In Sabellic cultures The
Agnone Tablet, a 3rd-century BCE
Oscan inscription, describes the worship of Ceres within a certain sacred site. The term utilized to describe this site—''''''''''—is of unclear meaning and is varyingly translated as "sanctuary," "
sacred grove," or "enclosure." 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. 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. 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. 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. Within the Agnone tablet, numerous other gods are mentioned with the accompanying adjective '
("of Ceres"). These deities are themselves often linked with agriculture or fertility, such as "" ("She who flowers of Ceres") or "'" ("daughter of Ceres"). Another Oscan inscription from
Capua mentions Ceres with the epithet , perhaps meaning "avengeress," which may imply a connection between the underworld and Ceres, an association paralleled by Roman concepts such as the . In a
Paelignian inscription, a deity named is mentioned, who may be identified with the Roman goddess
Angerona, herself associated with
childbirth. Otherwise, in Paelignian culture, Ceres was possibly connected with agriculture, as another inscription mentions a "," which perhaps means "priestess of the Cereres and the divinities of sowing." It is unclear whether the plural form
Cereres consists of both Ceres and her daughter
Proserpina or perhaps
Venus and Ceres, who are known from another inscription to have been worshipped together by another Paelignian priesthood. However, the philologist Michael Weiss notes that, during the development of Paelignian, the Proto-Italic sequence was syncopated into , before transforming into . Such a sound change is attested for the Paelignian term , itself from Proto-Italic , therefore contradicting the supposed etymological relationship between and Ceres. Weiss concedes that the unusual development of may be explained if it was borrowed from another Italic language, perhaps
South Picene, which itself possibly allowed for a different treatment of the cluster .
Archaic and Regal eras Roman tradition credited Ceres's eponymous festival,
Cerealia, to Rome's second king, the semi-legendary
Numa. Ceres's senior, male priesthood was a
minor flaminate whose establishment and rites were supposedly also innovations of Numa. Her affinity and joint cult with Tellus, also known as
Terra Mater (Mother Earth) may have developed at this time. Much later, during the
early 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.
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
plebs (citizen commoners), the
dictator A. Postumius vowed a temple to 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. Postumius's vow was fulfilled in 493 BC: Ceres became the central deity of the new
Triad, housed in a
new-built Aventine temple. She was also – or became – the patron goddess of the
plebs, 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 of
Magna Graecia, particularly from
Sicily, which later Roman
mythographers describe as Ceres's "earthly home". Writers of the
late Roman Republic and early Empire describe Ceres's Aventine temple and rites as conspicuously Greek. 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. When a new form of Cerean cult was officially imported from Magna Graecia, it was known as the
ritus graecus (Greek rite) of Ceres, and was distinct from her older Roman rites. 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's original Aventine cult was led by male priests, her "Greek rites" (
ritus graecus Cereris) were exclusively female. In Rome, this was known as the
ritus graecus Cereris; its priestesses were granted
Roman 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 the
Thesmophoria to
Demeter and
Persephone, whose cults and myths also provided a basis for the
Eleusinian Mysteries. From the end of the 3rd century BC, Demeter's temple at
Enna, in
Sicily, was acknowledged as Ceres's oldest, most authoritative cult centre, and Libera was recognised as Proserpina, Roman equivalent to Demeter's daughter
Persephone. 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 female initiates and priestesses as upholders of Rome's traditional,
patrician-dominated social hierarchy and
morality.
Ceres and Magna Mater A year after the import of the
ritus cereris, patrician senators imported cult to the Greek goddess
Cybele and established her as
Magna Mater (The Great Mother) within Rome's
sacred boundary, facing the Aventine Hill. Like Ceres, Cybele was a form of Graeco-Roman earth goddess. Unlike her, she had mythological ties to
Troy, and thus to the Trojan prince
Aeneas, mythological ancestor of
Rome's founding father and first patrician
Romulus. The establishment of official Roman cult to Magna Mater coincided with the start of a new
saeculum (cycle of years). It was followed by
Hannibal's defeat, the end of the
Second 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, the
ieiunium Cereris ("
fast of Ceres"). In 133 BC, the
plebeian noble and
tribune Tiberius Gracchus bypassed the
Senate and appealed directly to the popular assembly to pass his proposed
land-reforms. Civil unrest spilled into violence; Gracchus and many of his supporters were murdered by their conservative opponents. At the behest of the
Sibylline oracle, the senate sent the
quindecimviri to Ceres's ancient cult centre at
Henna in
Sicily, 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 or
demagogue, a
homo sacer who had offended Ceres's laws against tyranny.
Late Republic The
Eleusinian Mysteries became increasingly popular during the late Republic. Early Roman initiates at
Eleusis in Greece included
Sulla and
Cicero; thereafter many
Emperors were initiated, including
Hadrian, who founded an Eleusinian cult centre in Rome itself. In Late Republican politics,
aristocratic traditionalists and
popularists used coinage to propagate their competing claims to Ceres's favour. A coin of
Sulla 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. Popularists used her name and attributes to appeal their guardianship of plebeian interests, particularly the
annona and
frumentarium; and plebeian nobles and aediles used them to point out their ancestral connections with plebeians as commoners. 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) and
Victoria (victory).
Imperial era of 66 AD. Left:
Nero, garlanded. Right:
Annona stands with
cornucopiae (horns of Plenty); enthroned Ceres holds grain-ears and torch; between is a
modius (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 Imperial
Pax (peace) and prosperity, for the benefit of all. The emperor
Augustus began the restoration of Ceres's Aventine Temple; his successor
Tiberius completed it. Of the several figures on the Augustan
Ara Pacis, one doubles as a portrait of the Empress
Livia, who wears Ceres's
corona 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. The emperor
Claudius'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 mother
Antonia as an
Augusta, wearing the
corona spicea. ,
Stabiae, 1st century. Nude Greco-Roman deity
Bacchus (right), god of wine, freedom and male fertility, identified with Greek
Dionysus and Rome's native
Liber. Ceres (left) is usually identified as his mother The relationship between the reigning emperor, empress and Ceres was formalised in titles such as
Augusta mater agrorum ("The august mother of the fields) and
Ceres Augusta. On coinage, various emperors and empresses wear her
corona 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 of
Nerva (reigned AD 96–98) acknowledges Rome's dependence on the princeps' gift of
frumentio (corn dole) to the masses. Under Nerva's later dynastic successor
Antoninus Pius, Imperial theology represents the death and
apotheosis of the Empress
Faustina the Elder as Ceres's return to Olympus by
Jupiter'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 is
Faustina the Younger", empress-wife of Pius's successor
Marcus Aurelius. 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 and
Virgo, virgin mother of the gods. She is peace and virtue, and inventor of justice: she weighs "Life and Right" in her scale. 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'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. ==Legacy==