Ceres (mythology)
Ceres | |
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Goddess of agriculture, fertility, grains, the harvest, motherhood, the earth, and cultivated crops | |
Member of the Bacchus, Libera/Proserpina | |
Equivalents | |
Greek equivalent | Demeter |
Religion in ancient Rome |
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Practices and beliefs |
Priesthoods |
Deities |
Deified leaders: |
Related topics |
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In
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,[4] whose mythology was reinterpreted for Ceres in Roman art and literature.[3]
Etymology and origins
The name Cerēs stems from Proto-Italic *kerēs ('with grain, Ceres'; cf. Faliscan ceres, Oscan kerrí 'Cererī' < *ker-s-ēi- < *ker-es-ēi-), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱerh₃-os ('nourishment, grain'), a derivative of the root *ḱerh₃-, meaning 'to feed'.[5]
The Proto-Italic adjective *keresjo- ('belonging to Ceres') can also be reconstructed from Oscan kerríiúí (fem. kerríiai), and Umbrian śerfi (fem. śerfie). A masculine form *keres-o- ('with grain, Cerrus') is attested in
Archaic cults to Ceres are well-evidenced among Rome's neighbours in the
Cults and cult themes
Agricultural fertility
Ceres was credited with the discovery of
Ceres' main festival,
Helper gods
In the ancient sacrum cereale a priest, probably the Flamen 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 the indigitamenta, names used to invoke specific divine functions.[16]
- Vervactor, "He who ploughs"[17]
- Reparātor, "He who prepares the earth"
- Imporcĭtor, "He who ploughs with a wide furrow"[17]
- 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
In Roman bridal processions, a young boy carried Ceres' torch to light the way; "the most
From at least the mid-republican era, an official, joint cult to Ceres and Proserpina reinforced Ceres' 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 (Mother Ceres) is described as genetrix (progenitress) and alma (nourishing); in the early Imperial era she becomes an Imperial deity, and receives joint cult with
Laws
Ceres was patron and protector of
The Lex 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' 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 with arbitrary arrest by patrician magistrates.[25] Ceres' 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 (Law-bearing Ceres), a translation of Demeter's Greek epithet, thesmophoros.[26]
As Ceres' first plough-furrow opened the earth (Tellus' 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 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.[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]
Poppies
Ceres' 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
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 (
The mundus of Ceres
The mundus cerialis or Caereris mundus ("the world of Ceres") was a hemispherical pit or underground vault in Rome, now lost.
Roman tradition held that the mundus had been dug and sealed by
Expiations
In Roman theology, prodigies were abnormal phenomena that manifested divine 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' 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 the Second 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 followed Rome'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 against Juno, 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]
Myths and theology
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.. Ceres' 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 the matronae.[46]
Ovid likens Ceres' 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 of Henna (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, in Sicily, 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]
Temples
Vitruvius (c.80 – 15 BC) describes the "Temple of Ceres near the Circus Maximus" (her Aventine Temple) as typically Araeostyle, having widely spaced supporting columns, with architraves 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 the Tuscan 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 advised Pliny the Younger to restore an ancient, "old and narrow" temple to Ceres, at his rural property near Como. It contained an ancient wooden cult statue of the goddess, which he replaced. Though this was an unofficial and privately funded cult (sacra privata), its annual feast on the Ides of September was attended by pilgrims from all over the region; this feast was also the same day as the Epulum Jovis. Pliny considered this rebuilding a fulfillment of his civic and religious duty.[51]
Images of Ceres
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' search for Proserpina. Ceres bears a torch, sometimes two, and rides in a chariot drawn by snakes; or she sits on the sacred kiste (chest) that conceals the objects of her mystery rites.[53] Sometimes she holds a caduceus, a symbol of Pax (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' 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]
Priesthoods
Ceres was served by several public priesthoods. Some were male; her senior priest, the flamen cerialis, also served Tellus and was usually plebeian by ancestry or adoption.
Otherwise, in Rome and throughout Italy, as at her ancient sanctuaries of Henna and Catena, Ceres'
Cult development
Archaic and Regal eras
Roman tradition credited Ceres' eponymous festival,
Republican era
Ceres and the Aventine Triad
In 496 BC, against a background of economic recession and famine in Rome, imminent war against the Latins and a threatened secession by Rome's
Much of Rome's grain was imported from territories of
The older forms of Aventine rites to Ceres remain uncertain. Most Roman cults were led by men, and the officiant's head was covered by a fold of his toga. In the Roman ritus graecus, a male celebrant wore Greek-style vestments, and remained bareheaded before the deity, or else wore a wreath. While Ceres' original Aventine cult was led by male priests, her "Greek rites" (ritus graecus Cereris) were exclusively female.[71]
Middle Republic
Ceres and Proserpina
Towards the end of the
From the end of the 3rd century BC, Demeter's temple at Enna, in Sicily, was acknowledged as Ceres' oldest, most authoritative cult centre, and Libera was recognised as Proserpina, Roman equivalent to Demeter's daughter Persephone.[73] Their joint cult recalls Demeter's search for Persephone, after the latter's abduction into the underworld by Hades. 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 male flamen 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 and morality.[74]
Ceres and Magna Mater
A year after the import of the ritus cereris, patrician senators imported cult to the Greek goddess
In 133 BC, the
Late Republic
The
Imperial era
Imperial theology conscripted Rome's traditional cults as the divine upholders of Imperial
The emperor
The relationship between the reigning emperor, empress and Ceres was formalised in titles such as
In Britain, a soldier's inscription of the 2nd century AD attests to Ceres' 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 and Virgo, virgin mother of the gods. She is peace and virtue, and inventor of justice: she weighs "Life and Right" in her scale.[87]
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 of Septimius Severus (AD 193–211), showing his empress, Julia Domna, in the corona spicea. After the reign of Claudius Gothicus, no coinage shows Ceres' image. Even so, an initiate of her mysteries is attested in the 5th century AD, after the official abolition of all non-Christian cults.[88]
Legacy
The word
Ceres is featured both as a goddess and Queen of Sicilly in De Mulieribus Claris, a collection of biographies of historical and mythological women by the Florentine author Giovanni Boccaccio, composed in 1361–62 and notable as the first collection devoted exclusively to biographies of women in Western literature.[91]
Ceres appears briefly to bless the wedding of Ferdinand and Miranda, in a masque at the ending of William Shakespeare's play The Tempest (1611).
In 1801, a newly discovered dwarf planet or asteroid was named after her. Two years later, the newly discovered element Cerium was named after the dwarf planet.[92]
An aria in praise of Ceres is sung in Act 4 of the opera The Trojans (first performance 1863) by Hector Berlioz.
A misanthropic poem recited by
In the US, Ceres is one of the three "goddess offices" held in
See also
Notes
- ^ Various candidates for its location include the site of Rome's Comitium and the Palatine Hill, within the city's ritual boundary (pomerium)
- ^ Apparently not the same Lapis manalis used by the pontifices to alleviate droughts.
References
- ^ "Ceres". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. 2014.
- ^ "Ceres". Oxford Dictionaries. Archived from the original on November 3, 2014.
- ^ ISBN 0-8442-5469-X.
- ^ Larousse Desk Reference Encyclopedia, The Book People, Haydock, 1995, p. 215.
- ^ a b de Vaan 2008, pp. 110–111.
- ISBN 0195085957.
- ^ 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 the Iguvine Tablets, and Gantz' identification of Ceres as one of six figures shown on a terracotta plaque at Etruscan Murlo (Poggio Civitate)
- ^ John Scheid, in Rüpke, 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 the porca praecidanea.
- ^ Spaeth, 1996, pp. 35–39: the offer of praemetium 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.
- ^ Wiseman, 1995, p. 137.
- ^ 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' first ludi scaeneci. He celebrated the event with the dole of a new commemorative denarius; his claim to have given "the first Cerealia" represents this innovation. See Spaeth, 1996, p. 88.
- Fabius 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.
- ^ ISBN 978-0521316828.
- ^ Spaeth, 1996, citing Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis, 30.75.
- 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' role at marriages and the ideal of a "chaste married life" for Roman matrons, see Staples, 1998, pp. 84–93.
- ^ Benko, p. 177.
- ^ Spaeth, 1996, 103 - 106.
- ^ Spaeth, 1996, pp. 42–43, citing Vetter, E., 1953, Handbuch der italienischen Dialekte 1. Heidelberg, for connections between Ceres, Pelignan Angitia 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
- 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
- ^ Cereri necari, literally "killed for Ceres".
- ^ Spaeth, 1996, p. 70, citing Pliny the elder, Historia naturalis, 18.3.13 on the Twelve Tables and cereri 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.128-129
- ^ Spaeth, 1996, pp. 55–63.
- ^ 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" in Journal of Roman Studies, 2, 1912, pp. 25–26: Warde Fowler notes the possibility that pigs were offered: also (pp. 35–36) seed-corn, probably far, from the harvest.
- ^ Cited in Macrobius, 1.16.18.
- ^ Festus p. 261 L2, citing's Cato's commentaries on civil law.
- ^ DiLuzio, M. J., A Place at the Altar. Priestesses in Republican Rome. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016, pp. 113-114
- ^ Plutarch, Romulus, 11.
- ^ See Spaeth, pp. 63–5: W. Warde Fowler, "Mundus Patet" in Journal 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, the mundus is an entrance to the underworld realm of Orcus, broadly equivalent to Dis Pater and Greek Pluto. For more on Ceres as a liminal deity, her earthly precedence over the underworld and the mundus, see Spaeth, 1996, pp. 5, 18, 31, 63-5. For further connection between the mundus, the penates, and agricultural and underworld deities, see W. Warde Fowler, "Mundus Patet" in Journal of Roman Studies, 2, (1912), pp. 25–33: available online at Bill Thayer's website
- Ab Urbe Condita, 36.37.4-5. Livy describes the fast as a cyclical ieiunium 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.
- ^ Spaeth, 1996, pp. 14–15, 65–7(?).
- Comitia). 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]
- Vergil, 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.
- ^ Spaeth, 1996, p. 129.
- ^ Vitruvius, On Architecture, 3.1.5 available at penelope. edu
- ^ Vitruvius, On Architecture, 1.7.2 available at penelope. edu
- ^ Pliny the Younger, Epistles, 9.39: cited by Oliver de Cazanove, in Rüpke, Jörg (Editor), A Companion to Roman Religion, Wiley-Blackwell, 2007, p. 56.
- ^ Eric Orlin, Foreign Cults in Rome: Creating a Roman Empire (Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 144.
- ^ Spaeth, pp. 11, 61.
- ^ Spaeth, pp. 28, 68.
- ^ Spaeth, p. 37, illustrated at fig. 7.
- ^ Spaeth, pp. 97–102.
- ^ Rome's legendary second King, Numa was thought to have instituted the flamines, so Ceres' service by a flamen cerialis suggested her oldest Roman cult as one of great antiquity.
- ^ CIL X 3926.
- ^ Responsibility for the provision of grain and popular games lent the aedileship a high and politically useful public profile. See Cursus 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
- Vestal 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' 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.
- ^ Ovid, Fasti, 1.673–684.
- ^ Spaeth, 1996, pp.8, 44.
- ^ Wiseman, 1995, p. 133 and notes 20, 22.
- ^ The Sibylline Books were written in Greek; according to later historians, they had recommended the inauguration of Roman cult to the Greek deities Demeter, Dionysus and Persephone. 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.
- ^ a b Spaeth, 1996, pp. 4, 6–13. For discussion of ritus graecus and its relation to Ceres' cult, see Scheid, pp. 15–31.
- ^ Spaeth, 1996, pp. 4, 6–13, citing Arnobius, 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.
- ^ Scheid, p. 23.
- ^ Spaeth, 1996, pp. 13, 15, 60, 94–97.
- Claudia 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, 2.4.108 et 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, 1996, pp. 6–8, 86ff.
- ^ 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, Libertas et al., as one of several Imperial Virtues.
- ^ CILXl, 3196.
- ^ Spaeth, 1996, p. 101.
- ^ 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"; cf Juno Caelestis, "Queen of Heaven", the Romanised form of Tanit.
- ^ Spaeth, 1996, pp. 30, 62, citing EE 4.866 for the 5th century mystes Cereris.
- ^ Oxford Languages online [4]
- ^ Santos, R. de Mambro, "The Beer of Bacchus. Visual Strategies and Moral Values in Hendrick Goltzius’ Representations of Sine Cerere et Libero Friget Venus", in Emblemi 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
- ISBN 0-674-01130-9.
- ^ 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.
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