Aventine Triad
The Aventine Triad is a modern term for the joint cult of the Roman deities Ceres, Liber and Libera. The cult was established within a sacred district on or near the Aventine Hill, traditionally associated with the Roman plebs. Later accounts describe the temple building and rites as "Greek" in style. Some modern historians describe the Aventine Triad as a plebeian parallel and self-conscious antithesis to the Archaic Triad of Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus and the later Capitoline Triad of Jupiter, Minerva and Juno. The Aventine Triad, temple and associated ludi served as a focus of plebeian identity, sometimes in opposition to Rome's original ruling elite, the patricians.
Origins
The Aventine relationship between Ceres, Liber and Libera was probably based first on their functions as agricultural and fertility deities of the plebs as a distinct social group. Liber had been companion to both Ceres and to Libera in separate and disparate fertility cults that were widespread throughout the Hellenised Italian peninsula, long before their official adoption by Rome - or rather, their partial assimilation, as Ceres' own cult appears to have been considered more tractable and obedient than Liber's. Their Aventine cults, reported in later Roman sources as distinctively Greek in character, may have been further reinforced and influenced by their perceived similarities to particular Greek deities: Ceres to Demeter, Liber to Dionysus and Libera to either Persephone or Ariadne. In keeping with Roman theology, the internal and external equivalence of the Aventine Triad remained speculative, broad and flexible. Long after its establishment, Cicero rejects the equivalence of Liber and Dionysus and asserts that Ceres is mother to Liber and Libera.Foundation
The Aventine Triad was established soon after the overthrow of the Roman monarchy and establishment of the Republic. Rome's majority of citizen commoners were ruled by the patricians, a small number of powerful, landed aristocrats who asserted a traditional, exclusive right to Rome's highest religious, political and military offices. The plebs not only served in Rome's legions: they were the backbone of its economy - smallholders, labourers, skilled specialists, managers of landed estates, vintners, and importers and exporters of grain and wine. Against a background of famine in Rome, an imminent war against the Latins and a threatened plebeian secession, the dictator A. Postumius vowed a temple to the patron deities of the plebs, Ceres, Liber and Libera on or near the Aventine Hill. The famine ended and Rome's plebeian citizen-soldiery co-operated in the conquest of the Latins. In 493 BC, a new built temple on or near the Aventine Hill was dedicated to the Triad and Rome's first recorded ludi scaenici were held in honour of Liber, for the benefit of the Roman people. Liber's festival, the Liberalia, may date from this time.Patrician dominance was manifest in the Capitoline Triad of Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus on the Capitoline Hill, at the heart of the city. The Capitoline temple lay within Rome's sacred boundary. The Aventine lay outside it. In most versions of the Roman founding myth, this was the hill on which the unfortunate Remus lost to his brother Romulus in a contest of augury to decide Rome's foundation, name and leadership. Postumius' vow has been interpreted as a pragmatic, timely recognition of the plebeian citizenry as a distinct social and political grouping with its own values, interests and traditions; the vow may have intended confirmation of the plebs and their deities as fully Roman, but its fulfillment focused plebeian culture and identity on a Triad of deities only part-assimilated into official Roman religion. Some aspects of their cults were still considered morally "un-Roman" by Rome's authorities. Thus, the Aventine Triad gave the plebs what has been variously described by modern historians as a parallel to the official Capitoline Triad, and its "copy and antithesis". Among other religious innovations based on his antiquarian interests, the emperor Claudius redrew the pomerium to encompass the Aventine.
Development
The plebs continued to establish and administer their own laws and held formal assemblies from which patricians were excluded,. They elected their own magistrates and sought religious confirmation of their decisions through their own augury, which in plebeian religious tradition had been introduced by Marsyas, a satyr or silen in the entourage of Liber. Meanwhile, the plebeian tribunes, an emergent plebeian nobility and a small but growing number of popularist politicians of patrician ancestry gained increasing influence over Rome's religious life and government. Any person who offended against the sacred rights and person of a plebeian tribune was liable to declaration as homo sacer, who could be killed with impunity and whose property was, almost certainly, forfeit to Ceres. Even so, official Ludi Cereales were not established until as late as 202 BC. Liber's festival and the Bacchic or Dionysian aspects of his cult were suppressed under the ferocious Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus of 186 BC. The Liberalia rites were transferred to Cerealia; after a few years they were restored to Liber.Varro's complex, investigative Late Republican theology groups Ceres with Tellus and Venus, therefore with Victoria; and Ceres with Libera, when the latter is understood as the female aspect of Liber.