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:
“Between repetition and forgetting, it is a marvel that a new thought ever struggles into existence.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“When sins are dear to us we are too prone to slide into them again. The act of repentance itself is often sweetened with the thought that it clears our account for a repetition of the same sin.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“I look on trade and every mechanical craft as education also. But let me discriminate what is precious herein. There is in each of these works an act of invention, an intellectual step, or short series of steps taken; that act or step is the spiritual act; all the rest is mere repetition of the same a thousand times.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)