The first point to be noticed here is that the same deity has two festival days, with an interval of three days between them. There is no exact parallel to this in the calendar, though there are several instances of something analogous[1290]. The Lemuria are on May 9, 11, 13; but here are three days, and no special deity. Kindred deities have their festivals separated by three days, as Consus and Ops (Aug. 21, 25); and we may compare the Fordicidia and Cerealia on April 15 and 19, and the Quinquatrus and Tubilustrium, both apparently sacred to Mars, on March 19 and 23. All festivals occur on days of uneven number; and if there was an extension to two or more days, the even numbers were passed over[1291]. But the Romans did not apparently consider the two Carmentalia to be two parts of the same festival, but two different festivals, or they would not have tried to account as they did for the origin of the second day. It was said to have been added by a victorious general who left Rome by the Porta Carmentalis to attack Fidenae[1292], or by the matrons who had refused to perform the function of women, in anger at being deprived by the Senate of the right of riding in _carpenta_; and who, when the decree was withdrawn, testified their satisfaction in this curious way. It does not seem possible to discover the real meaning of the double festival. It has been suggested[1293] that the two days represent the so-called Roman and Sabine cities, like the two bodies of Salii and Luperci. This guess is hardly an impossible one, but it is only a guess, and has nothing to support it but a casual statement by Plutarch that the Carmentalia were instituted at the time of the _synoikismos_ of Latin and Sabine cities[1294]. There is fortunately little doubt about the nature of Carmenta and the general meaning of the cult. In all the legends into which she was woven[1295] her most prominent characteristic is the gift of prophecy; she is the ‘vates fatidica,’ &c., Cecinit quae prima futuros Aeneadas magnos et nobile Pallanteum. So Ovid, at the end of his account of her: At felix _vates_, ut dis gratissima vixit, Possidet hunc Iani sic dea mense diem. The power is expressed in her very name, for _carmen_ signifies a spell, a charm, a prophecy, as well as a poem. Now there is clear evidence that either women alone had access to the temple at the Porta Carmentalis, or that they were the chief frequenters of it; and they are even said to have built a temple themselves[1296]. Where we find women worshipping a deity of prophecy we may be fairly sure that that deity also has some influence on childbirth. ‘The reason,’ writes the late Prof. Nettleship[1297], ‘why the Carmentes are worshipped by matrons is because they tell the fortunes of the children’—and also, surely, because they tell the fortunes of the women in childbirth[1298].