The story told by Livy of the introduction of the goddess is an interesting episode in Roman history. It illustrates the far-reaching policy of the Senate in enlisting Eastern kings, religions, and oracles in the service of the state at a critical time, and also the curious readiness of the Roman people to believe in the efficacy of cults utterly foreign to their own religious practices. At the same time it shows how careful the government was then, as always, to keep such cults under strict supervision. But the long stress of the Hannibalic War had its natural effect on the Italian peoples; and less than twenty years later the introduction of the Bacchic orgies forced the senate to strain every nerve to counteract a serious danger to the national religion and morality.
XVII Kal. Mai. (April 15). NP.
FORD[ICIDIA][215]. (CAER. MAFF. VAT. PRAEN.)
This is beyond doubt one of the oldest sacrificial rites in the Roman religion. It consisted in the slaughter of pregnant cows (hordae or fordae), one in the Capitol and one in each of the thirty curiae[216]; i.e. one for the state and the rest for each of its ancient divisions. This was the first festival of the curiae; the other, the Fornacalia, will be treated of under February 17. The cows were offered, as all authorities agree, to Tellus[217], who, as we shall see, may be an indigitation of the same earth power represented by Ceres, Bona Dea, Dea Dia, and other female deities. The unborn calves were torn by attendants of the virgo vestalis maxima from the womb of the mother and burnt[218], and their ashes were kept by the Vestals for use at the Parilia a few days later[219]. This was the first ceremony in the year in which the Vestals took an active part, and it was the first of a series of acts all of which are connected with the fruits of the earth, their growth, ripening and harvesting. The object of burning the unborn calves seems to have been to procure the fertility of the corn now growing in the womb of mother earth, to whom the sacrifice was offered[220].
Many charms of this sacrificial kind have been noticed by various writers; one may be mentioned here which was described by Sir John Barrow, when British Ambassador in China in 1804. In a spring festival in the temple of Earth, a huge porcelain image of a cow was carried about and then broken in pieces, and a number of small cows taken from inside it and distributed among the people as earnests of a good season[221]. This must be regarded as a survival of a rite which was no doubt originally one of the same kind as the Roman.
iii Id. Apr. (April 11). N.
On this day[222] the oracle of the great temple of Fortuna Primigenia at Praeneste was open to suppliants, as we learn from a fragment of the Praenestine Fasti. Though not a Roman festival, the day deserves to be noticed here, as this oracle was by far the most renowned in Italy. The cult of Fortuna will be discussed under June 25 and Sept. 13. It does not seem to be known whether the oracle was open on these days only; see R. Peter in Myth. Lex. s. v. Fortuna, 1545.
xiii Kal. Mai. (April 19). NP.
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