ritual · Roman

Prayer to Earth

Holy Goddess, Tellus, Mother of all Nature, engendering all things and regenerating them each day, as You alone bring forth from Your womb all things into life. Heavenly Goddess, overseeing all things on earth and throughout the seas, in whatever by silent nature is restored in sleep and in death, in the same way that You put to flight the Night with the Light You restore each day. Earth, Enricher of Life, You dispel the dark shadow of death and the disorder of vast endless Chaos. You hold back the winds and storms, the rain showers and tempests. You alone regulate the weather cycles. You give the Food of Life unfailingly, in fidelity, and when the soul by necessity departs, in You alone do we find refuge. Thus, whatever You give, in You all will be returned. Deservedly are You called Great Mother of the Gods. You are the Great Goddess, the Queen of Heaven. You, Goddess, I adore. I call upon Your power, come. Make what I ask to be readily and easily accomplished.

Commentarius · Commentary

The Precatio Terrae is the strangest Latin prayer in this collection and the least known. It reached us not through literature but through herbals and medical manuscripts: it was copied as a working formula, to be spoken before gathering plants.

The Earth in it is not the Roman Tellus of the furrow and the boundary stone but a universal deity. Rerum naturae parens, parent of the nature of things; she begets and begets again all things, disposes of sky and sea, covers the shades of Dis and immeasurable chaos, restrains the winds and lets them go when she pleases. This is nearer to the Egyptian aretalogies of Isis, and to the opening of Lucretius, than to anything in Roman ritual.

The construction is worth noting: an unbroken chain of clauses — quae, per quam, tu. The deity is defined by an inventory of what is done by her; there is no request in this part at all, and it comes in the second half of the prayer (tellus-002).

To be read with caution, on two counts. The attribution to Antonius Musa, Augustus' physician, is traditional and unsupported; Baehrens prints the prayer anonymously, and the card's dating (1st century BC to 1st century AD) rests on precisely that discarded attribution. The manuscript context allows a considerably later date. Beyond that, the text itself is unstable: the readings indidem, vitalia, concipit, attines, tete and Tuque illa vera es are the editor's conjectures against the manuscripts.

Fons · Source

AuthorAntonius Musa

WorkPrecatio Terrae

Period1st c. BC - 1st c. AD

Classificatio · Taxonomy

CultureRoman

Formritual

DeitiesEarth

FunctionsInvocation · Praise · Petition

SphereAgricultural · Personal