Cerealia

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Emerita Augusta, present-day Mérida, Spain

In

festival celebrated for the grain goddess Ceres. It was held for seven days from mid- to late April. Various agricultural festivals were held in the "last half of April". The Cerealia celebrated the harvest, and may have begun on the 19th.[1] Surviving descriptions of Rome's city festival of Ceres are presumably urban versions of an originally rustic, agricultural festival. In his treatise on agriculture, Cato the Elder recommends that farmers sacrifice a sow (porca praecidanea) to Ceres, before the harvest.[2][3]

The Cerealia is listed on the oldest Roman calendars, and its institution in the city is attributed to the semi-legendary

aetiological explanation: long ago, at ancient Carleoli, a farm-boy caught a fox stealing chickens and tried to burn it alive. The fox escaped, ablaze; in its flight it set fire to the fields and their crops. As these were both sacred to Ceres, foxes are punished at her festival ever since.[4]

Libera with Proserpina[5]

During the

ludi scaenici, theatrical performances with religious dimensions, held April 12–18. The plebeian aedile Gaius Memmius is credited with staging the first of these ludi scaenici, and distributing a new commemorative denarius coin in honor of the event. This was an indirect appeal for continued political support in the distribution of free or subsidised grain, a particular interest of the plebs.[8]
His innovations led to his claim to have presented "the first Cerealia".

Rome's traditional religious festivals, including the Cerealia, were still managed by aediles in the Imperial era, until the banning of "pagan" cults and festivals. Cerealia is marked in the

Calendar of Philocalus, 354 AD[9]

See also

References

  1. ^ Barbette Stanley Spaeth, The Roman Goddess Ceres (University of Texas Press, 1996), pp. 36–37.
  2. ^ Spaeth, 1996, p.36, citing Cato the elder, On agriculture, 134
  3. ^ W. Warde Fowler, The Roman festivals of the period of the Republic, Macmillan and Co., 1899, Mens Aprilis, ff.
  4. ^ Ovid, Fasti 4. cited in Spaeth, 1996, pp. 36-37
  5. ^ Spaeth, 1996, pp. 12-27
  6. ^ Hayne, Léonie. “THE FIRST CERIALIA.” L’Antiquité Classique, vol. 60, 1991, p. 132. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41655332. Accessed 26 Jun. 2022.
  7. T.P. Wiseman
    , Remus: A Roman Myth (Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 137.
  8. ^ Hayne, 1991, pp. 131-140
  9. ^ Tertullian.org: Chronography of 354

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cerealia&oldid=1217574906"