Caieta

In Roman literary tradition Caieta is presented as a wet-nurse attached to the household of figures in the Trojan-to-Italian genealogical cycle. Vergil locates her grave on the bay at Gaeta, and the port (Caietae Portus) is said to take its name from her tomb. Ovid records a funerary epitaph commemorating her, and the fourth-century commentator Servius records that there was disagreement in sources over whether she was the wet-nurse of Aeneas, or alternatively Creusa or Ascanius. The surviving attestations therefore present Caieta as a named household figure whose burial becomes a local toponym and a point of literary commemoration.

Surviving sources provide no physical description of Caieta. Ancient texts and later summaries identify her only by social role (wet-nurse) and by the location of her tomb on the shore called Caietae Portus; they do not record details of age, dress, or iconography. No further depiction or sustained visual tradition is attested in the supplied materials, and later uses of the name in modern contexts do not supply ancient iconographic evidence.

The cited literary and commentarial materials do not attribute supernatural powers, magical functions, or active behaviors to Caieta. Her role in the tradition is commemorative and toponymic: she is remembered as a nurse within a household network and as the eponym of a place where she was buried. Ancient commentators discuss her identity and connection to named mythic figures, but do not ascribe agency beyond her social role and memorial significance.