Carmenta- Roman GodDeity"The Prophetess"

From Arcadia to the Palatine

Carmenta came to Italy from Arcadia with her son Evander when he was exiled from his homeland. In the Aeneid, Virgil describes her guiding Evander to the hill beside the Tiber where Rome would one day rise, and the two of them settled on the Palatine with a handful of followers. Ovid in the Fasti tells the same arrival but lingers on Carmenta's prophecy: standing on the riverbank, she declared that this ground would become the center of the world.

Her name came from carmen, the Latin word for prophetic song, and Romans heard it every time they spoke of incantations or ritual verses. Hyginus and later antiquarians credited her with adapting the Greek alphabet her people had carried from Arcadia into the Latin letters Romans wrote with. The Porta Carmentalis, the gate at the foot of the Capitoline, bore her name. Armies marched through it to war and returned through it in triumph.

The Carmentalia

Roman women invoked Carmenta during labor. She split into two faces for the work: Porrima, also called Antevorta, presided over children born headfirst, and Postvorta over breech births. One looked forward in time, the other backward, and together they held the moment of delivery between prophecy and memory. Ovid records this in the Fasti, and Gellius confirms the twin aspects in the Noctes Atticae.

Her festival fell on January 11 and 15. Women were forbidden to wear leather during the rites; only living material could enter the presence of a goddess who governed new life. Carmenta had her own priest, the flamen Carmentalis, one of the minor flamines, and her sanctuary stood beside her gate at the Capitoline's base.