Carmen Arvale

The Carmen Arvale is the preserved chant of the Arval priests or Fratres Arvales of ancient Rome. The Carmen Arvale is preserved on an inscription discovered in 1778 during the construction of a sacrarium for Pope Pius VI, which—according to the classicist Arthur E. Gordon—is perhaps to be identified with the Sagrestia of St. Peter's Basilica. On the back of the inscription, there is mention of the emperor and the consul Marcus Oclatinius Adventus, thereby implying a date of 218 CE. The song is only a component of the broader inscription, which also describes the proceedings of a celebration of the goddess Dea Dia.

Although the inscription was probably created in 218, it is possible that the song itself may date back to the 4th-century BCE, as it is written in an archaic form of Old Latin. The text includes numerous archaic Latin forms, such as "lases" instead of "lares," though still contains later forms such as "iuvate." Furthermore, the text contains multiple separate forms of the same word, such as the varying forms pleores and pleoris. It is perhaps possible that the song was orally transmitted for centuries before eventually being codified at a later date, perhaps with a series of successive alterations to the text, thereby explaining the mixture of archaic and later Latin forms. It is alternatively possible that the text may have been created by an Augustan scholar, who perhaps modeled the song after other ancient Latin writings, such as the Carmen Saliare. However, the philologist Zoa Alonso Fernández considers such a hypothesis to be "almost impossible to prove." Fernández does, however, suggest the possibility that the inscription may have served to legitimize the rule of Emperor Elagabalus (r. 218–222), who is mentioned in the accompanying text as a new member of the Arval Brotherhood and who, historically, had only recently overthrown the previous emperor Macrinus.

According to Gordon, throughout the inscription, the majority of the letters assume various different shapes, and they are often easily confused with other. Due to these discrepancies, Gordon suggests that the stonecutter must have copied from a handwritten source, thereby incurring the natural stylistic variation of handwriting. Moreover, Gordon argues that the craftsman himself probably did not fully understand the contents of the text. While passages of this text are obscure, Gordon nevertheless considers the correct reading of much of the inscription to be "clear." Likewise, the classicist Philip Baldi, despite agreeing that the general meaning of the text is clear, states that interpretations of the song can "vary wildly." 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."

The request for the protection of Mars is consistent with a general characterization of Mars as a guardian deity. Similarly, in another text—a prayer recorded by Cato the Elder—a peasant performs a lustration around their fields and calls upon Mars to protect their land from a variety of misfortunes. The term "Semunis" is probably to be connected with the name Semo, which appears as an epithet of Sancus in other Roman writings. According to the philologist Michael Weiss, the text of the song indicates that Mars was summoning forth the Semones. In particular, Weiss notes the usage of the term "advocapit," which Weiss to compares to a passage from Seneca the Younger in which the verb advoco is utilized to describe Jupiter summoning a group of deities. Weiss concludes that the Semones—within this song—were connected with the god Mars and may have served as his retinue.