What does the word carmen mean in ancient Rome?
In ancient Rome, carmen generally signified a verse, but in its proper sense it meant a spell, a prayer, or a form of expiation. Surviving examples include the Carmen Arvale and the Carmen Saliare.
Questions about Carmen (verse)
Short answers, pulled from the story.
Where does the Latin word carmen come from?
Carmen comes from the root verb canere, meaning to sing, combined with the passive ending -men, so it literally meant a thing sung. The same word-building pattern appears in flumen, from fluere, and numen, from nuere.
What happened when the freedman Furius was accused of using carmen on his crops?
Pliny the Elder recorded that Furius grew richer crops from a smaller plot than his neighbor by using better tools and methods. His neighbor accused him before the Roman tribes of bewitching his field with a carmen, but the tribes acquitted him once they saw his sturdy slaves and his real farming tools, hoes, rakes, and ploughs.
How many times did the carmen incantation in Virgil's eighth Eclogue have to be repeated?
The incantation of the lover in Virgil's eighth Eclogue was repeated nine times.
How many times were the verses of the Carmen Saliare chanted?
Each verse of the Carmen Saliare was chanted three times, matching the threefold measure in which the Leaping Priests of Mars danced.
What did W. Warde Fowler say about the Carmen Saliare in 1911?
W. Warde Fowler wrote in The Religious Experience of the Roman People, published in 1911, that the verses of the Carmen Saliare "seem certainly to belong rather to the region of magic than of religion proper."