Proca and Carna Coloring Pages
The Romans believed the scariest thing at night wasn't a monster in the forest. It was a strix at the nursery window. This is their story of the night the striges came for a baby prince, and the goddess of doorways who sent them packing.
It also has a lovely twist at the end for anyone who knows how Rome was founded.
Jump to: A Little Prince | The Window | Carna | Beans
A Very Small Prince
Long before Rome was built, the kings of a nearby city called Alba Longa lived in a palace in the hills. One of their babies was a little prince named Proca, and when this story begins he was only five days old. He spent most of his time asleep and the rest of it eating, which is exactly what a five-day-old prince is supposed to do.
His nurse rocked him to sleep each evening and tucked him into his cradle by the window. Nobody in the palace was thinking about owls. That turned out to be a mistake, because the striges were always on the lookout for a baby left alone in the dark, and they weren't fussy about whether he was royal.
Something at the Window
Striges looked like owls whose heads were much too big for their bodies, with wide staring eyes above a beak hooked like a fishhook. They flew at night and squeezed through any gap they could find, and that night they found the one by Proca's cradle.
The nurse heard a thin little cry and came running with a lamp. The birds were already gone, but the baby's soft cheeks were scratched and he'd turned pale and quiet. The nurse knew right away what had been in the room. The whole palace was frightened, since nobody had any idea how to keep the striges from coming back.
Carna, The Goddess of Hinges
Help came from Carna, a goddess with an unusual job... she was a goddess with power over hinges (yep, the Romans had a goddess of hinges). Carna could open anything that was shut and shut anything that was open. If something was sneaking into a nursery, she was exactly who you wanted.
Carna went straight to Proca's room and tapped the doorposts three times with leaves from a strawberry tree, a tree whose bumpy round fruit looks like strawberries but isn't. She marked the doorstep three times as well and sprinkled the doorway with water.
Last of all she set a branch of whitethorn in the window, the plant no strix would go near. Whitethorn is usually thought to be hawthorn, and either way the striges never came back to that window again.
A King and a Bowl of Beans
By morning the color had come back into Proca's cheeks. He grew up safe and strong and became king of Alba Longa, and one of his grandchildren had twin boys named Romulus and Remus. They were the very twins who were raised by a she-wolf and went on to found Rome, so in a roundabout way Carna, the goddess of hinges saved the whole city of Rome before it was even built... with just with a handful of leaves and a few drops of water.
The Romans didn't forget Carna. On the first of June they held her festival, and everyone sat down to a warm bowl of beans cooked with bacon.
People said it kept your tummy healthy all year, which is a much easier tradition to keep up than hanging whitethorn in the window.
Fun Fact: The two-faced god who gave Carna her power was Janus, and the month of January is named after him.
One of his faces looked back at the old year while the other looked ahead to the new one.