In the popular
religion of ancient Rome, though not appearing in literary
Roman mythology
Roman mythology is the body of myths of ancient Rome as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans. One of a wide variety of genres of Roman folklore, ''Roman mythology'' may also refer to the modern study of these representat ...
, the god Fabulinus (from ''fabulari'', to speak) taught children to speak. He received an offering when the child spoke its first words. He figured among what
Walter Pater
Walter Horatio Pater (4 August 1839 – 30 July 1894) was an English essayist, art critic and literary critic, and fiction writer, regarded as one of the great stylists. His first and most often reprinted book, ''Studies in the History of the Re ...
enumerated in ''
Marius the Epicurean
''Marius the Epicurean: his sensations and ideas'' is a historical and philosophical novel by Walter Pater (his only completed full-length fiction), written between 1881 and 1884, published in 1885 and set in 161–177 AD, in the Rome of the Ant ...
'' (1885) among:
the names of that populace of 'little gods', dear to the Roman home, which the pontiffs had placed on the sacred list of the ''Indigitamenta
In ancient Roman religion, the ''indigitamenta'' were lists of deities kept by the College of Pontiffs to assure that the correct divine names were invoked for public prayers. These lists or books probably described the nature of the various dei ...
'', to be invoked, because they can help, on special occasions, were not forgotten in the long litany— Vatican who causes the infant to utter his first cry, Fabulinus who prompts his first word, Cuba
Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...
who keeps him quiet in his cot, Domiduca especially, for whom Marius had through life a particular memory and devotion, the goddess who watches over one's safe coming home".[Pater, ''Marius the Epicurean'', ch. I, "The Religion of Numa".]
See also
*
List of Roman birth and childhood deities
In ancient Roman religion, birth and childhood deities were thought to care for every aspect of conception, pregnancy, childbirth, and child development. Some major deities of Roman religion had a specialized function they contributed to this ...
Notes
Knowledge gods
Roman gods
Childhood gods
{{AncientRome-myth-stub