The nameCerēs stems fromProto-Italic*kerēs ('with grain, Ceres'; cf.Faliscanceres,Oscankerrí 'Cererī' < *ker-s-ēi- < *ker-es-ēi-), ultimately fromProto-Indo-European*ḱerh₃-os ('nourishment, grain'), a derivative of theroot*ḱerh₃-, meaning 'to feed'.[5]
The Proto-Italic adjective *keresjo- ('belonging to Ceres') can also be reconstructed from Oscankerríiúí (fem.kerríiai), and Umbrianśerfi (fem.śerfie). A masculine form *keres-o- ('with grain, Cerrus') is attested inUmbrianśerfe. The spelling of LatinCerus, a masculine form ofCeres denoting the creator (cf.Cerus manus 'creator bonus',duonus Cerus 'good Cerus'), might also reflectCerrus, which would match the other Italic forms.[5]
Archaic cults to Ceres are well-evidenced among Rome's neighbours in theRegal period, including the ancientLatins,Oscans andSabellians, less certainly among theEtruscans andUmbrians. An archaicFaliscan inscription of c. 600 BC asks her to providefar (spelt wheat),[6] which was a dietary staple of theMediterranean world. Ancient Roman etymologists thought thatceres derived from the Latin verbgerere, "to bear, bring forth, produce", because the goddess was linked topastoral, agricultural and human fertility. Throughout the Roman era, Ceres's name was synonymous with grain and, by extension, with bread.[7]
Ceres was credited with the discovery ofspelt wheat (Latinfar), the yoking of oxen and ploughing, the sowing, protection and nourishing of the young seed, and the gift of agriculture to humankind; before this, it was said, man had subsisted on acorns, and wandered without settlement or laws. She had the power to fertilize, multiply and fructify plant and animal seed, and her laws and rites protected all activities of the agricultural cycle. In January, Ceres (alongside the earth-goddessTellus) was offered spelt wheat and a pregnant sow, at the movableFeriaeSementivae. This was almost certainly held before the annual sowing of grain. The divine portion of sacrifice was the entrails(exta) presented in an earthenware pot(olla).[8] In a rural, agricultural context,Cato the Elder describes the offer to Ceres of aporca praecidanea (a pig, offered before harvesting).[9] Before the harvest, she was offered a propitiary grain sample (praemetium).[10] Ovid tells that Ceres "is content with little, provided that her offerings arecasta" (pure).[11]
Ceres's main festival,Cerealia, was held from mid to late April. It was organised by herplebeianaediles and included circus games (ludi circenses). It opened with a horse-race in theCircus Maximus, whose starting point lay below and opposite to her Aventine Temple;[12] theturning post at the far end of the Circus was sacred toConsus, a god of grain-storage. After the race, foxes were released into the Circus, their tails ablaze with lighted torches, perhaps to cleanse the growing crops and protect them from disease and vermin, or to add warmth and vitality to their growth.[13] From c.175 BC, Cerealia includedludi scaenici (theatrical religious events) through April 12 to 18.[14]
In the ancientsacrum cereale a priest, probably theFlamen Cerialis, invoked Ceres (and probably Tellus) along with twelve specialised, minor assistant-gods to secure divine help and protection at each stage of the grain cycle, beginning shortly before the Feriae Sementivae.[15]W.H. Roscher lists these deities among theindigitamenta, names used to invoke specific divine functions.[16]
In Roman bridal processions, a young boy carried Ceres's torch to light the way; "the mostauspicious wood for wedding torches came from thespina alba, theMay-tree, which bore many fruits and hence symbolised fertility".[18] The adult males of the wedding party waited at the groom's house. A wedding sacrifice was offered toTellus on the bride's behalf; a sow is the most likelyvictim. Varro describes the sacrifice of a pig as "a worthy mark of weddings" because "our women, and especially nurses" call the female genitaliaporcus (pig).Barbette Spaeth (1996) believes Ceres may have been included in the sacrificial dedication, because she is closely identified with Tellus and, asCeres legifera (law-bearer), she "bears the laws" of marriage. In the most solemn form of marriage,confarreatio, the bride and groom shared a cake made of far, the ancient wheat-type particularly associated with Ceres.[19][20]
Funerary statue of an unknown woman, depicted as Ceres holding wheat. Mid 3rd century AD. (Louvre)
From at least the mid-republican era, an official, joint cult to Ceres and Proserpina reinforced Ceres's connection with Roman ideals of female virtue. The promotion of this cult coincides with the rise of a plebeian nobility, an increased birthrate among plebeian commoners, and a fall in the birthrate among patrician families. The late RepublicanCeres Mater (Mother Ceres) is described asgenetrix (progenitress) andalma (nourishing); in the early Imperial era she becomes an Imperial deity, and receives joint cult withOpsAugusta, Ceres's own mother in Imperial guise and a bountiful genetrix in her own right.[21] Several of Ceres's ancient Italic precursors are connected to human fertility and motherhood; the Pelignan goddessAngitia Cerealis has been identified with the Roman goddessAngerona (associated with childbirth).[22]
Ceres was patron and protector ofplebeian laws, rights andTribunes. Her Aventine Temple served the plebeians as cult centre, legal archive, treasury and possibly law-court; its foundation was contemporaneous with the passage of theLex Sacrata, which established the office and person of plebeian aediles and tribunes as inviolate representatives of the Roman people. Tribunes were legally immune to arrest or threat, and the lives and property ofthose who violated this law were forfeit to Ceres.[23]
TheLex Hortensia of 287 BC extended plebeian laws to the city and all its citizens. The official decrees of the Senate (senatus consulta) were placed in Ceres's Temple, under the guardianship of the goddess and her aediles. Livy puts the reason bluntly: the consuls could no longer seek advantage for themselves by arbitrarily tampering with the laws of Rome.[24] The Temple might also have offered asylum for those threatened witharbitrary arrest by patrician magistrates.[25] Ceres's temple, games and cult were at least part-funded by fines imposed on those who offended the laws placed under her protection; the poet Vergil later calls herlegifera Ceres (Law-bearing Ceres), a translation of Demeter's Greek epithet,thesmophoros.[26]
As Ceres's first plough-furrow opened the earth (Tellus's realm) to the world of men and created the first field and its boundary, her laws determined the course of settled, lawful, civilised life. Crimes against fields and harvest were crimes against the people and their protective deity. Landowners who allowed their flocks to graze on public land were fined by the plebeian aediles, on behalf of Ceres and the people of Rome. Ancient laws of theTwelve Tables forbade the magical charming of field crops from a neighbour's field into one's own, and invoked the death penalty for the illicit removal of field boundaries.[27] An adult who damaged or stole field-crops should be hanged "for Ceres".[28] Any youth guilty of the same offense was to be whipped or fined double the value of damage.[29]
Ceres's signs and iconography, like Demeter's from early Mycenae onwards, include poppies - symbolic of fertility, sleep, death and rebirth. Poppies readily grow on soil disturbed by ploughing, as in wheatfields, and bear innumerable tiny seeds. They were raised as a crop by Greek and Roman farmers, partly for their fibrous stems and for the food value of their seeds[30] Where the poppy capsule alone is shown, this probably belongs to theopium poppy (papaver somniferum, the "sleep-bearing poppy"). The Roman poet Vergil, inGeorgics, 1.212, describes this asCereale papaver, or "Ceres's poppy", which eases pain and brings sleep - the deepest sleep of all being death. Poppies are often woven into Ceres's wheat-stalk crown, thecorona spicea, worn by her priestesses and devotees.[31]
Ceres maintained the boundaries between the realms of the living and the dead, and was an essential presence at funerals. Given acceptable rites and sacrifice, she helped the deceased into the afterlife as an underworld shade, or deity (Di Manes). Those whose death was premature, unexpected or untimely were thought to remain in the upper world, and haunt the living as a wandering,vengeful ghost (Lemur). They could be exorcised, but only when their death was reasonably due. For her service at burials or cremations, well-off families offered Ceres sacrifice of a pig. The poor could offer wheat, flowers, and a libation.[32] The expected afterlife for the exclusively female initiates in thesacra Cereris may have been somewhat different; they were offered "a method of living" and of "dying with better hope".[33]
During her long, torch-lit search for her daughter, Proserpina, Ceres drinks water given her by Hecuba, and is mocked by the boy, Askalabos, for spilling some of it. She will transform him into a lowly "star-lizard' ornewt (Latin; stellio) as punishment. The episode is inOvid's, Metamorphoses V, lines 449-450. Oil-paint on copper, byAdam Elsheimer and workshop, copy circa 1605, held by theMuseo Nacional del Prado. From an original in the collection of Alfred and Isabel Bader
Themundus cerialis orCaereris mundus ("the world of Ceres") was a hemispherical pit or underground vault in Rome, now lost.[a] It was usually sealed by a stone lid known as thelapis manalis.[b] On August 24, October 5 and November 8, it was opened with the official announcementmundus patet ("themundus is open") and offerings were made there to agricultural or underworld deities, including Ceres as goddess of the fruitful earth and guardian of its underworld portals. Its opening offered the spirits of the dead temporary leave from the underworld to roam lawfully among the living, in what Warde Fowler describes as 'holidays, so to speak, for the ghosts'.[34] The days when the mundus was open were among the very few occasions that Romans made official contact with the collective spirits of the dead, theDi Manes (the others beingParentalia andLemuralia). This possibly secondary or late function of themundus is first attested in the Late Republican Era, byVarro.[35] The juristCato understood the shape of themundus as a reflection or inversion of the dome of the upper heavens.[36] Di Luzio observes that the Romanmundus shared functional and conceptual similarities with certain types of underground "pit altar" ormegaron, used in Demeter's Thesmophoria.[37]
Roman tradition held that themundus had been dug and sealed byRomulus as part of Rome's foundation; Plutarch compares it to pits dug by Etruscan colonists, containing soil brought from their parent city, used to dedicate the first fruits of the harvest.[38] Warde Fowler speculates themundus as Rome's first storehouse (penus) for seed-grain, later becoming the symbolicpenus of the Roman state.[39] In the oldest known Roman calendar, the days of themundus are marked as C(omitiales) (days when theComitia met). Later authors mark them asdiesreligiosus (when no official meetings could be held). Some modern scholars seek to explain this as the later introduction and accommodation of Greek elements, grafted onto the originalmundus rites.[40] The rites of August 24 were held between the agricultural festivals ofConsualia andOpiconsivia; those of October 5 followed theIeiunium Cereris, and those of November 8 took place during thePlebeian Games. As a whole, the various days of themundus suggest rites to Ceres as the guardian deity of seed-corn in the establishment of cities, and as a door-warden of the afterlife, which was co-ruled during the winter months by her daughter Proserpina, queen-companion toDis.[41]
In Roman theology,prodigies were abnormal phenomena that manifesteddivine anger at human impiety. In Roman histories, prodigies cluster around perceived or actual threats to the Roman state, in particular, famine, war and social disorder, and are expiated as matters of urgency. The establishment of Ceres's Aventine cult has itself been interpreted as an extraordinary expiation after the failure of crops and consequent famine. In Livy's history, Ceres is among the deities placated after a remarkable series of prodigies that accompanied the disasters of theSecond Punic War: during the same conflict, a lightning strike at her temple was expiated. A fast in her honour is recorded for 191 BC, to be repeated at 5-year intervals.[42] After 206, she was offered at least 11 further official expiations. Many of these were connected to famine and manifestations of plebeian unrest, rather than war. From the Middle Republic onwards, expiation was increasingly addressed to her as mother to Proserpina. The last known followedRome's Great Fire of 64 AD.[43] The cause or causes of the fire remained uncertain, but its disastrous extent was taken as a sign of offense againstJuno,Vulcan, and Ceres-with-Proserpina, who were all given expiatory cult. Champlin (2003) perceives the expiations to Vulcan and Ceres in particular as attempted populist appeals by the ruling emperor,Nero.[44]
The complex and multi-layered origins of the Aventine Triad and Ceres herself allowed multiple interpretations of their relationships, beyond the humanised pattern of relations within the Triad; while Cicero asserts Ceres as mother to both Liber and Libera, consistent with her role as a mothering deity, Varro's more complex theology groups her functionally with Tellus, Terra, Venus (and thus Victoria) and with Libera as a female aspect of Liber.[45] No native Roman myths of Ceres are known. According tointerpretatio romana, by which Roman deities were identified with their Greek counterparts, she was an equivalent to Demeter, one of theTwelve Olympians of Greek religion and mythology; this made Ceres one of Rome's twelveDi Consentes, daughter ofSaturn andOps, sister ofJupiter, mother ofProserpina by Jupiter and sister ofJuno,Vesta,Neptune andDis. Ceres's known mythology is indistinguishable from Demeter's:
When Ceres sought through all the earth with lit torches for Proserpina, who had been seized by Dis Pater, she called her with shouts where three or four roads meet; from this it has endured in her rites that on certain days a lamentation is raised at the crossroads everywhere by thematronae.[46]
Ovid likens Ceres's devotion to her own offspring to that of a cow to its calf; but she is also the originator of bloody animal sacrifice, a necessity in the renewal of life. She has a particular enmity towards her own sacrificial animal, the pig. Pigs offend her by their destructive rooting-up of field crops under her protection; and in the myth of Proserpina's abduction on the plains ofHenna (Enna), her tracks were obscured by their trampling. If not for them, Ceres might have been spared the toils and grief of her lengthy search and separation, and humankind would have been spared the consequent famine. The myth is also a reminder that the gift of agriculture is a contract, and comes at a price. It brings well-being but also mortality.[47] Enna, inSicily, had strong mythological connections with Ceres and Proserpina, and was the site of Ceres most ancient sanctuary. Flowers were said to bloom throughout the year on its "miraculous plain".[48]
Vitruvius (c.80 – 15 BC) describes the "Temple of Ceres near the Circus Maximus" (her Aventine Temple) as typicallyAraeostyle, having widely spaced supporting columns, witharchitraves of wood, rather than stone. This species of temple is "clumsy, heavy roofed, low and wide, [its]pediments ornamented with statues of clay or brass, gilt in theTuscan fashion".[49] He recommends that temples to Ceres be sited in rural areas: "in a solitary spot out of the city, to which the public are not necessarily led but for the purpose of sacrificing to her. This spot is to be reverenced with religious awe and solemnity of demeanour, by those whose affairs lead them to visit it."[50] During the early Imperial era, soothsayers advisedPliny the Younger to restore an ancient, "old and narrow" temple to Ceres, at his rural property nearComo. It contained an ancient wooden cult statue of the goddess, which he replaced. Though this was anunofficial and privately funded cult (sacra privata), its annual feast on theIdes of September was attended by pilgrims from all over the region; this feast was also the same day as theEpulum Jovis. Pliny considered this rebuilding a fulfillment of his civic and religious duty.[51]
Denarius picturingQuirinus on theobverse, and Ceres enthroned on the reverse, a commemoration by a moneyer in 56 BC of a Cerialia, perhaps her firstludi, presented by an earlier GaiusMemmius asaedile[52]
No images of Ceres survive from her pre-Aventine cults; the earliest date to the middle Republic, and show the Hellenising influence of Demeter's iconography. Some late Republican images recall Ceres's search for Proserpina. Ceres bears a torch, sometimes two, and rides in a chariot drawn by snakes; or she sits on the sacredkiste (chest) that conceals the objects of her mystery rites.[53] Sometimes she holds acaduceus, a symbol ofPax (Roman goddess of Peace).[54] Augustan reliefs show her emergence, plant-like from the earth, her arms entwined by snakes, her outstretched hands bearing poppies and wheat, or her head crowned with fruits and vines.[55] In free-standing statuary, she commonly wears a wheat-crown, or holds a wheat spray.Moneyers of the Republican era use Ceres's image, wheat ears and garlands to advertise their connections with prosperity, the annona and the popular interest. Some Imperial coin images depict important female members of the Imperial family as Ceres, or with some of her attributes.[56]
Ceres was served by several public priesthoods. Some were male; her senior priest, theflamen cerialis, also served Tellus and was usually plebeian by ancestry or adoption.[57] Her public cult at theAmbarvalia, or "perambulation of fields" identified her withDea Dia, and was led by theArval Brethren ("The Brothers of the Fields"); rural versions of these rites were led as private cult by theheads of households. An inscription atCapua names a malesacerdos Cerialis mundalis, a priest dedicated to Ceres's rites of themundus.[58] Theplebeian aediles had minor or occasional priestly functions at Ceres's Aventine Temple and were responsible for its management and financial affairs including collection of fines, the organisation ofludi Cerealia and probably the Cerealia itself. Theircure (care and jurisdiction) included, or came to include, thegrain supply (annona) and later the plebeian grain doles (frumentationes), the organisation and management of publicgames in general, and the maintenance of Rome's streets and public buildings.[59]
Otherwise, in Rome and throughout Italy, as at her ancient sanctuaries of Henna and Catena, Ceres'sritus graecus and her joint cult with Proserpina were invariably led by femalesacerdotes, drawn from local and Roman elites: Cicero notes that once the new cult had been founded, its earliest priestesses "generally were either from Naples or Velia", cities allied or federated to Rome. Elsewhere, he describes Ceres's Sicilian priestesses as "older women respected for their noble birth and character".[60] Celibacy may have been a condition of their office; sexual abstinence was, according to Ovid, required of those attending Ceres's major, nine-day festival.[61] Herpublic priesthood was reserved to respectable matrons, be they married, divorced or widowed.[62] The process of their selection and their relationship to Ceres's older, entirely male priesthood is unknown; but they far outnumbered her few male priests, and would have been highly respected and influential figures in their own communities.[63][64][65]
TheAgnone Tablet, a 3rd-century BCEOscan inscription, describes the worship of Ceres within a certain sacred site.[66] The term utilized to describe this site—húrz—is of unclear meaning and is varyingly translated as "sanctuary," "sacred grove," or "enclosure."[67] Nevertheless, the tablet records 15 ritual activities occurring at the site within the space of a year, which—according to the archaeologist Rafael Scopasca—indicates that ritual activities likely occurred at the ceremony at least once a month.[68] These services likely catered towards numerous different groups, perhaps with worshippers varying across each ceremony. Scopasca notes that the act of documenting the dates of temple services implies that many suppliants lacked prior knowledge of the ritual calendar, perhaps as a consequence of infrequent involvement with ritual activity.[68] However, Scopasca suggests that it is likely there was still a "core" group of suppliants, which is perhaps to be identified with the same set of people to whom ownership of the temple belonged.[69] According to the tablet, the grove was controlled by the individuals capable of allocating a tenth of their incomes towards the maintenance of the sanctuary, who themselves—according to Scopasca—probably constituted a small class of affluent individuals with sufficient wealth to meet the stipulated criterion.[68]
Within the Agnone tablet, numerous other gods are mentioned with the accompanying adjectiveKerríi ("of Ceres").[70] These deities are themselves often linked with agriculture or fertility, such as "fluusaí kerríiaí" ("She who flowers of Ceres") or "fuutreí kerríiaí" ("daughter of Ceres").[66] Another Oscan inscription fromCapua mentions Ceres with the epithetArentikai, perhaps meaning "avengeress," which may imply a connection between the underworld and Ceres, an association paralleled by Roman concepts such as themundus Cerialis. In aPaelignian inscription, a deity namedAnaceta Ceria is mentioned, who may be identified with the Roman goddessAngerona, herself associated withchildbirth. Otherwise, in Paelignian culture, Ceres was possibly connected with agriculture, as another inscription mentions a "Cerfum sacracirix semunu," which perhaps means "priestess of the Cereres and the divinities of sowing." It is unclear whether the plural formCereres consists of both Ceres and her daughterProserpina or perhapsVenus and Ceres, who are known from another inscription to have been worshipped together by another Paelignian priesthood.[71] However, the philologist Michael Weiss notes that, during the development of Paelignian, the Proto-Italic sequence*-res- was syncopated into*-rs-, before transforming into*-rr-. Such a sound change is attested for the Paelignian termcerria, itself from Proto-Italic*keresjos, therefore contradicting the supposed etymological relationship betweenCerfum and Ceres. Weiss concedes that the unusual development ofCerfum may be explained if it was borrowed from another Italic language, perhapsSouth Picene, which itself possibly allowed for a different treatment of the cluster*-rs-.[72]
Roman tradition credited Ceres's eponymous festival,Cerealia, to Rome's second king, the semi-legendaryNuma. Ceres's senior, male priesthood was aminor flaminate whose establishment and rites were supposedly also innovations of Numa.[73] Her affinity and joint cult with Tellus, also known asTerra Mater (Mother Earth) may have developed at this time. Much later, during theearly Imperial era,Ovid describes these goddesses as "partners in labour"; Ceres provides the "cause" for the growth of crops, while Tellus provides them a place to grow.[74]
In 496 BC, against a background of economic recession and famine in Rome, imminent war against the Latins and a threatened secession by Rome'splebs (citizen commoners), thedictatorA. Postumiusvowed a temple to Ceres,Liber andLibera on or near theAventine Hill. The famine ended and Rome's plebeian citizen-soldiery co-operated in the conquest of the Latins. Postumius's vow was fulfilled in 493 BC: Ceres became the central deity of the newTriad, housed in anew-built Aventine temple.[75] She was also – or became – the patron goddess of theplebs, whose enterprise as tenant farmers, estate managers, agricultural factors and importers was a mainstay of Roman agriculture.
Much of Rome's grain was imported from territories ofMagna Graecia, particularly fromSicily, which later Romanmythographers describe as Ceres's "earthly home". Writers of thelate Roman Republic and early Empire describe Ceres's Aventine temple and rites as conspicuously Greek.[76] In modern scholarship, this is taken as further evidence of long-standing connections between the plebeians, Ceres and Magna Graecia. It also raises unanswered questions on the nature, history and character of these associations: the Triad itself may have been a self-consciously Roman cult formulation based on Greco-Italic precedents.[77] When a new form of Cerean cult was officially imported from Magna Graecia, it was known as theritus graecus (Greek rite) of Ceres, and was distinct from her older Roman rites.[78]
The older forms of Aventine rites to Ceres remain uncertain. Most Roman cults were led by men, and the officiant's head wascovered by a fold of his toga. In the Romanritus graecus, a male celebrant wore Greek-style vestments, and remained bareheaded before the deity, or else wore a wreath. While Ceres's original Aventine cult was led by male priests, her "Greek rites" (ritus graecus Cereris) were exclusively female.[78]
Towards the end of theSecond Punic War, around 205 BC, an officially recognised joint cult to Ceres and her daughterProserpina was brought to Rome fromSouthern Italy (part ofMagna Graecia) along with Greek priestesses to serve it.[79] In Rome, this was known as theritus graecus Cereris; its priestesses were grantedRoman citizenship so that they could pray to the gods "with a foreign and external knowledge, but with a domestic and civil intention"; the recruitment of respectable matrons seems to acknowledge the civic value of the cult. It was based on ancient, ethnically Greek cults to Demeter, most notably theThesmophoria toDemeter andPersephone, whose cults and myths also provided a basis for theEleusinian Mysteries.
From the end of the 3rd century BC, Demeter's temple atEnna, inSicily, was acknowledged as Ceres's oldest, most authoritative cult centre, and Libera was recognised as Proserpina, Roman equivalent to Demeter's daughterPersephone.[80] Their joint cult recalls Demeter's search for Persephone, after the latter's abduction into the underworld byHades. The new, women-only cult to "mother and maiden" took its place alongside the old; it made no reference to Liber. Thereafter, Ceres was offered two separate and distinctive forms of official cult at the Aventine. Both might have been supervised by the maleflamen Cerialis but otherwise, their relationship is unclear. The older form of cult included both men and women, and probably remained a focus for plebeian political identity and discontent. The new form identified its exclusively females initiates and priestesses as upholders of Rome's traditional,patrician-dominated social hierarchy andmorality.[81]
A year after the import of theritus cereris, patrician senators imported cult to the Greek goddessCybele and established her asMagna Mater (The Great Mother) within Rome'ssacred boundary, facing the Aventine Hill. Like Ceres, Cybele was a form of Graeco-Roman earth goddess. Unlike her, she had mythological ties toTroy, and thus to the Trojan princeAeneas, mythological ancestor ofRome's founding father and first patricianRomulus. The establishment of official Roman cult to Magna Mater coincided with the start of a newsaeculum (cycle of years). It was followed byHannibal's defeat, the end of theSecond Punic War and an exceptionally good harvest. Roman victory and recovery could therefore be credited to Magna Mater and patrician piety: so the patricians dined her and each other at her festival banquets. In similar fashion, the plebeian nobility underlined their claims to Ceres. Up to a point, the two cults reflected a social and political divide, but when certain prodigies were interpreted as evidence of Ceres's displeasure, the senate appeased her with a new festival, theieiunium Cereris ("fast of Ceres").[82]
In 133 BC, theplebeian noble andtribuneTiberius Gracchus bypassed theSenate and appealed directly to the popular assembly to pass his proposedland-reforms. Civil unrest spilled into violence; Gracchus and many of his supporters were murdered by their conservative opponents. At the behest of theSibylline oracle, the senate sent thequindecimviri to Ceres's ancient cult centre atHenna inSicily, the goddess' supposed place of origin and earthly home. Some kind of religious consultation or propitiation was given, either to expiate Gracchus's murder – as later Roman sources would claim – or to justify it as the lawful killing of a would-be king ordemagogue, ahomo sacer who had offended Ceres's laws against tyranny.[83]
TheEleusinian Mysteries became increasingly popular during the late Republic. Early Roman initiates atEleusis in Greece includedSulla andCicero; thereafter manyEmperors were initiated, includingHadrian, who founded an Eleusinian cult centre in Rome itself.[84] In Late Republican politics,aristocratic traditionalists andpopularists used coinage to propagate their competing claims to Ceres's favour. A coin ofSulla shows Ceres on one side, and on the other a ploughman with yoked oxen: the images, accompanied by the legend"conditor" ("he who stores the grain") claim his rule (a military dictatorship) as regenerative and divinely justified.[85] Popularists used her name and attributes to appeal their guardianship of plebeian interests, particularly theannona andfrumentarium; and plebeian nobles and aediles used them to point out their ancestral connections with plebeians as commoners.[86] In the decades of Civil War that ushered in the Empire, such images and dedications proliferate on Rome's coinage:Julius Caesar, his opponents, his assassins and his heirs alike claimed the favour and support of Ceres and her plebeian proteges, with coin issues that celebrate Ceres,Libertas (liberty) andVictoria (victory).[87]
Emperors claimed a partnership with Ceres in grain provision, as in thissestertius of 66 AD. Left:Nero, garlanded. Right:Annona stands withcornucopiae (horns of Plenty); enthroned Ceres holds grain-ears and torch; between is amodius (grain measure) on a garlanded altar; in the background is a ship's stern.
Imperial theology conscripted Rome's traditional cults as the divine upholders of ImperialPax (peace) and prosperity, for the benefit of all. The emperorAugustus began the restoration of Ceres's Aventine Temple; his successorTiberius completed it.[88] Of the several figures on the AugustanAra Pacis, one doubles as a portrait of the EmpressLivia, who wears Ceres'scorona spicea. Another has been variously identified in modern scholarship as Tellus, Venus, Pax or Ceres, or in Spaeth's analysis, a deliberately broad composite of them all.[89]
The emperorClaudius's reformed the grain supply and created its embodiment as an Imperial goddess,Annona, a junior partner to Ceres and the Imperial family. The traditional, Cerean virtues of provision and nourishment were symbolically extended to Imperial family members; some coinage shows Claudius's motherAntonia as anAugusta, wearing thecorona spicea.[90]
Fresco fromVilla Carmiano,Stabiae, 1st century. Nude Greco-Roman deityBacchus (right), god of wine, freedom and male fertility, identified with GreekDionysus and Rome's nativeLiber. Ceres (left) is usually identified as his mother
The relationship between the reigning emperor, empress and Ceres was formalised in titles such asAugusta mater agrorum[91] ("The august mother of the fields) andCeres Augusta. On coinage, various emperors and empresses wear hercorona spicea, showing that the goddess, the emperor and his spouse are conjointly responsible for agricultural prosperity and the all-important provision of grain. A coin ofNerva (reigned AD 96–98) acknowledges Rome's dependence on the princeps' gift offrumentio (corn dole) to the masses.[92] Under Nerva's later dynastic successorAntoninus Pius, Imperial theology represents the death andapotheosis of the EmpressFaustina the Elder as Ceres's return to Olympus byJupiter's command. Even then, "her care for mankind continues and the world can rejoice in the warmth of her daughter Proserpina: in Imperial flesh, Proserpina isFaustina the Younger", empress-wife of Pius's successorMarcus Aurelius.[93]
In Britain, a soldier's inscription of the 2nd century AD attests to Ceres's role in the popular syncretism of the times. She is "the bearer of ears of corn", the "Syrian Goddess", identical with the universal heavenly Mother, the Magna Mater andVirgo, virgin mother of the gods. She is peace and virtue, and inventor of justice: she weighs "Life and Right" in her scale.[94]
During the Late Imperial era, Ceres gradually "slips into obscurity"; the last known official association of the Imperial family with her symbols is a coin issue ofSeptimius Severus (AD 193–211), showing his empress,Julia Domna, in thecorona spicea. After the reign ofClaudius Gothicus, no coinage shows Ceres's image. Even so, an initiate of her mysteries is attested in the 5th century AD, after the official abolition of all non-Christian cults.[95]
The wordcereal derives from Ceres's association with edible grains.[96] Whereas Ceres represents food, her sonLiber (later indistinguishable fromBacchus) represents wine and "good living". The Roman comedianTerence (c. 195/185 – c. 159 BC) uses the linesine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus which at its simplest translates as "without food and drink, love freezes" or "love needs food and wine to thrive" - probably proverbial and widespread in his own day. It was adopted variously as a brewer's motto, celebration, warning, and a subject of art inRenaissance Europe, especially the north and the Dutch Republic. Ceres represented the grains that producedbeer through the brewing process. Imagery that represented the profitable business of commercial brewing showed the grain-goddess as a respectable matron and Liber-Bacchus as a gentleman; a wholesome picture of moral sobriety and restraint.[97]
Ceres is featured both as a goddess and Queen of Sicilly inDe Mulieribus Claris, a collection of biographies of historical and mythological women by theFlorentine authorGiovanni Boccaccio, composed in 1361–62 and notable as the first collection devoted exclusively to biographies of women in Western literature.[98]
An aria in praise of Ceres is sung in Act 4 of the operaThe Trojans (first performance 1863) byHector Berlioz.
A misanthropic poem recited byDmitri in Dostoevsky's 1880 novelThe Brothers Karamazov, (part 1, Book 3, chapter 3) reflects on Ceres's heartbroken search for her lost daughter, and her encounter with the worst and most degraded of humanity.
^Spaeth, 1990, pp. 1, 33, 182. See also Spaeth, 1996, pp. 1–4, 33–34, 37. Spaeth disputes the identification of Ceres with warlike, protective Umbrian deities named on theIguvine Tablets, and Gantz' identification of Ceres as one of six figures shown on a terracotta plaque at EtruscanMurlo (Poggio Civitate)
^John Scheid, inRüpke, Jörg (Editor),A Companion to Roman Religion, Wiley-Blackwell, 2007, p 264; and Varro,Lingua Latina, 5.98.
^Spaeth, 1996, p. 35: "The pregnant victim is a common offering to female fertility divinities and was apparently intended, on the principle of sympathetic magic, to fertilise and multiply the seeds committed to the earth." See also Cato the Elder,On Agriculture, 134, for theporca praecidanea.
^Spaeth, 1996, pp. 35–39: the offer ofpraemetium to Ceres is thought to have been an ancient Italic practice. In Festus, "Praemetium [is] that which was measured out beforehand for the sake of [the goddess] tasting it beforehand".
^Linderski, J., in Wolfgang Haase, Hildegard Temporini (eds),Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, Volume 16, Part 3, de Gruyter, 1986, p. 1947, citing Ovid, Fasti, 4.411 - 416.
^Spaeth, 1996, pp. 36–37. Ovid offers a myth by way of explanation: long ago, at ancient Carleoli, a farm-boy caught a fox stealing chickens and tried to burn it alive. The fox escaped and fired the fields and their crops, which were sacred to Ceres. Ever since (says Ovid) foxes are punished at her festival.
^A plebeian aedile, C. Memmius, claims credit for Ceres's first ludi scaeneci. He celebrated the event with the dole of a new commemorativedenarius; his claim to have given "the first Cerealia" represents this innovation. See Spaeth, 1996, p. 88.
^Ceres's 12 assistant deities are listed inServius,On Vergil's Georgics, 1.21. Cited in Spaeth, 1996, p. 36. Servius cites the historianFabius Pictor (late 3rd century BC) as his source.
^Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher,Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie (Leipzig: Teubner, 1890–94), vol. 2, pt. 1, pp. 187–233.
^Spaeth, 1996, pp. 5, 6, 44–47. ; the relevant passage from Varro isRerum Rusticarum, 2.4.10.Servius,On Vergil's Aeneid, 4.58, "implies that Ceres established the laws for weddings as well as for other aspects of civilized life." For more on Roman attitudes to marriage and sexuality, Ceres's role at marriages and the ideal of a "chaste married life" for Roman matrons, see Staples, 1998, pp. 84–93.
^Spaeth, 1996, pp. 42–43, citing Vetter, E., 1953,Handbuch der italienischen Dialekte 1. Heidelberg, for connections between Ceres, PelignanAngitia Cerealis,Angerona and childbirth.
^For discussion of the duties, legal status and immunities of plebeian tribunes and aediles, see Andrew Lintott,Violence in Republican Rome, Oxford University Press, 1999,pp. 92–101
^Livy's proposal that thesenatus consulta were placed at the Aventine Temple more or less at its foundation (Livy,Ab Urbe Condita, 3.55.13) is implausible. See Spaeth, 1996, pp. 86–87, 90.
^The evidence for the temple as asylum is inconclusive; discussion is in Spaeth, 1996, p. 84.
^Cornell, T.,The beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c.1000–264 BC), Routledge, 1995, p. 264, citing Vergil,Aeneid, 4.58.
^Ogden, in Valerie Flint,et al.,Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Ancient Greece and Rome, Vol. 2, Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd., 1998, p. 83: citing Pliny, Natural History, 28.17–18; Seneca, Natural Questions, 4.7.2
^Spaeth, 1996, p. 70, citing Pliny the elder, Historia naturalis, 18.3.13 on the Twelve Tables andcereri necari; cf the terms of punishment for violation of the sancrosancticity of Tribunes.
^Stone, S., p. 39, and note 9, citing Pliny the Elder,Natural History, 8.74.195 in Sebesta, Judith Lynn;Bonfante, Larissa, eds. (1994). The World of Roman Costume: Wisconsin Studies in Classics. The University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 9780299138509.
^Spaeth, 1996, pp. 60–61, 66; citing Cicero,de Legibus, 2.36. As initiates of mystery religions were sworn to secrecy, very little is known of their central rites or beliefs.
^W. Warde Fowler, "Mundus Patet" inJournal of Roman Studies, 2, 1912, pp. 25–26: Warde Fowler notes the possibility that pigs were offered: also (pp. 35–36) seed-corn, probablyfar, from the harvest.
^See Spaeth, pp. 63–5: W. Warde Fowler, "Mundus Patet" inJournal of Roman Studies, 2, (1912), pp. 25–33:available online at Bill Thayer's website: M. Humm, "Le mundus et le Comitium : représentations symboliques de l'espace de la cité," Histoire urbaine, 2, 10, 2004.French language, full preview.
^M. Humm, "Le mundus et le Comitium : représentations symboliques de l'espace de la cité," Histoire urbaine, 2, 10, 2004.French language, full preview.
^In Festus, themundus is an entrance to the underworld realm ofOrcus, broadly equivalent to Dis Pater and GreekPluto. For more on Ceres as aliminal deity, her earthly precedence over the underworld and themundus, see Spaeth, 1996, pp. 5, 18, 31, 63-5. For further connection between themundus, the penates, and agricultural and underworld deities, see W. Warde Fowler, "Mundus Patet" inJournal of Roman Studies, 2, (1912), pp. 25–33:available online at Bill Thayer's website
^Livy,Ab Urbe Condita, 36.37.4-5. Livy describes the fast as a cyclicalieiunium Cereris; but see also Viet Rosenberger, in Rüpke, Jörg (Editor),A Companion to Roman Religion, Wiley-Blackwell, 2007, p 296; if expiatory, it may have been a once-only event.
^For the circumstances of this expiation, and debate over the site of the Cerean expiation, see Edward Champlin,Nero, Harvard University Press, 2003, pp. 191–4: this expiation is usually said to be at the Aventine Temple. Champlin prefers the mundus (at or very near theComitia).Google-books preview
^C.M.C. Green, "Varro's Three Theologies and their influence on the Fasti", in Geraldine Herbert-Brown, (ed).,Ovid's Fasti: historical readings at its bimillennium, Oxford University Press, 2002. pp. 78–80.[1]
^Servius onVergil,Aeneid, 4.609. Cited in Spaeth, 107.
^Dennis Feeney, "Sacrificial Ritual in Roman Poetry", in Barchiesi, Rüpke, Stephens,Rituals in Ink: A Conference on Religion and Literary Production in Ancient Rome Held at Stanford University in February 2002, Franz Steiner Verlag, 2004, pp. 14, 15.
^Rome's legendary second King,Numa was thought to have instituted the flamines, so Ceres's service by aflamen cerialis suggested her oldest Roman cult as one of great antiquity.
^Responsibility for the provision of grain and popular games lent the aedileship a high and politically useful public profile. SeeCursus honorum.
^Spaeth, 104-5, citing Cicero,Pro Balbus, 55, and Cicero,Contra Verres, 2.4.99. The translations are Spaeth's.
^Most modern scholarship assumes Cerean priestesses celibate during their term of office but the evidence is inconclusive. See Schultz, 2006, pp. 75–78, for full discussion.
^See Schultz, pp. 75–78: also Schultz, Celia E., Harvey, Paul, (Eds),Religion in Republican Italy, Yale Classical Studies, 2006, pp. 52–53:googlebooks preview
^A Roman matron was any mature woman, married or unmarried, usually but not exclusively of the upper class. While females could serve asVestal Virgins, few were chosen, and those were selected as young maidens from families of the upper class.
^Spaeth, 1996, pp. 4–5, 9, 20 (historical overview and Aventine priesthoods), 84–89 (functions of plebeian aediles), 104–106 (women as priestesses): citing among others Cicero,In Verres, 2.4.108; Valerius Maximus, 1.1.1; Plutarch,De Mulierum Virtutibus, 26.
^More epigraphic evidence survives for priestesses of Ceres than for any other priesthood; it shows Cerean cults as less exclusively female than contemporary Roman authors would have it; while most Cerean priestesses were assisted by females, two in the Italian province are known to have had male assistants (Magistri Cereris). See Schultz, p. 72 and footnote 90 (p. 177).
^Whether or not Numa existed, the antiquity of Ceres's Italic cult is attested by the threefold inscription of her name c.600 BC on a Faliscan jar; the Faliscans were close neighbours of Rome. See Spaeth, 1996, pp. 4, 5, 33–34.
^TheSibylline Books were written in Greek; according to later historians, they had recommended the inauguration of Roman cult to the Greek deitiesDemeter,Dionysus andPersephone. See also Cornell, T.,The beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c.1000–264 BC), Routledge, 1995, p. 264, for Greek models as a likely basis in the development of plebeian political and religious identity from an early date.
^abSpaeth, 1996, pp. 4, 6–13. For discussion ofritus graecus and its relation to Ceres's cult, see Scheid, pp. 15–31.
^Spaeth, 1996, pp. 4, 6–13, citingArnobius, who mistakes this as the first Roman cult to Ceres. His belief may reflect the high profile and ubiquity of the "reformed" cult during the later Imperial period, and possibly the fading of older, distinctively Aventine forms of her cult.
^Spaeth, 1996, pp. 14, 94–97. See also the legend ofClaudia Quinta.
^Both interpretations are possible. On the whole, Roman sources infer the expedition as expiatory; for background, see Valerius Maximus, 1.1.1., and Cicero,In Verres, 2.4.108et passim, cited by Olivier de Cazanove, in Rüpke, Jörg (Editor),A Companion to Roman Religion, Wiley-Blackwell, 2007, p 56. For debate and challenge to Roman descriptions of the motives for this expedition, see Spaeth, 1990, pp. 182–195. Spaeth finds the expedition an attempt to justify the killing of T. Gracchus as official, right and lawful, based on senatorial speeches given soon after the killing;contra Henri Le Bonniec,Le culte de Cérès à Rome. Des origines à la fin de la République, Paris, Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1958. Le Bonniec interprets the consultation as an attempt to compensate the plebs and their patron goddess for the murder.
^Spaeth, 1996, pp. 13, citing Cicero, Balbus, 55.5., and p. 60.
^Fears, J. Rufus,The Cult of Virtues and Roman Imperial Ideology, in Hildegard Temporini, Wolfgang Haase (eds), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, Part 2, Volume 17, p. 795.[2]
^The plebeian L. Assius Caeicianus, identifies his plebeian ancestry and duties to Ceres on a denarius issue, c.102 BC. Spaeth, 1996, pp. 97–100.
^Spaeth, 1996, pp. 97–100, with further coin images between pp. 32–44.
^Spaeth argues for the identification of the central figure in the Ara Pacis relief as Ceres. It is more usually interpreted as Tellus. See Spaeth, 1996, 127–134.
^Spaeth, 1996, pp. 26, 30. See also Fears, J. Rufus,The Cult of Virtues and Roman Imperial Ideology, in Hildegard Temporini, Wolfgang Haase (eds), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, Part 2, Volume 17, pp. 894–5.[3]: Ceres Augusta can be considered, along with Pax, Libertaset al., as one of several Imperial Virtues.
^Fears, J. Rufus,The Cult of Virtues and Roman Imperial Ideology, in Hildegard Temporini, Wolfgang Haase (eds), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, Part 2, Volume 17, Walter de Gruyter, 1981, pp. 905–5, footnote 372 1, 1.
^Benko, pp. 112–114: see also pp. 31, 51, citing Apuleius, Metamorphoses, 11.2, in which Isis reveals to Lucius that she, Ceres and Proserpina, Artemis and Venus are all aspects of the one "Heavenly Queen"; cfJuno Caelestis, "Queen of Heaven", the Romanised form ofTanit.
^Spaeth, 1996, pp. 30, 62, citing EE 4.866 for the 5th centurymystes Cereris.
^Santos, R. de Mambro, "The Beer of Bacchus. Visual Strategies and Moral Values in Hendrick Goltzius’ Representations of Sine Cerere et Libero Friget Venus", inEmblemi in Olanda e Italia tra XVI e XVII secolo, ed. E. Canone and L. Spruit, 2012, Olschki Editore, Florence, pp. 21 ff, 26-27, 29
^Boccaccio, Giovanni (2003).Famous Women. I Tatti Renaissance Library. Vol. 1. Translated by Virginia Brown. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. p. xi.ISBN0-674-01130-9.
^Emsley, John (2011).Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements. Oxford University Press. pp. 120–125. ISBN 978-0-19-960563-7.
Linderski, J. (March 7, 2016)."religion, Italic".Oxford Classical Dictionary. Oxford University Press.
Room, Adrian,Who's Who in Classical Mythology, p. 89-90. NTC Publishing 1990.ISBN0-8442-5469-X.
Scheid, John, "Graeco Ritu: A Typically Roman Way of Honoring the Gods,"Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 97, Greece in Rome: Influence, Integration, Resistance, 1995, pp. 15–31.
Schultz, Celia E.,Women's Religious Activity in the Roman Republic (Studies in the History of Greece and Rome), University of North Carolina Press, 2006.
Spaeth, Barbette Stanley, "The Goddess Ceres and the Death of Tiberius Gracchus",Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Vol. 39, No. 2, 1990.
Spaeth, Barbette Stanley (1996),The Roman goddess Ceres, University of Texas Press,ISBN0-292-77693-4.
Staples, Ariadne,From Good Goddess to vestal virgins: sex and category in Roman religion, Routledge, 1998.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
