Ceres (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion, Ceres was a goddess of agriculture, grain crops, fertility and motherly relationships. She was originally the central deity in Rome's so-called plebeian or Aventine Triad, then was paired with her daughter Proserpina in what Romans described as "the Greek rites of Ceres". Her seven-day April festival of Cerealia included the popular Ludi Ceriales. She was also honoured in the May lustration of the fields at the Ambarvalia festival: at harvesttime, and during Roman marriages and funeral rites. She is usually depicted as a mature woman.
Ceres is the only one of Rome's many agricultural deities to be listed among the Dii Consentes, Rome's equivalent to the Twelve Olympians of Greek mythology. The Romans saw her as the counterpart of the Greek goddess Demeter, whose mythology was reinterpreted for Ceres in Roman art and literature.
Etymology and origins
The name Cerēs stems from Proto-Italic *kerēs, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱerh₃-os, a derivative of the root *ḱerh₃-, meaning 'to feed'.The Proto-Italic adjective *keresjo- can also be reconstructed from Oscan kerríiúí, and Umbrian śerfi. A masculine form *keres-o- is attested in Umbrian śerfe. The spelling of Latin Cerus, a masculine form of Ceres denoting the creator, might also reflect Cerrus, which would match the other Italic forms.
Archaic cults to Ceres are well-evidenced among Rome's neighbours in the Regal period, including the ancient Latins, Oscans and Sabellians, less certainly among the Etruscans and Umbrians. An archaic Faliscan inscription of c. 600 BC asks her to provide far, which was a dietary staple of the Mediterranean world. Ancient Roman etymologists thought that ceres derived from the Latin verb gerere, "to bear, bring forth, produce", because the goddess was linked to pastoral, agricultural and human fertility. Throughout the Roman era, Ceres's name was synonymous with grain and, by extension, with bread.
Cults and cult themes
Agricultural fertility
Ceres was credited with the discovery of spelt wheat, 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 was offered spelt wheat and a pregnant sow, at the movable Feriae Sementivae. This was almost certainly held before the annual sowing of grain. The divine portion of sacrifice was the entrails presented in an earthenware pot . In a rural, agricultural context, Cato the Elder describes the offer to Ceres of a porca praecidanea. Before the harvest, she was offered a propitiary grain sample. Ovid tells that Ceres "is content with little, provided that her offerings are casta".Ceres's main festival, Cerealia, was held from mid to late April. It was organised by her plebeian aediles and included circus games. It opened with a horse-race in the Circus Maximus, whose starting point lay below and opposite to her Aventine Temple; the turning post at the far end of the Circus was sacred to Consus, 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. From c.175 BC, Cerealia included ludi scaenici through April 12 to 18.
Helper gods
In the ancient sacrum cereale a priest, probably the Flamen Cerialis, invoked Ceres 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. W.H. Roscher lists these deities among the indigitamenta, names used to invoke specific divine functions.- Vervactor, "He who ploughs"
- Reparātor, "He who prepares the earth"
- Imporcĭtor, "He who ploughs with a wide furrow"
- Insitor, "He who plants seeds"
- Obarātor, "He who traces the first ploughing"
- Occātor, "He who harrows"
- Serritor, "He who digs"
- Subruncinator, "He who weeds"
- Mĕssor, "He who reaps"
- Convector, "He who carries the grain"
- Conditor, "He who stores the grain"
- Promitor, "He who distributes the grain"
Marriage, human fertility and nourishment
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 Republican Ceres Mater is described as genetrix and alma ; in the early Imperial era she becomes an Imperial deity, and receives joint cult with Ops Augusta, Ceres's own mother in Imperial guise and a bountiful genetrix in her own right. Several of Ceres's ancient Italic precursors are connected to human fertility and motherhood; the Pelignan goddess Angitia Cerealis has been identified with the Roman goddess Angerona.
Laws
Ceres was patron and protector of plebeian laws, rights and Tribunes. Her Aventine Temple served the plebeians as cult centre, legal archive, treasury and possibly law-court; its foundation was contemporaneous with the passage of the Lex 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 of those who violated this law were forfeit to Ceres.The Lex Hortensia of 287 BC extended plebeian laws to the city and all its citizens. The official decrees of the Senate 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. The Temple might also have offered asylum for those threatened with arbitrary arrest by patrician magistrates. 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 her legifera Ceres, a translation of Demeter's Greek epithet, thesmophoros.
As Ceres's first plough-furrow opened the earth 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 the Twelve 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. An adult who damaged or stole field-crops should be hanged "for Ceres". Any youth guilty of the same offense was to be whipped or fined double the value of damage.
Poppies
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 Where the poppy capsule alone is shown, this probably belongs to the opium poppy. The Roman poet Vergil, in Georgics, 1.212, describes this as Cereale 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, the corona spicea, worn by her priestesses and devotees.Funerals
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. 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. 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. The expected afterlife for the exclusively female initiates in the sacra Cereris may have been somewhat different; they were offered "a method of living" and of "dying with better hope".File:Ovid Met 5 - Star Lizard - Adam Elsheimer.jpg|thumb|upright=1.4|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' or newt as punishment. The episode is in Ovid's, Metamorphoses V, lines 449-450. Oil-paint on copper, by Adam Elsheimer and workshop, copy circa 1605, held by the . From an original in the collection of Alfred and Isabel Bader