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Prayers to Minerva

6 prayers

Minerva is asked for competence. The prayers come from craftsmen, teachers, doctors and writers — the trades that kept her March festival, the Quinquatrus — and they ask for skill in the work rather than for victory or fertility.

What is asked
Fontes · Sources
  • Cicero · De Domo sua ad Pontifices1
  • Livy · Ab Urbe Condita1
  • Ovid · Fasti1
  • Seneca · Hercules Furens1
  • Statius · Thebaid1
  • Virgil · Aeneid1
Orationes · The texts
  1. 001

    Prayer to Minerva

    Cicero · De Domo sua ad Pontifices · 144

    O Minerva, You have always come to my aid with Your counsels, witness to the existence of my works.

    RomanGratitudeInvocation
  2. 002

    Prayer to Minerva

    Seneca · Hercules Furens · 900

    To you, you alone, O warlike Pallas Minerva, I pray, friend and companion in all my toils; Tamer of Lycurgus, ivy wreathed you crossed the eastern seas, bearing the Thyrsus in your hand; and you divine twins, Apollo and Diana, hear my prayer.

    RomanInvocationPetition
  3. 003

    Prayer to Minerva

    Statius · Thebaid · 2.715-729

    Proud, warlike Goddess, great honor and wisdom of Your Father, powerful in war are You, on whom the grim helmet is borne with its frightful decoration, speckled with the Gorgon's blood that glows more violent with increasing rage. May You with Your nod accept this sacrificial offering. Should I return to my Parthaonian fields, then amid her hills I shall dedicate to you a golden temple where a hundred Calydonian virgins will serve in devotions at your altar.

    RomanPetitionDedicationOath
  4. 004

    Prayer to Minerva

    Ovid · Fasti · 6.652

    Come now, golden haired Minerva, to favor the task I've begun.

    RomanInvocation
  5. 005

    Prayer to Jupiter

    Livy · Ab Urbe Condita · 6.16.1

    Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Juno Regina, Minerva, and all you other gods and goddesses who dwell upon the Capitolium and the Arx, is this how you allow your defender, the protector of your shrines, to be treated, to be vexed and harassed by his enemies in this manner? Shall this right arm which drove the Gauls headlong from your shrines now be bound and chained?

    RomanPetitionOath
  6. 006

    Prayer to Minerva

    Virgil · Aeneid · 11.483-485

    Diana, skillful in arms, leader in battle and guardian of soldiers, with Your hand, Tritonian Virgin, shatter the spear of this Phrygian pirate; throw him to the ground and stretch him out prostrate beneath our high gate.

    RomanPetitionProtection
Invoked alongside
Apollo1Diana1Juno1Jupiter1
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