A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Carmenta, or Nicostrata
CARMENTA, or NICOSTRATA,
An ancient poetess of Latium, who flourished before the foundation of Rome, in which city divine honours were afterwards paid to her. According to Dionysius of Halicamassus, Carmenta was born in Arcadia, where she was known by her name of Nicostrata. Her son Evander being implicated in an unintentional homicide, she found means for an emigration, which she conducted herself, about sixty years prior to the Trojan war. She led her followers into Italy, and established her son as king of that country, which afterwards contained Rome. She found it inhabited by a savage race, without religion, without courtesy, without agriculture. She taught them to sow grain, she polished them by introducing poetry and music, and she built their first temple, and lifted their thoughts to a superintending Deity. For these great benefits she was revered as prophetess, priestess, and queen, and received her celebrated name of Carmenta, in allusion to the oracular power with which she was supposed to be gifted.
That she was a woman of great genius and a remarkably practical mind, there can be little doubt; as the Romans would not otherwise have acknowledged, for such a length of time, her talents and merits. In their proudest days, they never forgot the honours due to the benefactress of their rude ancestors. Cicero speaks of an officer in his day called Flamen Carmentalis, who had charge of the rites instituted by this ancient prophetess. Virgil alludes to this remarkable woman in the eighth book of the Æneid:—
——"Dehinc progressus, monstrat et aram,
Et Carmentalem Romano nomine imrtam,
Quam memorant Nymphæ priscum Cannentis honorem
Vatis fatidicæ."
It is supposed to be from her name that verses were called Carmina by the Latins. She was well skilled in the Greek language, and of extraordinary learning for the age in which she lived.