I
Cato, De Agricultura 141
Start with a contract. A Roman farmer walks his land, sacrifices, and tells Mars exactly what he expects in return: health for the household, the cattle, the crop. Nothing is implied and nothing is felt — the terms are stated. This is the shape most ancient prayer has, and everything that follows is a departure from it.
Father Mars, I pray and beseech thee that thou be gracious and merciful to me, my house, and my household; to which intent I have bidden this suovetaurilia to be led around my land, my ground, my farm; that thou keep away, ward off, and remove sickness, seen and unseen, barrenness and destruction, ruin and unseasonable influence; and that thou permit my harvests, my grain, my vineyards, and my plantations to flourish and to come to good issue, preserve in health my shepherds and my flocks, and give good health and strength to me, my house, and my household. To this intent, to the intent of purifying my farm, my land, my ground, and of making an expiation, as I have said, deign to accept the offering of these suckling victims; Father Mars, to the same intent deign to accept the offering of these suckling victims.
Read →II
Anonymous, CIL CIL III 8298
And here is the receipt. A Roman knight had vowed something to Diana; the goddess did her part, and he records that he is discharging his side of it — in stone, where it can be checked. The vow and its payment are two halves of one document.
Virgin Goddess of Delia, known for Your favoring grace, what offerings You demand I happily give.
Read →III
Fratres Arvales, Carmen Arvalium (CIL VI 2104)
Now go back as far as the language goes. This is the oldest Latin in the collection, and by the time it was carved the priests singing it no longer understood the words. Ancient prayer does not require comprehension; it requires exactness.
Lasas assist us, Lasas delight us, Lasas come to our aid! Neither plague nor ruin, Marmor, allow to be visited on us. But if however we are invaded, like Mars we shall leap across our borders to sate you with the blood of our enemies and stay the barbarians. Marmor assist us, Marmor defend us, Marmor come to our aid. Triumph, triumph, triumph, triumph, triumph!
Read →IV
Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.595-598
Not every prayer is a rite. Here someone is in trouble at sea and says so. No formula, no offering named — the register changes completely when the need is immediate.
O Neptune, who reigns over the realm of wandering waves, Bearer of the Trident, come to our aid, I pray, and undo her father's savagery. Neptune, grant her a safe haven, or else allow her to become a place herself, to live forever as one of Your nymphs.
Read →V
Anonymous (Homeric corpus), Homeric Hymns 6
Then prayer becomes literature. A Homeric hymn is sung before a performance, and the god is not so much asked for something as described at length and beautifully. The request, when it comes, is almost an afterthought.
I will sing of stately Aphrodite, gold-crowned and beautiful, whose dominion is the walled cities of all sea-set Kypros. There the moist breath of Zephyros the western wind wafted her over the waves of the loud-moaning sea in soft foam, and there the gold-filleted Horai welcomed her joyously... Hail, sweetly-winning, coy-eyed goddess! Grant that I may gain the victory in this contest, and order you my song. And now I will remember you and another song also.
Read →VI
Anonymous (Orphic corpus), Orphic Hymns 2
The Orphic hymns take the same move further, until the description is the whole prayer: a torrent of epithets, one god named twenty ways. Notice what it is for — childbirth. The most abstract poetry in the corpus is addressed to the most physical emergency in it.
O venerable Goddess, hear my prayer, for labour pains are thy peculiar care. In thee, when stretched upon the bed of grief, the sex, as in a mirror, view relief. Guard of the race, endued with gentle mind, to helpless youth benevolent and kind; benignant nourisher; great nature's key belongs to no divinity but thee. Thou dwellest with all immanifest to sight, and solemn festivals are thy delight. Thine is the task to loose the virgin's zone and thou in every work art seen and known. With births you sympathise, though pleased to see the numerous offspring of fertility. When racked with labour pangs, and sore distressed the sex invoke thee, as the soul's sure rest; for thou Eileithyia alone canst give relief to pain, which art attempts to ease, but tries in vain. Artemis Eileithyia, venerable power, who bringest relief in labour's dreadful hour; hear, Prothyraia and make the infant race thy constant care.
Read →VII
Ariphron, Paian to Hygeia
A hinge. Ariphron asks Health to live with him, then lists everything else worth having — wealth, children, power, love — and says that without her none of it is anything. The prayer has started to argue rather than to ask.
O' Hygeia of the Blissful Ones, you are most revered by mortals; with you I traverse the life remaining in me. For what is the joy of wealth or of children, or what brings people closer to the Gods? The power of a king or the secret lust brought by Aphrodite, or that obvious relief from pain which is the god sent delight. With you, blissful divine Hygeia, the company of the Kharites shine and bloom, without you, no one has well-being.
Read →VIII
Anonymous (inscription from Athens), Inscriptiones Graecae II³ 4, 939 ll. 30-42
One of two hymns cut on a single stone in Athens. The god here is a child, and he plays; his laughter brightens the faces of his priests. Rare permission, in ancient religion, for a god to be cheerful rather than powerful.
Hail then to me, O healer, O greatly honoured one, play, Telesphoros, play, hail — and you with your
Read →IX
Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 8.9.6-8
The highest stake anyone in this collection plays for. A consul, with the battle going badly, devotes the enemy army and himself to the gods below, and then rides into the enemy line to make the offer good. The contract from the first card, at the limit.
Janus, Jupiter, Father Mars, Quirinus, Bellona, Lares, You divine Novensiles and You divine Indigetes, deities whose power extends over us and over our foes, and to You, too, Divine Manes, I pray, I do You reverence, I crave Your grace and favour will bless the Roman People, the Quirites, with power and victory, and will visit fear, dread and death on the enemies of the Roman People, the Quirites. In like manner as I have uttered this prayer so do I now on behalf of the commonwealth of the Quirites, on behalf of the army, the legions, the auxiliaries of the Roman People, the Quirites, devote the legions and auxiliaries of the enemy, together with myself to Tellus and the Divine Manes.
Read →X
Hippocrates
Here the gods stop being the addressee. They are called on as witnesses to a promise made to other people — and that shift, from asking a god for something to swearing before one, is most of the distance between religion and ethics.
I swear by Apollon the physician, and Asklepios, and Hygeia, and Panakeia, and all the gods and goddesses, that, according to my ability and judgment, I will keep this Oath and this stipulation...
Read →XI
Anonymous, Greek Magical Papyri (PGM IV) 2785-2870
The boundary of the collection, included so that you can see where it runs. A magician's working notebook from Roman Egypt: names piled up without hierarchy, Greek beside Egyptian and Hebrew, on the principle that the more names you say the likelier one of them is the real one. Here one no longer asks but compels.
Come to me, O' beloved lady, three faced Selene, listen, with kindness, to my sacred chant. Youthful, exulted Jewel of the Night, bringing light to mortals; child of early dawn, riding joyfully on fierce bulls, O' Queen, driving the chariot along the path of Helios; In triple form, You dance, three-headed, with the three Kharites, revelling with the stars, and Dike and the threads of the Moirae; Klotho, and Lakhesis as well as Atropos, and Persephone, Megaira and Allecto. Multi-formed, your hands armed with the dreaded dark lamps, your mane of terrifying serpents shakes upon your brow, from your mouth is heard the roaring of bulls. Solitary, night-crier, bull-faced, bull-headed, you have the eyes of bulls, you have the voice of dogs, you hide amongst lions by taking their shape. Your ankles are wolf-shaped, fierce dogs are your friends, hence they call you Hekate, illustrious Mene, you dart through the air as arrow-shooting Artemis, four-faced goddess, of the four names, of the four roads. Artemis, Persephone, deer-shooting, night-shining, triple striking, triple sounding, triple headed, triple named Selene; three-pronged, triple-faced, triple-necked and of the triple roads. Come, graciously hear my call, You who oversees the wide world of the night, darkness voyaging Goddess; famed, easy-birthing, bull-faced, horned, mother of Gods and men, Nature's All-Mother. You frequent Olympos, traversing the broad and boundless abyss, You are the beginning and the end, You alone rule all.
Read →XII
Cleanthes
Thirty-seven lines, and a single request, right at the end: deliver us from ignorance. Everything before it explains why asking for a harvest would make no sense — in a world governed throughout by law, the one thing a person lacks is an understanding of that law.
Most glorious of the immortals, many-named, forever almighty, Zeus, first author of nature, steering all things by law —
Read →XIII
Cleanthes (preserved by Epictetus), Enchiridion 53
And the end of the road. Four lines by the same man, which ask for nothing whatever: lead me where I am assigned, I shall follow; and if I refuse, I shall become base and follow anyway. Six hundred years and a whole way of thinking separate this from the farmer counting his cattle — and both are prayers.
Lead me, O Zeus, and you too, Destiny, wherever I have been assigned by you;
Read →