Prayer to Carmenta

The offering of a popanum in the modern order; for the general explanation see carmenta-001.

The formula is the same as in carmenta-002 — Cato's, with bonas preces precor and volens propitius — but with an added opening: "In your keeping, dearest Mother, in your keeping we are." The doubling in tua … in tua is a genuine device: Roman prayer likes to repeat a preposition in order to dwell on a word.

The popanum, however, is a Greek cake, πόπανον, and in Roman rite it turns up where the rite is deliberately kept in a Greek register: at the Secular Games for Apollo and Diana (apollo-006). For Carmentis, a thoroughly Roman and archaic goddess, the choice is odd.

The grammar limps again: carissime for carissima, propitius for propitia, nostri for nostris.