Happy Carmentalia!

Today is the first day of Carmentalia, which was an Ancient Roman festival celebrating the oracle Carmenta. The prophetess was the mother of Evander, who founded Rome...er...sorta. Evander built the city Pallantium near the Capitoline Hill, which was later incorporated into Rome after Romulus clubbed his brother in the head with a shovel. You remember that back story, right?

Anyway, Evander was there to welcome Aeneas to the peninsula when Aeneas got done fighting that pesky little dust up called the "Trojan War", and the subsequent unassing of the place once the Greeks did that whole "surprise, is us inside horse!" trick. Oh, yeah, and Aeneas went to Carthage for a while to bone Dido. "Thank You", indeed.

Sorry, I've gotten a bit off track. I'm still weeping over the fucking Packers shitting the bed choking on their successes from the week before. Say, is there room for one more on that Vikings' bandwagon? As a wise man once said, "Football makes strange bed fellows." A sage, that one, I tell you.

Have I digressed further? Shame on me.

Anyway, Carmenta was originally named Nicostrate, but since she was so damned good at her job (which was prophecy), she had her name changed to "Carmenta", because "carmen" in Latin means "a song, a poem, an oracle" and can also be defined as "a magical spell", and it is from where we pick up the word "charm". When Carmenta died, she was deified and became the goddess of prophecy and also childbirth.

However, her most important and famous gift to humanity was in creating the Latin alphabet, supposedly by changing 15 of the Greek letters to their Roman counterparts. The Romans only used 24 letters (remember, no W, no J), so they had to pick up nine other letters from elsewhere. Most of them came from the Etruscans in the early days when the Romans were trying to assert their authority over the other tribes in the area. Carmenta made the Roman alphabet, which she gave to Evander. Evander, in turn, showed the letters to the Latins, who in turn used it to write down their language, which eventually begat a certain Friday series. So, we should be thankful, otherwise this blog would just be Greek to me...

Sorry about the bad pun. I had a much better joke there, but apparently Blogger doesn't allow you to cut and paste in Greek letters. Harumph. Kind of killed the momentum.

Anyway, since she was the Roman Goddess of childbirth, her festival days (January 11 and January 15) were celebrated mainly by women. Not much is known about the celebration other than the fairer sex were the chief celebrators. From the extensive study I've put into what women do when they are together with one another, I can only assume that the women of Rome would gather at Carmenta's temple, strip to their panties, garter belts and stockings, (bras optional) and have a pillow fight. A sexy pillow fight!

With that in mind...ladies...I suggest that we reinitiate the celebration of Carmentalia in all it's pillow-fight glory. Just, uh, conveniently leave a ladder outside the temple, okay?