by Horatius Piscinus on Tue Jan 27, 2004 11:07 pm
Salve mi Draco
Vates and sagae both can mean very different things, depending on context. Vates can be applied to women who healed primarily by reciting charms. In one sense they can be thought as priests and priestesses that you would find at a temple, and one of their functions at a temple would bejust this, to offer healing spells like the one found in Cato Agricultura. I seem to recall Pliny mentioning such a form of healing at temples when discussing a history of medicine at Rome. Such charms, or carmina, would be put into the versus Saturnius, and thus the vates who would make up such charms as were needed, impromtu would also be poetae vates. At times though you find the term applied to what we would think of as a poet, (I think Ovid may refer to himself one time as a vates). At other times it can refer to a charm spinning witch, in a good sense. For the latter, I think there is an example in Horace where the vates provide a love charm. She might also be thought to refer to a woman who would have been a common figure in Italian villages well into the twentieth century. She is a healer, maybe using charms or herbs, relying mainly on folk remedies. Both vates and sagae cross over to becoming a kind of witch figure when they lend love charms as well as curing charms. Then, too, vates were also said to be able to whip up poetic charms to curse fruit trees, change the weather, pull down the moon and the whole assortment of witchery that is commonly found in the Latin literature I pointed out earlier.
Cura valeas, mi amice
M Horatius Piscinus
Sapere aude!