Repetition
Repetition characterized the magic incantation. For instance, the incantation of the lover in Virgil's eighth Eclogue, already referred to, was repeated nine times; the incantation which the witch formulated for Tibullus had to be uttered three times. At the conclusion of the prayer to Pales is the following: "With these words the goddess must be appeased. So do you, facing the east, utter them four times...." The verses of the Carmen Saliare were each chanted three times, as the Leaping Priests of Mars danced in threefold measure. W. Warde Fowler, who on the whole is not inclined to identify spell and prayer, writes in The Religious Experience of the Roman People (1911) that the verses "seem certainly to belong rather to the region of magic than of religion proper." Repetition was also characteristic of the Carmen Arvale and the prayer of the Fratres Attiedii.
Read more about this topic: Carmen (verse)
Famous quotes containing the word repetition:
“The echo is, to some extent, an original sound, and therein is the magic and charm of it. It is not merely a repetition of what was worth repeating in the bell, but partly the voice of the wood; the same trivial words and notes sung by a wood-nymph.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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“Change is upsetting. Repetition is tedious. Three cheers for variation!”
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