ritual · Roman

Prayer to Mars

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.

Commentarius · Commentary

In his handbook on farming Cato gives the owner the exact words for the annual purification of the land — the rite in which a pig, a sheep and a bull (suovetaurilia) are led around the boundary and then slaughtered.

This is the oldest continuous Latin prayer that has come down to us, and it reads like a legal document. Everything is doubled and tripled: "diseases seen and unseen", "ward off, avert and turn away", "barrenness and devastation, calamities and bad weather". The list is exhaustive not from eloquence but from caution: a harm left unnamed might fall outside the contract. The god is addressed as a party to an agreement who will perform exactly what was stipulated and not a hair more.

The archaism of the original is lost in translation. The forms prohibessis, siris, duis duonam were already old for Cato's own contemporaries.

Fons · Source

AuthorCato

WorkDe Agricultura

Section141

Period2nd c. BC

Occasionlustratio agri — purification of the farm / suovetaurilia

Classificatio · Taxonomy

CultureRoman

Formritual

DeitiesMars

FunctionsPetition · Protection · Dedication

SphereAgricultural