Cardea
.JPG)
Cardea ( Latin cardo "door hinge", "hinge") was the goddess of thresholds, door hinges and door handles in the Roman religion .
Like Forculus , the god of the doorpost, and Limentinus , the god of the doorstep, she belongs to the ranks of the special Roman deities . Their confusion with the very different Carna , a goddess of health, goes back to Ovid , who tells the following story in the Fasti :
Cardea, originally called Carne , was a beautiful nymph in the grove of Helernus on the Tiber. When an admirer asked her to meet, she said that she was so ashamed in the open air that he should go ahead of her into a bush or to a cave. As soon as her admirer did that and thus let her out of sight, she slipped into the bushes. But she couldn't cheat the double- faced Janus like that and Cardea had to keep her promise.
In gratitude, Janus gave her the power of the door hinges and door handles. With the magic of the hawthorn she was able to protect children from blood-sucking strigens and witches . Ovid said of Cardea: “Your power is to open what is closed; to close what is open. ”What Ovid goes on to tell about the festive custom on the calends of Junius relates to Carna.
literature
- Emil Aust : Cardea . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume III, 2, Stuttgart 1899, Sp. 1586 f.
- Emil Aust: Carna . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume III, 2, Stuttgart 1899, Col. 1597 f.
- Fritz Graf : Carna. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 2, Metzler, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-476-01472-X , Sp. 991-993.
- Georg Wissowa : Carna . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 1,1, Leipzig 1886, Col. 854 f. ( Digitized version ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Tertullian De idolatria 15; Ad nationes 2.15; De corona 13; Scorpiace 10; Augustine De civitate dei 4,8; 6.7.
- ↑ Ovid Fasti 6,101-130.
- ↑ Ovid Fasti 6,165ff.