Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jul 5, 2026

Caieta

In Roman mythology, Caieta 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. The poet Ovid, working a generation later, provides an epitaph:

Last revised
Jul 5, 2026
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Wikipedia ↗
Aeneas Erects a Tomb to his Nurse, Caieta, and Flees the Country of Circe (Aeneid, Book VII) source ↗

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:2

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

"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

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