PARCA. – Par(i)ca, from Lat. pario = “I give birth” (etymologies from parco and partior are to be rejected), is the goddess, originally conceived as a single deity, who presides over birth. The number subsequently became three through the addition of Nona and Decima, the two P. who preside over the two months that complete pregnancy (Varro, in Gellius, III, 6, 10).
The Greek Moirai, who likewise increased from the original conception of a single deity to three, also caused both the ternary number and the meaning of divinities presiding over human destiny (Tria Fata), from birth to death, to become established in Rome. The names of the P. in the Latin writers who frequently mention them are the same as those of the Greek Moirai: Clothos, who holds the distaff; Lachesis, who spins the thread; Atropos, who cuts II. Catullus (LXIV, 306) represents them as three old women, Virgil (Ecl., IV, 47) as the ones who fix fate, Horace (Carmen Saeculare, 25) invites them to foretell good fates for Rome; Apuleius (De mundo, 38) regards them as the three symbols of the past, the present, and the unknown future; Servius (ad Aen., I, 26) as those who foretell, write down, and regulate the course of life.
In Rome the P. had no genuine cult apart from the sacrifice offered to them, under the Latinized Greek name moerae, at the Tarentum on the occasion of the Secular Games. They are mentioned in votive inscriptions from Celtic regions: deabus Parcis (Dessau 3766, 3768); Parcis Augustis (Dessau 3765, 3767); aram Parcabus (Dessau 3769), and in funerary metrical inscriptions in which the name P. signifies the fatality of destiny (Dessau, 4414; 5213; 6068; 7759).