ritual · Roman

Prayer to Carmenta

Hail, Carmentis, Goddess of song and prophecy. From Your father Sebathus, Telon, king of the Taphonians, took You away from the river shores of Naples to the isle of Capree, there as Bateia, wife of Oebalus, to become mother to Spartans and Sabines alike. From Campania You set sail with Your son Evander up the River Tiber, showing him where to make land, and teaching him the songs by which to found Paletum. In Your sacred grove beneath the Palatine Hill You sang as Nicostrate the rites by which Hercules was to honor His Father Jupiter. There, too, You met with Dardanian Aeneas, singing for him the vision of Rome that his generations would found upon the Septimonium. There in Your sacred grove you sang to the infant twins as they were nurtured by a she-wolf.

Commentarius · Commentary

This is a modern text. The Ritus Carmentis is a rite composed by Nova Roma, an organisation devoted to reviving Roman religion; the provenance field reads modern, and the card cannot be read without that mark.

Its content is a composite biography of the goddess such as no ancient author tells. Individual links are genuine: Carmenta-Nicostrate, mother of Evander, who sailed with him to Italy and pointed out the site of the future Rome, is a well-known tradition; Telon, king of the Teleboae, and Oebalus on Capri are in Virgil. But the joining of all this into a single life — from a father Sebatus and Naples by way of Capri and Sparta to the Sabines and the Palatine — is modern work.

There is nothing to condemn in that: a reconstruction is a reconstruction, and its author did not present it as a discovery. The corpus's business is not to forbid such texts but to label them, so that a reader knows what is in hand.

This case should, however, be distinguished from others in the same set. On cards carmenta-004, carmenta-010 and carmenta-011 genuine ancient lines that have nothing to do with Carmenta stand as prayers to her — those are substitutions. Here nothing has been substituted: the text is simply new.

Fons · Source

AuthorAnonymous

WorkRitus Carmentis

SectionHail prayer

Periodmodern reconstruction (Nova Roma)

Classificatio · Taxonomy

CultureRoman

Formritual

DeitiesCarmenta

FunctionsPraise · Invocation

SphereCivic · Arts & Poetry