The old-Italian goddess of agriculture, grain, and the love a mother bears for her child. The cult of Ceres was originally closely connected with that of Tellus, the goddess earth. In later mythology, Ceres is identified with the Greek Demeter. She is the daughter of Saturn and the mother of Proserpina. Hades - or Pluto - the god of the underworld, kidnapped Persephone, Ceres' daughter, and took her to live with him. Ceres felt abandoned by her daughter's absence.
Persephone ate seven pomegranate seeds, an action that could have sealed her fate to live in the underworld forever. But Ceres, being a shrewd mother, was able to negotiate with Hades for her daughter's custody. Persephone would spend half of the year with Hades in the underworld and half of the year living with her mother. During the time Persephone was in the underworld, Ceres was so grief-stricken that she refused to allow anything on Earth to be beautiful or fruitful, and these were the winter months. When Ceres had her daughter to look after, she was happy and the earth brought forth crops, giving food, so we have summer and the autumn harvest.
Ceres had a temple on the Aventine Hill, were she was worshipped together with Liber and Libera. Her festival, the Cerealia, was celebrated on April 19. Ceres is portrayed with a scepter, a basket with flowers or fruits, and a garland made of the ears of corn. Another festival was the Ambarvalia, held in May.
The ceremony, involved a procession around the cultivated lands of the city where prayers were said and a sacrifice was made in order to ensure the success of its crops. The name of the festival is a compound derived from the adjective amb, going round, and arvum, the fields. The word is a rarity in surviving classical material. References to the festival are found in the writings of Strabo (c. 64 BC - AD 24), Festus (c. late second century AD), and in Macrobius' (c. AD 400) Saturnalia.7 Private Ambarvalia ceremonies in which elements very similar to those performed during the public festival are recorded in the writings of Cato (234-149 BC), Virgil (70-19 BC) and Tibullus (48-19 BC).8 Therefore, from a very early period in Roman literature we have various recorded testimonies which bear witness to the continuance of the Ambarvarlia ceremony over a prolonged period.
By the time of Augustine's reign it had become impossible to physically circumambulate the ever-increasing boundaries around Rome, and thus the ceremonies and sacrifices were made at certain circumscribed locations.
At the sacred grove on Via Campana, the festival of Dea Dia was also celebrated by the Arval Brethren, and although this feast was movable, its customary date was 29 May. This was the most crucial month for the crops in Rome, and thus purification ceremonies, or lustrations were performed so as to guarantee a healthy harvest. Because of the similarities between this festival and that of Ambarvalia, it has been suggested that these were one and the same festivals.
In the famous Carmen arvale recited during the festival of Dea Dia, the Lares (gods of the soil), Semones (god of seed and abundance) and Mars are petitioned in order to protect the land and harvest.
Furthermore, records concerning Dea Dia show that she shared characteristics similar to those of Ceres (the greatly revered corn-goddess). However, the hymn contains no direct reference to Dea Dia, and Mars is the dominant deity invoked. Here Mars is portrayed as a of defender of crops, called upon to do battle against all the unseen evil forces which threaten the harvest. The cry of e nos Marmor iuuato triumpe triumpe trium[pe tri]umpe by the Arval Brethren at the end of the hymn reinforces both the combative and defensive character of Mars.
Cato, in a ritual to be performed during a private Ambarvalia ceremony proposes a prayer to be recited, in which Mars is invoked in similar terms to that found in the hymn of the Arval Brethren. The prayer calls on Mars to combat demons which threaten the crops. "[H]alt, repulse, and cast out the visible and invisible maladies, dearth and desolation, calamities and inclemencies . . . in order that thou may allow the products, wheat, vines, and young shoots, to increase and arrive at a favorable outcome . . . ."
As I have already mentioned above, during the Ambarvalia festival, (which was processional in nature) fields were circumambulated and purified though lustrations. The word lustration is derived from the Latin verb lustrum: to purify by means of a propitiatory offering in order to ensure that all evil was excluded from within the circle which had been circumambulated.
The
lustration ceremony had no doubt been observed since the origins of Rome,
whereby the boundary of the cultivated land was marked off from that of
the wilderness, the sacred from the profane. This boundary-line was itself
eventually to become sacred, marked by a procession, prayers and sacrifice,
usually in May, for during this period crops were vulnerable to disease
and had to be protected. It is probable that the classical Roman festival
of the Ambarvalia was imported to Gaul during its occupation by Rome.
1 H. H Scullard, Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic (London: Thames and Hudson, 1981) 124-5.
2 The Oxford Classical Dictionary, ed. Simon Hornblower and Anthony Spawforth, 3rd ed (Oxford: OUP, 1996) 292.
3 Georges Dumézil Archaic Roman Religion, trans. by Philip Krapp (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1970) vol. i 229-31.
4 Hampson. 228. 33 Fowler, The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic 127.
5 Warde
Fowler, The Roman Festival of the Period of the Republic: An Introduction
to the Study of the Religion of the Romans (London: MacMillan, 1899) 435.