Instead, his own fate is mirrored in Carmentis’ first speech, on the topic of exile. She strikingly contrasts with the poet Ovid, who will not receive similar honors. Carmentis both prophesies and prefigures what will become an entire chain of deifications of members of the house of Augustus, and she is deified herself.
Harking back to Aeneid 8, where Carmentis is mentioned in passing, Ovid presents her in a new light: as a vates of exile and deification.
In Fasti 1, the festival dedicated to Carmentis, a prophetess ( vates) named after carmen, “song” itself, has strong programmatic implications for Ovid’s own song and his vatic persona.
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