In Ancient Rome, carmen was generally used to signify a verse, but in its proper sense, it referred to a spell or prayer, form of expiation, execration, etc.
[1] The term carmen is derived from the root canere (meaning "to sing") with the passive nominal ending -men (therefore "a thing sung," cf.
Tibullus, in a poem in which he complains that an old woman has bewitched Marathus, takes the opportunity to recount various feats of witches, such as transferring crops from one field to another.
However, these prayers, even in the form in which they are found in Cato, are predominantly spondaic, in keeping with the slow movement of the chant and with the solemn religious character of the rites.
W. Warde Fowler, who on the whole is not inclined to identify spell and prayer, writes in The Religious Experience of the Roman People (1911) that the verses "seem certainly to belong rather to the region of magic than of religion proper."