PARCA. - Parca, from Lat. *pario* = I give birth (etymologies deriving from *parco* and *partior* should be discarded), is the goddess, originally conceived as a single deity, who presides over birth. The number later became three with the addition of Nona and Decima, the two Parcae who preside over the two months that conclude pregnancy (Varro, in Gellius, III, 6,10).
The Greek Moirai, also originally conceived as a single entity, rose to three in number, and in Rome both the triad and the meaning of goddesses presiding over human destiny (Tria Fata), from birth to death, became established. The names of the Parcae in Latin writers who frequently mention them are the same as those of the Greek Moirai: Clotho, who holds the distaff, Lachesis, who spins the thread, and Atropos, who cuts the thread. Catullus (LXIV, 306) depicts them as three old women, Virgil (Ecl., IV, 47) as the weavers of fate, Horace (Carmen Saeculare, 25) invokes them to foretell good things for Rome; Apuleius (De mundo, 38) considers them as the three symbols of the past, present, and unknown future; Servius (ad Aen., I, 26) describes them as those who predict, write, and regulate the course of life.
In Rome, the Parcae did not receive true cult, as evidenced by the useless sacrifice offered to them under the Greek-Latinized name of *Moerae* in the Tarentum during 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 metrical funeral inscriptions where the name *Parcae* stands to indicate the inevitability of fate (Dessau, 4414; 5213; 6068; 7759).