Prayer to Carmenta

The address to Carmentis and her sisters Porrima and Postvorta that opens the modern order of the Carmentalia.

This is not an ancient text. "Ritus Carmentis" is the name under which reconstructions of the rite circulate, composed in our own time by the Nova Roma community: the Latin is written in imitation of genuine formulae and assembled from scattered passages of Virgil and Ovid. There is no ancient original behind it and there never will be. The provenance has been corrected from ancient to modern; the period field read "Archaic", a contradiction left over from the original attribution, and has been corrected too.

This card serves as the anchor for all ten carmenta-* cards: the shared explanation is given here once, and the others refer back to it.

The work, it must be said, is not incompetent. Porrima and Postvorta are Carmentis' genuine companions, goddesses who look backward and forward, and "anima laeta veni" rests on real evidence. But three cards in this set are built quite differently and far worse: there a genuine ancient line is taken and the desired deity substituted into it. Analysed in carmenta-004 (Tibullus 3.10.1), carmenta-010 and carmenta-011 (Livius Andronicus).