Ceres had to do not only with the fertility of the crops but also the fertility of women. In this sense, she was the ultimate goddess of life. According to the myths, Ceres taught humanity how to grow, preserve, and harvest grains. Most gods of Ancient Rome only participated in human affairs when it suited their needs and interests.
In contrast, Ceres involved herself in the daily affairs of the Romans through agriculture and protection. She was the protectress of the lower classes like slaves and plebeians. She also oversaw the laws, rights, and Tribunes of these people and offered her guidance.
The Proserpine joined the domain of Ceres, and together, they were goddesses of female virtue. Together, they were associated with marriage, fertility, motherhood, and many other features of the life of women at the time. One of the most important myths related to Ceres was the abduction of Proserpine. This story might have emigrated from Greek mythology, but it held special symbolism for the Romans. In some accounts, Venus took pity on Pluto, who lived in the underworld alone.
To help Pluto, Venus commanded Cupid to shoot him with a love-inducing arrow, thus causing him to fall in love with Proserpine. According to other myths, Pluto saw Proserpine strolling and decided to kidnap her. She was so beautiful that Pluto wanted her as his wife. When Ceres realized that her daughter was missing, she invested herself in finding Proserpine. During this time, Ceres left her role as a goddess of agriculture and fertility unattended, and the crops started to die. Ceres looked for her daughter everywhere, accompanied by several deities.
In many depictions, Ceres appears with a torch to symbolize her search for Proserpine. No matter how hard Ceres looked, she could not find her, and the land suffered because of it. Since the land was deteriorating, Jupiter sent Mercury to convince Pluto to send Proserpine back to the land of the living.
Pluto agreed, but not without first giving her food from the underworld. According to the myths, those who ate food from the underworld could never leave it. Other stories say that she ate six pomegranate seeds, the fruit of the dead, and those who ate it could not live among the living. After reaching a compromise, they decided that Proserpine would share her time between both places. She would spend six months in the underworld with Pluto as her husband and six months in the world of the living with her mother.
The Romans believed that this was the explanation for the seasons. Offerings of grain were thrown into the pit to reach the Underworld. This tradition celebrated Ceres as a mediator between the world of the living, where she made grain grow in the summer, and the land of the dead, where her daughter ruled as queen through the winter. Some historians, however, believe that it may have served an earlier purpose. The Romans believed that the pit had been dug in the time of Romulus, before the establishment of the Greek rites.
Historians think that such a pit may have once been grain storage for the city. The rituals of the mundus cerialus were established after the Greek rites became more popular. While the first use of the grain pit had been for life-preserving storage, its later use recognized Ceres as a goddess that moved between the living and the dead.
While the Romans adopted their major gods from Greece, more minor deities had local roots. These lesser gods were often linked to more powerful Olympians like the nymphs and daemones were in Greece. The minor gods who formed the retinue of Ceres personified each stage of the process of growing grain. While Ceres was the goddess of the grain itself, these gods helped her grow and flourish.
They were:. These gods represented not only the work of farming, but also the Roman system of ensuring that the city was fed. Most citizens of the city y the Republican era had little first-hand experience with farming. Roman grain was stored in large warehouses throughout the city and distributed to the population.
As a goddess of agriculture, Ceres had been established with the Aventine Hill early in her Roman worship. The allied her firmly with the plebeian class. In the time of the early Roman kings, the plebs had been the farmers and laborers of the fledgling state. Their noble counterparts, the patricians, were the rulers and military men. As the Republic expanded, these classes did as well. The old patrician families maintained a hereditary claim to political power and military authority, keeping this power in a few families for generations.
The plebeian class, however, expanded. In addition to farmers and laborers, it included a new class that was, at times, as wealthy as the patrician families. The class structure of Rome, however, ensured that these new elites would never be able to truly rival the power of the patrician families.
Under the Republic, this social inequity led to increasing discontent. Eventually, the plebeians won representation in government through their Tribunes. The temple of Ceres, as the goddess of the plebeian class, served as a center for political organization. It held the official records of the Tribunes and may have served as a court of law for plebeian matters. The Romans believed that the first laws had been to regulate land use and grain distribution, so Ceres was at the center of legal matters.
Laws concerning farming still fell under her jurisdiction. As the patrician class expanded, many more affairs that impacted them fell under her purview. Patrician law allowed for the lower class to be detained almost arbitrarily. As plebeians gained political power, there is evidence that this law was used with some regularity to silence political opponents.
Patricians reportedly used their status to commit crimes with impunity. They could not be tried by the Plebeian Council and answered only to the laws of their own class. In BC the Senate, under pressure from prominent plebs, decreed that laws passed by the Plebeian Council would apply to all people in the city of Rome equally.
The Temple of Ceres gained additional power under this decree because the official decrees of the Senate were housed there. According to Livy, this was so unscrupulous patricians could not alter the laws of Rome without the knowledge of the plebs. The Temple of Ceres had always been associated with the plebeian class. In the early Republic, it had been the center of efforts to limit the power and prestige of the patricians and make Roman society more equitable.
By the end of the Republic, however, the tradition was used to advance many of those same patrician interests. Agricultural scenes and stalks of grain became symbols for the political values of the plebs. In the later years of the Republic, patrician politicians began to co-opt this imagery for their own purposes. Aligning themselves with the goddess of grain gave the impression that they had the approval of the lower classes and fought for their ideals. Sulla, for example, established a military dictatorship from BC.
Coins from this era show plowmen in the fields and the world conditor , implying that his grip on power was a time of growth and prosperity under the auspices of Ceres. When Julius Caesar took power three decades later, he too credited Ceres for his success.
The implication was that his dictatorship would benefit the plebs, even if he was himself a patrician. He, too, emphasized the cult of Ceres.
In olive-culture no part of Greece competed with Attica, which also produced the best figs, the fruit most widely cultivated.
Kitchen-gardening was practised on the largest scale in Boeotia. Considering the enormous consumption of flowers in wreaths, the rearing of them, especially of the rose, lily, narcissus, and violet, must have been a lucrative business, at least in the neighbourhood of great towns. Meadow-farming was of next to no importance, few districts having a soil adapted for it, and such meadows as there were being used for pasture rather than haymaking. MARS 9. He was held to be the son of Juno, who bore him in consequence of touching a wonderful spring-flower, and the husband of Nerio or Nerlene, a goddess of strength.
Through the emphasising of one of his attributes he gradually came to be considered as, above all, the god of war; for originally he is at the same time one of the mightiest gods of nature, who accords fertility and protection to fields and herds. The first month of the old Roman year was dedicated to him as the fertilizing god of spring; in the very ancient chant of the Arval brothers q.
In later times the names of Ceres and Bacchus were substituted for his on this particular occasion. At the festival on 15th October see below a horse was sacrificed to him to insure the fair growth of the seed that had been sown. As god of war he had the special name Gradixus, the strider, from the rapid march in battle 1 Cp. When war broke out, the general solemnly invoked his aid, by smiting his holy lance and the holy shields ancilia - see ANCILE with the cry, Mars, awake! Mars vigila!
Many sacrifices were also offered to him during the campaign and before battle; and in his name military honours were conferred. The Field of Mars Campus Martius was dedicated to him as the patron god of warlike exercises; contests with battle-steeds, called Equirria, were there held in his honour on the 27th February, 14th March, and 15th October. On the last-mentioned day the horse on the right of the victorious team was sacrificed on his altar in the Field of Mars; it was known as the horse of October October equus , and its blood was collected and preserved in the temple of Vesta, and used at the Palilia for purposes of purification.
His principal festival was in March, the month sacred to him. As early as the time of king Tullus Hostilius, Pavor and Pallor, Fear and Pallor, are said to have been worshipped as his companions in the fight, in sanctuaries of their own.
Augustus caused him to be honoured in a new form, as Mars Ultor avenger of Caesar , in the magnificent temple in the Forum Augusti, consecrated B. In later times he was identified completely with the Greek Ares q. The god of luxuriant fertility, especially as displayed by the vine; and therefore the god of wine. His native place, according to the usual tradition, was Thebes, where he was born to Zeus by Semele, the daughter of Cadmus.
Semele was destroyed by the lightning of her lover, and the child was born after six months. Zeus accordingly sewed it up in his thigh till ripe for birth and then gave it over to Ino, the daughter of Semele. After her death Hermes took the boy to the nymphs of Mount Nysa, or according to another version, to the Hyades of Dodona, who brought him up, and hid him in a cave away from the anger of Hera.
It cannot be ascertained where Mount Nysa was originally supposed to be. In later times the name was transferred to many places where the vine was cultivated, not only in Greece, but in Asia, India, and Africa. When grown up, Dionysus is represented as planting the vine, and wandering through the wide world to spread his worship among men, with his wine-flushed train thiasos , his nurses and other nymphs, Satyrs, Sileni, and similar woodland deities. Whoever welcomes him kindly, like Icarius in Attica, and CEneus in Aetolia, receives the gift of wine; but those who resist him are terribly punished.
For with all his appearance of youth and softness, he is a mighty and irresistible god, strong to work wonders. A whole series of fables is apparently based upon the tradition that in many places, where a serious religious ritual existed, the dissolute worship of Dionysus met with a vigorous resistance. This worship soon passed from the continent of Greece to the wine-growing islands, and flourished pre-eminently at Naxos. Here it was, according to the story, that the god wedded Ariadne.
In the islands a fable was current that he fell in with some Tyrrhenian pirates who took him to their ship and put him in chains. But his fetters fell off, the sails and the mast were wreathed in vine and ivy, the god was changed into a lion, while the seamen throw themselves madly into the sea and were turned into dolphins.
In forms akin to this the worship of Dionysus passed into Egypt and far into Asia. Hence arose a fable founded on the story of Alexander's campaigns, that the god passed victoriously through Egypt, Syria, and India as far as the Ganges, with his army of Sileni, Satyrs, and inspired women, the Maenades or Bacchantes , carrying their wands thyrsi crowned with vines and ivy.
Having thus constrained all the world to the recognition of his deity, and having, with Heracles, assisted the gods, in the form of a lion, to victory in their war with the Giants, he was taken to Olympus, where, in Homer, he does not appear. From Olympus be descends to the lower world, whence he brings his mother, who is worshipped with him under the name of Thyone the wild one , as Leto was with Apollo and Artemis.
From his mother he is called Thyoneus , a name which, with others of similar meaning, such as Bacchus, Bromios, Evios, and Iacchos , points to a worship founded upon a different conception of his nature. In the myth with which we have been hitherto concerned, the god appears mainly in the character and surroundings of joy and triumph.
But, as the god of the earth, Dionysus belongs, like Persophone, to the world below as well as to the world above. The death of vegetation in winter was represented as the flight of the god into hiding from the sentence of his enemies, or even as his extinction, but he returned again from obscurity, or rose from the dead, to new life and activity.
In this conexion he was called Zagreus "Torn in pieces" and represented as a son of Zeus and his daughter Persephone, or sometimes of Zeus and Demeter. In his childhood he was torn to pieces by the Titans, at the command of the jealous Hera. But every third year, after spending the interval in the lower world, he is born anew.
According to the Orphic story, Athene brought her son's heart to Zeus, who gave it to Semele, or swallowed it himself, whereupon the Theban or younger Dionysus was born. The grave of Dionysus was shown at Delphi in the inmost shrine of the temple of Apollo. Secret offerings were brought thither, while the women who were celebrating the feast woke up Licnites ; in other words, invoked the new-born god cradled in a winnowing fan, on the neighbouring mountain of Parnassus.
Festivals of this kind, in celebration of the extinction and resurrection of the deity, were held by women and girls only, amid the mountains at night, every third year, about the time of the shortest day.
The rites, intended to express the excess of grief and joy at the death and reappearance of the god, were wild even to savagery, and the women who performed them were hence known by the expressive names of Bacchae, Maenads, and Thyiades.
They wandered through woods and mountains, their flying locks crowned with ivy or snakes, brandishing wands and torches, to the hollow sounds of the drum, and the shrill notes of the flute, with wild dances, and insane cries and jubilation.
The victims of the sacrifice, oxen, goats, even fawns and roes from the forest, were killed, torn in pieces and eaten raw, in imitation of the treatment of Zagreus by the Titans. Thrace, and Macedonia, and Asiatic Greece were the scene of the wildest orgies; indeed Thrace seems to be the country of their birth.
In Asiatic Greece, it should be added, the worship of Dionysus-Zagreus came to be associated with the equally wild rites of Rhea Cybele , and Atys, and Sabus or Sabazius.
They were also known in Naxos, Crete, and other islands. They seem to have been unknown in Attica, though Dionysus was worshipped at the Eleusinian mysteries with Persephone and Demeter, under the name of Iacchos, as brother or bridegroom of Persephone. But the Attic cycle of national festivals in honour of Dionysus represents the idea of the ancient and simple Hellenic worship, with its merry usages.
Here Dionysus is the god who gives increase and luxuriance to vineyard and tree. For he is a kindly and gentle power, terrible only to his enemies, and born for joy and blessing to mankind. His gifts bring strength and healing to the body, gladness and forgetfulness of care to the mind, whence he was called Lyaeos , or the loosener of care, They are ennobling in their effects, for they require tending, and thus keep men employed in diligent labour; they bring them together in merry meetings, and inspire them to music and poetry.
Thus it is to the worship of Dionysus that the dithyramb and the drama owe their origin and development. In this way Dionysus is closely related, not only to Demeter, Aphrodite, Eros, the Graces and the Muses, but to Apollo, because he inspires men to prophesy.
The most ancient representation of Dionysus consists of wooden images with the phallus, as the symbol of generative power. In works of art he is sometimes represented as the ancient Indian Dionysus, the conqueror of the East. In this character he appears, as in the Vatican statue called Sardanapalus, of high stature, with a luxuriant wealth of hair on head and chin comp.
Sometimes again, as in numerous statues which have survived, he is a youth of soft and feminine shape, with a dreamy expression, his long, clustering hair confined by a fillet or crown of vine or ivy, generally naked, or with a fawn or panther skin thrown lightly over him. He is either reposing or leaning idly back with the Thyrsos, grapes, or a cup in his hand fig. Often, too, he is surrounded by the fauns of his retinue, Maenads, Satyrs, Sileni, Centaurs, etc.
See the engravings. Besides the vine, ivy, and rose, the panther, lion, lynx, ox, goat, and dolphin were sacred to him. His usual sacrifices were the ox and the goat. In Italy the indigenous god Liber, with a feminine Libera at his side, corresponded to the Greek god of wine. Just as the Italian Ceres was identified with Demeter, so these two deities were identified with Dionysus, or Iakchos, and Persephone, with whom they were worshipped under their native name, but with Greek rites, in a temple on the Aventine.
Liber or Bacchus, like Dionysus, had a country and an urban festival. The country festivities were held, with unrestrained merriment, at the time of grape-gathering and straining off the wine.
The urban festival held in Rome on the 17th March, was called Liberalla. Old women, crowned with ivy, sold cheap cakes liba of meal, honey, and oil, and burnt them on little pans for the purchasers.
The boys took their toga virilis or toga libera on this day, and offered sacrifice on the Capitol. Side by side with this public celebration, a secret worship, the Bacchanalia, found its way to Rome and into the whole of Italy.
The Bacchanatia were celebrated by men and women, in Italy outside the cities, in Rome in the sacred enclosure of Stimula or Semele. They were accompanied with such shameless excesses that in B. Her name signifies Mother Earth, the meaning being that she was goddess of agriculture and the civilization based upon it. Her children are, by Iasion, a son Plutus, the god of riches, and by her brother Zeus, a daughter Persephone. Round Demeter and this daughter centre her worship and the fables respecting her.
Hfid6s carries off Persephone, and Demeter wanders nine days over the earth seeking her, till on the tenth day she learns the trutb from the all-seeing sun. She is wrath with Zeus for permitting the act of violence, and she visits Olympus and wanders about among men in the form of an old woman under the name of Deo or the Seeker, till at length, at Elensis, in Attica, she is kindly received at the house of king Celeus, and finds comfort in tend ing his newly born son Demophoon.
Surprised by his mother in the act of trying to make the child immortal by putting it in the fire, she reveals her deity, and causes a temple to he built to her, in which she gives herself up to her grief. In her wrath she makes the earth barren, so that man kind are threatened with destruction by famine, as she does not allow the fruit of the earth to spring up again until her daughter is allowed to spend two-thirds of the year with her. On her return to Olympus she leaves the gift of corn, of agriculture, and of her holy mysteries with her host, as a token of grateful recollection.
She sends Triptolemus the Eleusinian round the world on her chariot, drawn by serpents, to diffuse the knowledge of agriculture and other blessings accompanying it, the settlement of fixed places of abode, civil order, and wedlock.
Thus Demeter was worshipped as the goddess of agriculture and foundress of law, order, and especially of marriage, in all places where Greeks dwelt, her daughter being usually associated with her. The most ancient seat of her worship was Athens and Eleusis, where the Rharian plain was solemnly ploughed every year in memory of the first sowing of wheat.
As the goddess of fertility, Demeter was in many regions associated with Poseidon, the god of fertilizing water. This was particularly the case in Arcadia, where Poseidon was regarded as the father of Persephone. She was also joined with Dionysus, the god of wine, and, as mother of Persephone and goddess of the earth, to which not only the seed, but the dead are committed, she is connected with the lower world under the name of Chthonia. In later times she was often confused with Gaia and Rhea, or Cybele.
Besides fruit and honeycombs, the cow and the sow were offered to her, both as emblems of productivity. Her attributes are poppies and ears of corn also a symbol of fruitfulness , a basket of fruit and a little pig. Other emblems had a mystic significance, as the torch and the serpent, as living in the earth, and as symbolizing a renewal of life by shedding its skin.
The Romans identified her with their own Ceres. As in course of time the Italian god became identified with the Greek, he was regarded as a son of Saturn and of Ops, the deities deemed to correspond to the Greek Uranus and Rhea respectively.
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