Aeneas Erects a Tomb to his Nurse, Caieta, and Flees the Country of Circe (Aeneid, Book VII)

In Roman mythology, Caieta (Ancient Greek: Καιήτη, Cāiēta) was the wet-nurse of Aeneas. The Roman poet Vergil locates her grave on the bay at Gaeta, to which she also gives her name (cf. Caietae Portus).[1] The poet Ovid, working a generation later, provides an epitaph:

HIC • ME • CAIETAM • NOTAE • PIETATIS • ALVMNUS
EREPTAM • ARGOLICO • QVO • DEBVIT • IGNE • CREMAVIT[2]

"Here me, Caieta, snatched from Grecian flames, my pious son consumed with fitting fire."[3] The fourth-century commentator Servius writes that there was some controversy about whose wet-nurse Caieta was: in addition to Aeneas, he offers Creusa and Ascanius as possibilities.[4]

References

  1. ^ Vergil Aeneid 7.1-4
  2. ^ Ovid Metamorphoses 14.443-444
  3. ^ Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Frank Justus Miller, Loeb Classical Library 43 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 331.
  4. ^ Servius In Vergili Aeneidem Commentarii 7.1
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