Carmen Arvale
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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 Dea Dia, and offered sacrifices to her to ensure the fertility of ploughed fields (Latin arvum). There were twelve Arval priests, chosen from patrician families. During the Roman Empire the Emperor was always an Arval priest. They retained the office for life, even if disgraced or exiled. Their most important festival, the Ambarvalia, occurred during the month of May, in a grove dedicated to Dea Dia.
The Carmen Arvale is preserved in an inscription of AD 218 which contains records of the meetings of the Arval Brethren, but is in a more archaic stage of Old Latin, likely not fully understood any more at the time the inscription was made. The inscription is written without spaces and contains numerous errors. One of its interpretations goes as follows:
- enos Lases iuuate
- enos Lases iuuate
- enos Lases iuuate
- neue lue rue Marmar sins incurrere in pleores
- neue lue rue Marmar sins incurrere in pleores
- neue lue rue Marmar sins incurrere in pleores
- satur fu, fere Mars, limen sali, sta berber
- satur fu, fere Mars, limen sali, sta berber
- satur fu, fere Mars, limen sali, sta berber
- semunis alternei aduo capit conctos
- semunis alternei aduo capit conctos
- semunis alternei aduo capit conctos
- enos Marmor iuuato
- enos Marmor iuuato
- enos Marmor iuuato
- triumpe triumpe triumpe triumpe triumpe
While passages of this text are obscure, the traditional interpretation makes the chant a prayer to seek aid of Mars and the Lares (lases), beseeching Mars not to let plagues or disasters overtake in the fields, asking him to be satiated, and dance, and call forth the "Semones", who may represent sacred sowers. (Cf. Semo Sancus, a god of agriculture and fidelity.) Semones are minor tutelary deities, in particular Sancus, Priapus, Faunus, all Vertumni, all Silvani, Bona Dea.
limen sali, sta means jump over the barrier, stand in standard Latin and probably is an instruction for the dancing priests,
which doesn't belong to the archaic text. Similar instruction for the dancing priests is probably incurrere, but incurre
in other version.
The original text is visualized in [1]. The visualizations contain the word alternei. Hence
alterne i ad duo might be an instruction too.
Unclear image of the carving can be found in Baldi<ref>[2] Philip Baldi, The foundations of Latin, 1999 - Foreign Language Study</ref>.
See also
