1 §5; Plin. H.N. xxviii.2). The form of the upper garment is here well seen."

Source: http://www.ku.edu/history/index/europe/ancient_rome/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Vestales.html Take a look at the page as it even includes an image for Tuccia (I didn't want to steal their bandwidth and link it here).

Smith's Dictionary (index): http://www.ukans.edu/history/index/europe/ancient_rome/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/home*.html

Lacus Curtius: http://www.ukans.edu/history/index/europe/ancient_rome/E/Roman/home.html