Prayer to Juno

A hundred and ten matrons at the Secular Games of 17 BC pray to Juno Regina, and Marcus Agrippa prompts them: the women repeat after him. The number is not accidental — the saeculum according to the Sibylline books was a hundred and ten years, one matron to each year.

Genibus nixae — kneeling. For Romans this is rare: one prayed standing, with hands raised, and knees signified supplication at its extreme. The record notes the posture separately because it was not taken for granted.

Precamur oramus obsecramusque — we pray, we beseech, we entreat. Three near-synonymous verbs in a row: ritual language insures itself against any one word proving insufficient, as a legal document enumerates every form of an act.

Antiquities are frozen into the formula. Duelli domique preserves the archaic duellum for bellum; utique semper Latinus obtemperassit, that the Latin always obey, asks for the submission of the Latins three hundred years after the question had been settled for good.

To be read with caution. The stone is badly damaged: square brackets mark editorial restoration, and the figure "3" marks a lacuna of unknown length. A considerable part of the connected text here is reconstruction from the neighbouring prayers of the same inscription.