In
Ancient Rome
In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 B ...
, ''carmen'' was generally used to signify a
verse, but in its proper sense, it referred to a
spell or
prayer
Prayer is an invocation or act that seeks to activate a rapport with an object of worship through deliberate communication. In the narrow sense, the term refers to an act of supplication or intercession directed towards a deity or a deified a ...
, form of
expiation
Propitiation is the act of appeasing or making well-disposed a deity, thus incurring divine favor or avoiding divine retribution. While some use the term interchangeably with expiation, others draw a sharp distinction between the two. The discuss ...
,
execration, etc. Surviving examples include the ''
Carmen Arvale
The ''Carmen Arvale'' is the preserved chant of the Arval priests or ''Fratres Arvales'' of ancient Rome.
The Arval priests were devoted to the goddess Dia, and offered sacrifices to her to ensure the fertility of ploughed fields (Latin ''ar ...
'' and the ''
Carmen Saliare
The ''Carmen Saliare'' is a fragment of archaic Latin, which played a part in the rituals performed by the Salii (Salian priests, a.k.a. "leaping priests") of Ancient Rome. There are 35 extant fragments of the ''Carmen Saliare'', which can be r ...
''.
Etymology
The term ''carmen'' is derived from the root ''canere'' (meaning "to sing") with the passive nominal ending -''men'' (therefore "a thing sung," cf. ''flumen'' from ''fluere'' or ''numen'' from ''nuere'').
Purposes
Spells and incantations were used for a variety of purposes. If a spell was intended to harm someone, the State could interfere to protect him. For instance, it was not unusual for a farmer whose crops had failed to accuse another farmer of having, by a ''carmen'', lured the crops away.
Tibullus
Albius Tibullus ( BC19 BC) was a Latin poet and writer of elegies. His first and second books of poetry are extant; many other texts attributed to him are of questionable origins.
Little is known about the life of Tibullus. There are only a fe ...
, in a poem in which he complains that an old woman has bewitched Marathus, takes the opportunity to recount various feats of witches, such as transferring crops from one field to another. Similarly,
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic '' ...
records in ''
Naturalis historia
The ''Natural History'' ( la, Naturalis historia) is a work by Pliny the Elder. The largest single work to have survived from the Roman Empire to the modern day, the ''Natural History'' compiles information gleaned from other ancient authors. ...
'' (XVIII. 8) that a certain
freedman
A freedman or freedwoman is a formerly enslaved person who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, enslaved people were freed by manumission (granted freedom by their captor-owners), emancipation (granted freedom a ...
, Furius, by using better implements and better methods than his neighbour, obtained richer crops from a smaller strip of land. A neighbour compelled Furius to go before the tribes and accused him of having bewitched his field. But when the tribes saw his sturdy slaves and his implements of witchcraft—hoes, rakes, and ploughs—they acquitted him.
[Burriss, Eli Edward. ]
Taboo, Magic, Spirits: A Study of Primitive Elements in Roman Religion
'. New York, Macmillan Company. 1931. Public domain.
Chanting
That incantations were chanted is a matter of common observance and scarcely needs illustration. For example, in magic rites, the purpose of which was to induce a dislocated or broken bone to come together, the incantation was sung (''cantare''). Tibullus writes that a witch composed a charm for him, to be chanted three times, after which he had to spit; then Delia's husband would believe gossip about other lovers of Delia, but not about her and Tibullus.
The two oldest prayers of the Romans which are still known—the ''
Carmen Arvale
The ''Carmen Arvale'' is the preserved chant of the Arval priests or ''Fratres Arvales'' of ancient Rome.
The Arval priests were devoted to the goddess Dia, and offered sacrifices to her to ensure the fertility of ploughed fields (Latin ''ar ...
'' and the ''
Carmen Saliare
The ''Carmen Saliare'' is a fragment of archaic Latin, which played a part in the rituals performed by the Salii (Salian priests, a.k.a. "leaping priests") of Ancient Rome. There are 35 extant fragments of the ''Carmen Saliare'', which can be r ...
''—were both chanted.
Livy
Titus Livius (; 59 BC – AD 17), known in English as Livy ( ), was a Ancient Rome, Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled , covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome before the traditiona ...
writes that "the leaping priests went through the city chanting their hymns." There is reason to believe that the old prayers which
Cato has preserved in his treatise
on agriculture were originally in metrical form; but in the directions given to the worshiper, the verb ''dicito'', and not ''cantato'', precedes the prayer, showing that, in Cato's time at least, such prayers were ''spoken'' rather than sung. However, these prayers, even in the form in which they are found in Cato, are predominantly
spondaic
A spondee (Latin: ) is a metrical foot consisting of two long syllables, as determined by syllable weight in classical meters, or two stressed syllables in modern meters. The word comes from the Greek , , 'libation'.
Spondees in Ancient Greek a ...
, in keeping with the slow movement of the chant and with the solemn religious character of the rites. In ceremonies intended to bring thunderbolts down from the sky, incantations were used.
Repetition
Repetition characterized the magic incantation. For instance, the incantation of the lover in
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: t ...
's eighth ''
Eclogue
An eclogue is a poem in a classical style on a pastoral subject. Poems in the genre are sometimes also called bucolics.
Overview
The form of the word ''eclogue'' in contemporary English developed from Middle English , which came from Latin , whi ...
'', already referred to, was repeated nine times; the incantation which the witch formulated for Tibullus had to be uttered three times. At the conclusion of the prayer to
Pales
In ancient Roman religion, Pales was a deity of shepherds, flocks and livestock. Regarded as male by some sources and female by others, ''Pales'' can be either singular or plural in Latin, and refers at least once to a pair of deities.
Pales' fes ...
is the following: "With these words the goddess must be appeased. So do you, facing the east, utter them four times…." The verses of the ''Carmen Saliare'' were each chanted three times, as the Leaping Priests of
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury (planet), Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Mars (mythology), Roman god of war. Mars is a terr ...
danced in threefold measure.
W. Warde Fowler, who on the whole is not inclined to identify spell and prayer, writes in ''The Religious Experience of the Roman People'' (1911) that the verses "seem certainly to belong rather to the region of magic than of religion proper." Repetition was also characteristic of the ''Carmen Arvale'' and the prayer of the
Fratres Attiedii
' (meaning "brothers" in Latin) is a musical work by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt exemplifying his tintinnabuli style of composition. It is three-part music, written in 1977, ''without fixed instrumentation'' and has been described as a †...
.
References
{{Authority control
Roman mythology
Ancient Roman religion
Prayer
Poetic forms