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CER[IALIA]. (CAER. MAFF. PRAEN. ESQ.)

CERERI LIBERO (LIBERAE) ESQ.

Note: All the days from 12th to 19th are marked ludi, ludi Cer., or ludi Ceriales, in Tusc. Maff. Praen. Vat., taken together: loid. Cereri in Esq., where the 18th only is preserved: loedi C in Caer. Philocalus has Cerealici c. m. (circenses missus) xxiv on 12th and 19th.

The origin of the ludi Cereales, properly so called, cannot be proved to be earlier than the Second Punic War. The games first appear as fully established in B.C. 202^[223]. But from the fact that April 19 is marked CER in large letters in the calendars we may infer, with Mommsen^[224], that there was a festival in honour of Ceres as far back as the period of the monarchy. The question therefore arises whether this ancient Ceres was a native Italian deity, or the Greek Demeter afterwards known to the Romans as Ceres.

That there was such an Italian deity is placed almost beyond doubt by the name itself, which all authorities agree in connecting with cerus = genius, and with the cerfus and cerfia of the great inscription of Iguvium^[225]. The verbal form seems clearly to be creare^[226]; and thus, strange to say, we actually get some definite aid from etymology, and can safely see in the earliest Ceres, if we recollect her identification with the Greek goddess of the earth and its fruits, a deity presiding over or representing the generative powers of nature. We cannot, however, feel sure whether this deity was originally feminine only, or masculine also, as Arnobius seems to suggest^[227]. Judging from the occurrence of forms such as those quoted above, it is quite likely, as in the case of Pales, Liber, and others, that this numen was of both sexes, or of undetermined sex. So anxious were the primitive Italians to catch the ear of their deities by making no mistake in the ritual of addressing them, that there was a distinct tendency to avoid marking their sex too distinctly; and phrases such as ‘sive mas sive femina,’ ‘si deus si dea,’ are familiar to all students of the Roman religion^[228].

We may be satisfied, then, that the oldest Ceres was not simply an importation from Greece. It is curious however, that Ceres is not found exactly where we should expect to find her, viz. in the ritual of the Fratres Arvales^[229]. Yet this very fact may throw further light on the primitive nature of Ceres. The central figure of the Arval ritual was the nameless Dea Dia; and in a ritual entirely relating to the fruits of the earth we can fairly account for the absence of Ceres by supposing that she is there represented by the Dea Dia—in fact, that the two are identical^[230]. No one at all acquainted with Italian ideas of the gods will be surprised at this. It is surely a more reasonable hypothesis than that of Birt, who thinks that an old name for seed and bread (i.e. Ceres) was transferred to the Greek deity who dispensed seed and bread when she was introduced in Rome^[231]. It is, in fact, only the name Ceres that is wanting in the Arval ritual, not the numen itself; and this is less surprising if we assume that the names given by the earliest Romans to supernatural powers were not fixed but variable, representing no distinctly conceived personalities; in other words, that their religion was pandaemonic rather than polytheistic, though with a tendency to lend itself easily to the influence of polytheism. We may agree, then, with Preller^[232], that Ceres, with Tellus, and perhaps Ops and Acca Larentia, are different names for, and aspects of, the numen whom the Arval brothers called Dea Dia. At the same time we cannot entirely explain why the name Ceres was picked out from among these to represent the Greek Demeter. Some light may, however, be thrown on this point by studying the early history of the Ceres-cult.

The first temple of Ceres was founded, according to tradition, in consequence of a famine in the year 496 B.C., in obedience to a Sibylline oracle^[233]. It was at the foot of the Aventine, by the Circus Maximus^[234], and was dedicated on April 19, 493, to Ceres, Liber and Libera, representing Demeter, Dionysus, and Persephone.^[235] Thus from the outset the systematized cult of Ceres in the city was not Roman but Greek. The temple itself was adorned in Greek style instead of the Etruscan usual at this period^[236]. How is all this to be accounted for?

Let us notice in the first place that from the very foundation of the temple it is in the closest way connected with the plebs. The year of its dedication is that of the first secession of the plebs and of the establishment of the tribuni and aediles plebis^[237]. The two events are connected by the fact, repeatedly stated, that any one violating the sacrosanctitas of the tribune was to be held sacer Cereri^[238]; we are also told that the fines imposed by tribunes were spent on this temple^[239]. It was under the care of the plebeian aediles, and was to them what the temple of Saturnus was to the quaestors^[240]. Its position was in the plebeian quarter, and at the foot of the Aventine, which in B.C. 456 is said to have become the property of the plebs^[241].

Now it can hardly be doubted that the choice of Ceres (with her fellow deities of the trias), as the goddess whose temple should serve as a centre for the plebeian community, had some definite meaning. That meaning must be found in the traditions of famine and distress which we read of as immediately following the expulsion of Tarquinius. These traditions have often been put aside as untrustworthy^[242], and may indeed be so in regard to details; but there is some reason for thinking them to have had a foundation of fact, if we can but accept the other tradition of the foundation of the temple and its connexion with the plebs. It is likely enough that under Tarquinius the population was increased by ‘outsiders’ employed on his great buildings. Under pressure from the attack of enemies, and from a sudden aristocratic reaction, this population, we may guess, was thrown out of work, deprived of a raison d’être, and starved^[243]; finally rescuing itself by a secession, which resulted in the institution of its officers, tribunes and aediles, the latter of whom some to have been charged with the duty of looking after the corn-supply^[244].

How the corn-supply was cared for we cannot tell for certain; but here again is a tradition which fits in curiously with what we know of the temple and its worship, though it has been rejected by the superfluous ingenuity of modern German criticism. Livy tells us that in B.C. 492, the year after the dedication of the temple, corn was brought from Etruria, Cumae, and Sicily to relieve a famine^[245]. We are not obliged to believe in the purchase of corn at Syracuse at so early a date, though it is not impossible; but if we remember that the decorations and ritual of the temple were Greek beyond doubt, we get a singular confirmation of the tradition in outline which has not been sufficiently noticed. If it was founded in 493, placed under plebeian officers, and closely connected with the plebs; if its rites and decorations were Greek from the beginning; we cannot afford to discard a tradition telling us of a commercial connexion with Greek cities, the object of which was to relieve a starving plebeian population.

And surely there is nothing strange in the supposition that Greek influence gained ground, not so much with the patricians who had their own outfit of religious armour, but with the plebs who had no share in the sacra of their betters, and with the Etruscan dynasty which favoured the plebs^[246]. We may hesitate to assent to Mommsen’s curious assertion that the merchants of that day were none other than the great patrician landholders^[247]; we may rather be disposed to conjecture that it was the more powerful plebeians, incapable of holding large areas of public land, who turned their attention to commerce, and came in contact with the Greeks of Italy and Sicily. The position of the plebeian quarter along the Tiber bank, and near the spot where the quays of Rome have always been, may possibly point in the same direction^[248].

To return to the Cerealia of April 19. We have still to notice a relic of apparently genuine Italian antiquity which survived in it down to Ovid’s time, and may be taken as evidence that there was a real Roman substratum on which the later Greek ritual was superimposed.

Every one who reads Ovid’s account of the Cerealia will be struck by his statement that on the 19th it was the practice to fasten burning brands to the tails of foxes and set them loose to run in the Circus Maximus^[249]:

Cur igitur missae vinctis ardentia taedis

Terga ferant volpes, causa docenda mihi est.

He tells a charming story to explain the custom, learnt from an old man of Carseoli, an Aequian town, where he was seeking information while writing the Fasti. A boy of twelve years’ old caught a vixen fox which had done damage to the farm, and tied it up in straw and hay. This he set on fire, but the fox escaped and burnt the crops. Hence a law at Carseoli forbidding—something about foxes, which the corruption of the MSS. has obscured for us^[250]. Then he concludes:

Utque luat poenas gens haec, Cerialibus ardet;

Quoque modo segetes perdidit, ipsa perit.

We are, of course, reminded of Samson burning the corn of the Philistines^[251]; and it is probable that the story in each case is a myth explanatory of some old practice like the one Ovid describes at Rome. But what the practice meant it is not very easy to see. Preller has his explanation ready^[252]; it was a ‘sinnbildliche Erinnerung’ of the robigo (i.e. ‘red fox’), which was to be feared and guarded against at this time of year. Mannhardt thinks rather of the corn-foxes or corn-spirits of France and Germany, of which he gives many instances^[253]. If the foxes were corn spirits, one does not quite see why they should have brands fastened to their tails^[254]. No exactly parallel practice seems to be forthcoming, and the fox does not appear elsewhere in ancient Italian or Greek folk-tales, as far as I can discover. All that can be said is that the fox’s tail seems to have been an object of interest, and possibly to have had some fertilizing power^[255], and some curious relation to ears of corn. Prof. Gubernatis believes this tail to have been a phallic symbol^[256]. We need not accept his explanation, but we may be grateful to him for a modern Italian folk-tale, from the region of Leghorn and the Maremma, in which a fox is frightened away by chickens which carry each in its beak an ear of millet; the fox is told that these ears are all foxes’ tails, and runs for it.

Here we must leave this puzzle^[257]; but whoever cares to read Ovid’s lines about his journey towards his native Pelignian country, his turning into the familiar lodging—

Hospitis antiqui solitas intravimus aedes,

and the tales he heard there—among them that of the fox—will find them better worth reading than the greater part of the Fasti.