Carmenta, A Compendium of the Ancient Gods

Awaiting its plateBefore thisLua Saturni

Carmenta was a goddess of childbirth and prophetic utterance, and her name was derived from carmen, "song, charm, formula" — for the prophetic songs that were spoken in her honor were a kind of magical poetry that sealed the future as it was uttered. She was an old Italic goddess, but the legend that grew up around her was Greek-Italic: she had been the mother of Evander, the Arcadian king who came to Italy generations before the Trojan War and founded the settlement that would one day become Rome. She herself, prophesying upon Evander's arrival, foresaw the city's coming greatness.

Two assistants stood with her: Antevorta, who looked forward to the future birth (or the head-first delivery), and Postvorta, who looked backward to the breech (or to the past that the child was leaving). Together the three were petitioned by mothers in labor, and the Carmentalia was kept on the eleventh and fifteenth of January in the goddess's temple at the foot of the Capitoline, by the gate that took her name — the Porta Carmentalis. Only women might offer at the rite, and they came in white robes; the meat of any animal that had been killed by means of leather was forbidden, for some old reason that the Romans had forgotten.

Carmenta's prophetic role was older and more important than her childbirth role, but by Cicero's time she was associated chiefly with the latter. The Carmenta who had foreseen the founding of Rome belonged to the deep past; the Carmenta of contemporary worship was the protectress of the woman in labor, who whispered the right charm to ease delivery.

Curator’s note

What the sources say, and what later tradition added. The sources for this bay

Carmenta is described by Livy (1.7.8, the Evander connection), Ovid (Fasti 1.461-636, the great extended treatment with the Arcadian arrival in Italy), Plutarch (Roman Questions 56), and Aulus Gellius (16.16, the etymology and the assistants Antevorta and Postvorta). The Porta Carmentalis stood at the southwest corner of the Capitoline; its location is well-attested. The flamen Carmentalis, one of the lesser flamines, was responsible for her cult — an indication of its archaic standing in the priestly system.

When the sources speak

Dated witnesses for The Indigenous Italic Gods. A date marks when the evidence was written down, not when the belief began. The whole timeline

c. 1000–750 BCE: Iron Age communities of Latium and neighboring peoples develop the cult landscapes later absorbed into Roman tradition.
traditional 753 BCE: Roman foundation chronology places Romulus and the first civic institutions at the beginning of the city’s sacred history.
traditional 7th–6th centuries BCE: The regal period is credited with priesthoods, calendars, temples, and the organization of public rites.
509–264 BCE: Republican expansion incorporates Latin, Sabine, Etruscan, and Italian cults through treaty, migration, and evocatio.
264–146 BCE: Mediterranean conquest accelerates Greek interpretation and the importation or redefinition of foreign gods.
204 BCE: The Magna Mater is formally brought from Pessinus during the Second Punic War.
1st century BCE: Varro, Cicero, and other antiquarians document rites and divine names amid civil war and institutional change.
27 BCE–14 CE: Augustan restoration monumentalizes selected ancestral cults and rewrites Roman sacred history.