Demetra-Demeter/Cerere-Ceres

Demetra

Demetra (in greco antico: Δημήτηρ, Dēmḗtēr) è una divinità della religione greca, figlia di Crono e Rea.
Nella mitologia romana la sua figura corrisponde a quella di Cerere.

Genealogia

Da Zeus divenne madre di Persefone ed ebbe Pluto da Iasione.
Secondo Igino da Iasione ebbe anche Filomelo (definito come gemello di Pluto).
Da Poseidone ebbe il cavallo Arione trasformatasi in Furia o in giumenta. Pausania aggiune una figlia (Despina).
Infine dal semidio Carmanor ebbe Crisotemi ed Eubulo.

Genealogia (Esiodo)

Urano

Gea

Genitali di  Urano

CRONO

Rea

Zeus

Era

Poseidone

Ade

Demetra

Estia

a

b

Ares

Efesto

Meti

Atena

Latona

Apollo

Artemide

Maia

Ermes

Semele

Dioniso

Dione

a

b

Afrodite

Mitologia

Demetra, Madre terra" o forse "Madre dispensatrice", probabilmente dal nome Indoeuropeo della Madre terra *dheghom mather), sorella di Zeus, nella mitologia greca è la dea del grano e dell'agricoltura, costante nutrice della gioventù e della terra verde, artefice del ciclo delle stagioni, della vita e della morte, protettrice del matrimonio e delle leggi sacre.
Negli Inni omerici viene invocata come la "portatrice di stagioni", un tenue indizio di come ella fosse adorata già da molto tempo prima che si affermasse il culto degli Olimpi, dato che l'inno omerico a Demetra è stato datato a circa il VII secolo a.C. Le figure di Demetra e di sua figlia Persefone erano centrali nelle celebrazioni dei Misteri eleusini, anch'essi riti di epoca arcaica e antecedente al culto dei dodici dei dell'Olimpo.

Il culto e i titoli di Demetra

Demetra viene spesso confusa con Gaia, Rea o Cibele. L'epiteto con cui la dea viene più frequentemente chiamata rivela l'ampiezza e la portata delle sue funzioni nella vita greca del tempo: lei e Kore ("la fanciulla") erano solitamente invocate come "le due dee" ("τώ θεώ"), e questa definizione appare già nelle iscrizioni in scrittura Lineare B di epoca Micenea trovati a Pilo. È assolutamente plausibile che vi sia una connessione con i culti dedicati alle due dee nella civiltà minoica di Creta.
Secondo il retore ateniese Isocrate, i più grandi doni di Demetra all'umanità furono i cereali (il cui nome deriva dal nome latino di Demetra, "Cerere"), che hanno reso l'uomo diverso dagli animali selvatici e i Misteri, che gli hanno consentito di coltivare speranze più elevate per la vita terrena e per ciò che dopo la vita verrà.
A seconda dei vari contesti, Demetra era invocata con diversi epiteti:

• Potnia - "Padrona" (nell'Inno Omerico a lei dedicato)
• Chloe - "Il verde germoglio" (in Pausania 1.22.3 per i suoi attributi di fertilità ed eterna giovinezza).
• Anesidora - "Colei che spinge in su i doni" (Pausania 1.22.3)
• Malophoros - "Colei che dà mele" o "Colei che dà greggi" (Pausania 1.44.3)
• Kidaria - (Pausania 8.13.3)
• Chtonia - "Che si trova nel suolo" (Pausania 3.14.5)
• Erinys - "Implacabile" (Pausania 8.25.50)
• Lusia - "Che prende il bagno" (Pausania 8.25.8)
• Thermasia - "Calorosa" (Pausania 2.34.6)
• Kabeiraia - nome di origine pre-greca di significato incerto
• Thesmophoros - "Fornitrice di consuetudini" o anche "legislatrice", titolo che la lega all'antica dea Temide. Questo titolo era usato in connessione con la Tesmoforie, una cerimonia segreta riservata alle donne che si svolgeva ad Atene, e connessa con le tradizioni matrimoniali.

Negli scritti di Teocrito si trovano tracce di quello che fu il ruolo di Demetra nei culti arcaici:

• "Per i Greci Demetra era ancora la dea dei papaveri"
• "Nelle mani reggeva fasci di grano e papaveri"

Una statuetta d'argilla trovata a Gazi sull'isola di Creta, rappresenta la dea del papavero adorata nella cultura Minoica mentre porta i baccelli della pianta, fonte di nutrimento e di oblio, incastonati in un diadema. Appare dunque probabile che la grande dea madre, dalla quale derivano i nomi di Rea e Demetra, abbia portato con sé da Creta nei Misteri Eleusini insieme al suo culto anche l'uso del papavero, ed è certo che nell'ambito dei riti celebrati a Creta, si facesse uso di oppio preparato con questo fiore.
Quando a Demetra fu attribuita una genealogia per inserirla nel Pantheon classico greco, diventò figlia di Crono e Rea, sorella maggiore di Zeus. Le sue sacerdotesse erano chiamate Melisse.
A Pellené in Arcadia si tenevano una serie di cerimonie in onore di Demetra di Misia che duravano sette giorni. Pausania visitò il santuario di Demetra di Misia, che si trovava sulla strada che andava da Micene ad Argo, ma la sola notizia che fu in grado di trovare per spiegare questa arcaica denominazione è la leggenda di un tale Misio, antico fedele di Demetra.
I luoghi principali in cui il culto di Demetra era praticato si trovavano sparsi indifferentemente per tutto il mondo Greco: templi sorgevano ad Eleusi, Ermione a Creta, Megara, Lerna, Egila, Munichia, Corinto, Delo, Piene, Agrigento, Iasos, Pergamo, Selinunte, Tegea, Thoriko s, Dion, Katane, Licosura, Mesembria, Enna, Samotracia e Siracusa.
Demetra donò al genere umano la conoscenza delle tecniche agricole: la semina, l'aratura, la mietitura e le altre correlate. Era particolarmente venerata dagli abitanti delle zone rurali, in parte perché beneficavano direttamente della sua assistenza, in parte perché nelle campagne c'è una maggiore tendenza a mantenere in vita le antiche tradizioni, e Demetra aveva un ruolo centrale nella religiosità Greca delle epoche pre-classiche. Esclusivamente in relazione al suo culto sono state trovate offerte votive, come porcellini di creta, realizzati già nel Neolitico.
In epoca romana, quando si verificava un lutto in famiglia, c'era l'usanza di sacrificare una scrofa a Demetra per purificare la casa.

Demetra e Poseidone

I nomi di Demetra e Poseidone appaiono collegati tra loro nelle prime iscrizioni in scrittura Lineare B trovate nelle rovine di Pilo di epoca Micenea. Vi si trovano le scritte PO-SE-DA-WO-NE e DA-MA-TE inserite in un contesto di richieste di grazia agli dei.
La sillaba DA, presente in entrambi i nomi sembrerebbe derivare da una radice Protoindoeuropea associata al concetto di distribuzione di terre e privilegi (per la radice comune vedi anche il verbo latino "dare"). Secondo altri studiosi di etimologia invece la radice DA sembra una forma dialettale della parola γῆ "terra".
Poseidone (il cui nome significa "il consorte di colei che distribuisce") una volta inseguì Demetra che aveva assunto l'antico aspetto di dea-cavallo. Demetra tentò di resistere alla sua aggressione, ma neppure confondendosi tra la mandria di cavalli del re Onkios riuscì a nascondere la propria natura divina; Poseidone si trasformò così anch'egli in uno stallone e si accoppiò con lei. Demetra fu letteralmente furibonda ("Demetra Erinni") per lo stupro subito, ma lavò via la propria ira nel fiume Ladona ("Demetra Lousia"). Dall'unione nacquero una figlia, il cui nome non poteva essere rivelato al di fuori dei Misteri Eleusini, ed un cavallo dalla criniera nera chiamato Arione. Anche in epoche storiche, in Arcadia Demetra era adorata come una dea dalla testa di cavallo:
Sempre il geografo Pausania scrive: "La seconda montagna, il Monte Elaios, dista circa 30 stadi da Figaleia e c'è una grotta sacra a Demetra Melaine (Nera)… gli abitanti di Figaleia dicono di aver dedicato la grotta a Demetra e di avervi posto una statua di legno. La statua fu realizzata in questo modo: era seduta su una roccia ed aveva l'aspetto di una donna tranne la testa. Aveva la testa e la criniera di un cavallo, e da questa testa uscivano serpenti ed altri animali. Il suo chitone era lungo fino ai piedi, in una mano teneva un delfino, nell'altra una colomba. La ragione per cui realizzarono la statua in questo modo dovrebbe essere chiara a chiunque si intenda delle antiche tradizioni. Dicono che l'hanno chiamata "Nera" perché la dea indossa una veste nera. Tuttavia non sanno dire chi abbia realizzato la statua o come finì per bruciare.; ma quando venne distrutta gli abitanti di Figaleia non ne realizzarono un'altra e il suo culto e i sacrifici in suo onore furono ampiamente trascurati finché i loro campi divennero sterili."

Demetra e il suo rapporto con Persefone

Il più importante mito legato a Demetra, che costituisce anche il cuore dei riti dei Misteri Eleusini, è la sua relazione con Persefone, sua figlia nonché incarnazione della dea stessa da giovane. Nel pantheon classico greco, Persefone ricoprì il ruolo di moglie di Ade, il dio degli inferi. Diventò la dea del mondo sotterraneo quando, mentre stava giocando sulle sponde del Lago di Pergusa, in Sicilia, con alcune ninfe (secondo un'altra versione con Leucippe) che poi Demetra punì per non essersi opposte a ciò che accadeva trasformandole in sirene, Ade la rapì dalla terra e la portò con sé nel suo regno. La vita sulla terra si fermò e la disperata dea della terra Demetra cominciò ad andare in cerca della figlia perduta, riposandosi soltanto quando si sedette brevemente sulla pietra Agelasta. Alla fine Zeus, non potendo più permettere che la terra stesse morendo, costrinse Ade a lasciar tornare Persefone e mandò Hermes a riprenderla. Prima di lasciarla andare, Ade la spinse con un trucco a mangiare sei semi di melagrana magici, che l'avrebbero da allora costretta a tornare nel mondo sotterraneo per sei mesi all'anno. Da quando Demetra e Persefone furono di nuovo insieme, la terra rifiorì e le piante crebbero rigogliose ma per sei mesi all'anno, quando Persefone è costretta a tornare nel mondo delle ombre, la terra ridiventa spoglia e infeconda. Questi sei mesi sono chiaramente quelli invernali, durante i quali in Grecia la maggior parte della vegetazione ingiallisce e muore.
Vi sono comunque altre versioni della leggenda. Secondo una di queste è Ecate a salvare Persefone. Una delle più diffuse dice che Persefone non fu indotta a mangiare i sei semi con l'inganno, ma lo fece volontariamente perché si era affezionata ad Ade.

La permanenza di Demetra a Eleusi

Mentre stava cercando la figlia Persefone, Demetra assunse le sembianze di una vecchia di nome Doso e con quest'aspetto fu accolta con grande senso dell'ospitalità da Celeo, re di Eleusi nell'Attica. Questi le chiese di badare ai suoi due figli, Demofoonte e Trittolemo, che aveva avuto da Metanira. Per ringraziare Celeo della sua ospitalità, Demetra decise di fargli il dono di trasformare Demofoonte in un dio. Il rituale prevedeva che il bimbo fosse ricoperto e unto con l'ambrosia, che la dea stringendolo tra le braccia soffiasse dolcemente su di lui e lo rendesse immortale bruciando nottetempo il suo spirito mortale sul focolare di casa. Demetra una notte, senza dire nulla ai suoi genitori, lo mise quindi sul fuoco come fosse un tronco di legno ma non poté completare il rito perché Metanira, entrata nella stanza e visto il figlio sul fuoco, si mise a urlare di paura e la dea, irritata, dovette rivelarsi lamentandosi di come gli sciocchi mortali non capiscano i rituali degli dei.
Invece di rendere Demofoonte immortale, Demetra decise allora di insegnare a Trittolemo l'arte dell'agricoltura, così il resto della Grecia imparò da lui a piantare e mietere i raccolti. Sotto la protezione di Demetra e Persefone volò per tutta la regione su di un carro alato per compiere la sua missione di insegnare ciò che aveva appreso a tutta la Grecia. Tempo dopo Trittolemo insegnò l'agricoltura anche a Linco, re della Scizia, ma costui rifiutò di insegnarla a sua volta ai suoi sudditi e tentò di uccidere Trittolemo: Demetra per punirlo lo trasformò allora in una lince.
Alcuni studiosi pensano che la leggenda di Demofoonte derivi da racconti popolari ancora più antichi.
Nelle Metamorfosi di Ovidio viene narrato l'incontro della dea con Abante, trasformato da Demetra in una lucertola.

Erisittone e Iasione

Amata in quanto apportatrice di messi, Demetra era anche ovviamente temuta, in quanto capace, all'inverso, di provocare carestie, come ricorda il mito di Erisittone che, avendola offesa tagliando degli alberi da un frutteto sacro, ne venne punito con una fame insaziabile.
Demetra viene solitamente raffigurata mentre si trova su un carro, e spesso associata ai prodotti della terra, come fiori, frutta e spighe di grano. A volte viene ritratta insieme a Persefone.
Raramente è stata ritratta con un consorte o un compagno: l'eccezione è rappresentata da Iasione, il giovane cretese che giacque con Demetra in un campo arato tre volte e fu in seguito, secondo la mitologia classica, ucciso con un fulmine da un geloso Zeus. La versione cretese del mito dice però che questo gesto fu invece compiuto da Demetra stessa, intesa nell'incarnazione più antica della dea. Con Iasione ebbe Pluto, il dio della ricchezza.

Wicca

Nella religione wicca, corrente del neopaganesimo, Demetra rappresenta un aspetto della divinità femminile, la Dea. Simboleggia gli aspetti della madre: l'amore disinteressato, la generosità, l'abbondanza, il nutrimento e la fonte della vita.

Busto di Demetra. Marmo, copia romana da un originale greco del IV sec. a.C.

Jastrow (2006)

Cerere

Nella religione romana Cerere (in latino: Ceres, Cereris e in osco: Kerri o Kerres o Kerria) era una divinità materna della terra e della fertilità, nume tutelare dei raccolti, ma anche dea della nascita, poiché tutti i fiori, la frutta e gli esseri viventi erano ritenuti suoi doni, tant'è che si pensava avesse insegnato agli uomini la coltivazione dei campi. Per questo veniva solitamente rappresentata come una matrona severa e maestosa, nonché bella e affabile, con una corona di spighe sul capo, una fiaccola in una mano e un canestro ricolmo di grano e di frutta nell'altra. Il flamine cereale presiedeva il suo culto. Sorella di Vesta, Giunone, Plutone, Nettuno e Giove e figlia di Saturno e Opi. La sua figlia più conosciuta è Proserpina.  

Origine e culto

Cerere era già presente nel pantheon dei popoli italici preromani, specialmente gli osco umbro sabelli e fu, in seguito, identificata con la dea greca Demetra. Il suo nome deriva dalla radice indoeuropea *ker e significa "colei che ha in sé il principio della crescita". Il culto di Cerere, cui era preposto un flamen minor, era inizialmente associato a quello delle antiche divinità rustiche di Liber e Libera e presentava delle similitudini con i riti celebrati a Eleusi in onore di Demetra (alla quale venne presto assimilata), Persefone e Iacco (uno dei nomi di Dioniso).
Tale culto è attestato al santuario dei 13 altari di Lavinio grazie al ritrovamento di una lamina metallica sulla quale vi è l'iscrizione Cerere(m) auliquoquibus, interpretata come offerta alla dea di interiora dell'animale sacrificato, bollite in pentola. Un suo santuario a Roma era ai piedi dell'Aventino, fondato nel V secolo a.C. In suo onore si celebravano le "Cerealia", ogni 12 aprile, durante le quali venivano offerti frutta e miele e sacrificati buoi e maiali. Si compivano anche sacrifici per purificare la casa da un lutto familiare.
Dalla sua unione con Giove nacque Proserpina.

Associazione con Tellus

Cerere è spesso associata alla dea Tellus sia nel culto che nel calendario in quanto Fordicidia (dedicate a Tellus) e Cerialia sono separate da un intervallo di quattro giorni (15 e 19 aprile), intervallo che di solito si riscontra nel caso di feste appartenenti ad uno stesso ciclo. Anche Publio Omero associa le due dee chiamandole "madri delle messi" (frugum matres).
Anche in due festività agricole c'è questa associazione tra le due dee, sia nelle Ferie sementive alla fine della semina a gennaio con l'offerta di una scrofa gravida a Tellus e spighe di spelta a Cerere, che nel sacrificio della porca praecidanea all'inizio della raccolta.

Aspetto infero

Cerere è legata anche al mondo dei morti attraverso il Caereris mundus, una fossa che veniva aperta soltanto in tre giorni particolari, il 24 agosto, il 5 ottobre e l'8 novembre. Questi giorni sono dies religiosi, vale a dire che ogni attività pubblica veniva sospesa perché l'apertura della fossa metteva idealmente in comunicazione il mondo dei vivi con quello sotterraneo dei morti. Secondo Festo in quei giorni non si attaccava battaglia con il nemico, non si arruolava l'esercito e non si tenevano i comizi. L'apertura del mundus era un momento delicato e pericoloso, non tanto per paura che i morti uscissero in massa invadendo il mondo dei vivi ma al contrario perché, secondo Macrobio, il mundus avrebbe attratto i vivi nel mondo dei morti, specialmente in occasione di scontri e battaglie.
Un altro riferimento al mondo dei morti sembra essere il termine cerritus che significa "invaso dallo spirito di Cerere". Il termine indica qualcuno che oggi si definirebbe "posseduto" (come il termine analogo larvatus). Secondo Renato Del Ponte questo termine potrebbe rivelare un'antica concezione della dea come mater larvarum ("madre degli spettri"), anche in relazione al fatto che il termine cerritus viene definito da Marziano Capella come vox obsoleta, "termine antiquato" quindi "arcaico".

Statua di Cerere contenuta nel Museo nazionale del Bardo, a Tunisi

Giorces - Opera propria

Ceres Diademea, scultura romana II sec., ex Museo nazionale del Bardo,Tunisi.

Demeter

In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Demeter (/dɪˈmiːtər/; Attic: Δημήτηρ Dēmḗtēr, pronounced [dɛːmɛ́ːtɛːr]; Doric: Δαμάτηρ Dāmā́tēr) is the goddess of the grain, agriculture, harvest, growth, and nourishment, who presided over grains and the fertility of the earth. Her cult titles include Sito (Σιτώ), "she of the Grain", as the giver of food or grain, and Thesmophoros (θεσμός, thesmos: divine order, unwritten law; φόρος, phoros: bringer, bearer), "Law-Bringer", as a mark of the civilized existence of agricultural society.
Though Demeter is often described simply as the goddess of the harvest, she presided also over the sacred law, and the cycle of life and death. She and her daughter Persephone were the central figures of the Eleusinian Mysteries that predated the Olympian pantheon. In the Linear B Mycenean Greek tablets of c. 1400–1200 BC found at Pylos, the "two queens and the king" may be related with Demeter, Persephone and Poseidon. Her Roman equivalent is Ceres.

Etymology

It is possible that Demeter appears in Linear A as da-ma-te on three documents (AR Zf 1 and 2, and KY Za 2), all three apparently dedicated in religious situations and all three bearing just the name (i-da-ma-te on AR Zf 1 and 2). It is unlikely that Demeter appears as da-ma-te in a Linear B (Mycenean Greek) inscription (PY En 609); the word 𐀅𐀔𐀳, da-ma-te, probably refers to "households". On the other hand, 𐀯𐀵𐀡𐀴𐀛𐀊, si-to-po-ti-ni-ja, "Potnia of the Grain", is regarded as referring to her Bronze Age predecessor or to one of her epithets.
Demeter's character as mother-goddess is identified in the second element of her name meter (μήτηρ) derived from Proto-Indo-European *méh₂tēr (mother). In antiquity, different explanations were already proffered for the first element of her name. It is possible that Da (Δᾶ), a word which corresponds to Ge (Γῆ) in Attic, is the Doric form of De (Δῆ), "earth", the old name of the chthonic earth-goddess, and that Demeter is "Mother-Earth". This root also appears in the Linear B inscription E-ne-si-da-o-ne, "earth-shaker", as an aspect of the god Poseidon. However, the dā element in the name of Demeter is not so simply equated with "earth" according to John Chadwick.
The element De- may be connected with Deo, an epithet of Demeter probably derived from the Cretan word dea (δηά), Ionic zeia (ζειά)—variously identified with emmer, spelt, rye, or other grains by modern scholars—so that she is the Mother and the giver of food generally. Wanax (wa-na-ka) was her male companion (Greek: Πάρεδρος, Paredros) in Mycenaean cult. The Arcadian cult links her to the god Poseidon, who probably substituted the male companion of the Great Goddess ; Demeter may therefore be related to a Minoan Great Goddess (Cybele).
An alternative Proto-Indo-European etymology comes through Potnia and Despoina, where Des- represents a derivative of PIE *dem (house, dome), and Demeter is "mother of the house" (from PIE *dems-méh₂tēr).

Agricultural deity

According to the Athenian rhetorician Isocrates, Demeter's greatest gifts to humankind were agriculture, particularly of cereals, and the Mysteries which give the initiate higher hopes in this life and the afterlife. These two gifts were intimately connected in Demeter's myths and mystery cults. In Hesiod, prayers to Zeus-Chthonios (chthonic Zeus) and Demeter help the crops grow full and strong. Demeter's emblem is the poppy, a bright red flower that grows among the barley.
In Hesiod's Theogony, Demeter is the daughter of Cronus and Rhea. At the marriage of Cadmus and Harmonia, Demeter lured Iasion away from the other revelers. They had intercourse in a ploughed furrow in Crete, and she gave birth to two sons, Philomelus and Ploutos. Her daughter by Zeus was Persephone, Queen of the Underworld.

Festivals and cults

Demeter's two major festivals were sacred mysteries. Her Thesmophoria festival (11–13 October) was women-only. Her Eleusinian mysteries were open to initiates of any gender or social class. At the heart of both festivals were myths concerning Demeter as Mother and Persephone as her daughter.

Mythology

Demeter and Persephone

Demeter's virgin daughter Persephone was abducted to the underworld by Hades. Demeter searched for her ceaselessly, preoccupied with her loss and her grief. The seasons halted; living things ceased their growth, then began to die. Faced with the extinction of all life on earth, Zeus sent his messenger Hermes to the underworld to bring Persephone back. Hades agreed to release her if she had eaten nothing while in his realm; but Persephone had eaten a small number of pomegranate seeds. This bound her to Hades and the underworld for certain months of every year, either the dry Mediterranean summer, when plant life is threatened by drought, or the autumn and winter. There are several variations on the basic myth. In the Homeric hymn to Demeter, Hecate assists in the search and later becomes Persephone's underworld attendant. In another, Persephone willingly and secretly eats the pomegranate seeds, thinking to deceive Hades, but is discovered and made to stay. Contrary to popular perception, Persephone's time in the underworld does not correspond with the unfruitful seasons of the ancient Greek calendar, nor her return to the upper world with springtime. Demeter's descent to retrieve Persephone from the underworld is connected to the Eleusinian Mysteries.
Demeter and her daughter Persephone were usually called:

• The goddesses, often distinguished as "the older" and "the younger" in Eleusis.
• Demeters, in Rhodes and Sparta
• The thesmophoroi, "the legislators" in the Thesmophoria.
• The Great Goddesses, in Arcadia.
• The mistresses in Arcadia.

In Mycenaean Pylos, Demeter and Persephone were probably called "queens" (wa-na-ssoi).
The myth of the capture of Persephone seems to be pre-Greek. In the Greek version, Ploutos (πλούτος, wealth) represents the wealth of the corn that was stored in underground silos or ceramic jars (pithoi). Similar subterranean pithoi were used in ancient times for funerary practices. At the beginning of the autumn, when the corn of the old crop is laid on the fields, she ascends and is reunited with her mother Demeter, for at this time the old crop and the new meet each other.
According to the personal mythology of Robert Graves, Persephone is not only the younger self of Demeter, she is in turn also one of three guises of the Triple Goddess – Kore (the youngest, the maiden, signifying green young grain), Persephone (in the middle, the nymph, signifying the ripe grain waiting to be harvested), and Hecate (the eldest of the three, the crone, the harvested grain), which to a certain extent reduces the name and role of Demeter to that of group name. Before her abduction, she is called Kore; and once taken she becomes Persephone ('she who brings destruction').

Demeter at Eleusis

Demeter's search for her daughter Persephone took her to the palace of Celeus, the King of Eleusis in Attica. She assumed the form of an old woman, and asked him for shelter. He took her in, to nurse Demophon and Triptolemus, his sons by Metanira. To reward his kindness, she planned to make Demophon immortal; she secretly anointed the boy with ambrosia and laid him in the flames of the hearth, to gradually burn away his mortal self. But Metanira walked in, saw her son in the fire and screamed in fright. Demeter abandoned the attempt. Instead, she taught Triptolemus the secrets of agriculture, and he in turn taught them to any who wished to learn them. Thus, humanity learned how to plant, grow and harvest grain. The myth has several versions; some are linked to figures such as Eleusis, Rarus and Trochilus. The Demophon element may be based on an earlier folk tale.

Demeter and Poseidon

Demeter and Poseidon's names appear in the earliest scratched notes in Linear B found at Mycenae and Mycenaean Pylos; e-ne-si-da-o-ne (earth-shaker) for Poseidon, and si-to-po-ti-ni-ja, who is probably related with Demeter. Poseidon carries frequently the title wa-na-ka (wanax) in Linear B inscriptions, as king of the underworld, and his title E-ne-si-da-o-ne indicates his chthonic nature. In the cave of Amnisos (Crete) Enesidaon is related with the cult of Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth. She was related with the annual birth of the divine child. During the Bronze Age, a goddess of nature, dominated both in Minoan and Mycenean cult, and Wanax (wa-na-ka) was her male companion (paredros) in Mycenean cult. She and her paredros survived in the Eleusinian cult, where the following words were uttered : " Mighty Potnia bore a strong son" However, there is no evidence that originally the name of Potnia was Demeter.
Tablets from Pylos record sacrificial goods destined for "the Two Queens and Poseidon" ("to the Two Queens and the King" :wa-na-ssoi, wa-na-ka-te). The "Two Queens" may be related with Demeter and Persephone, or their precursors, goddesses who were not associated with Poseidon in later periods. An exception is the myth of isolated Arcadia in southern Greece. Despoina, is daughter of Demeter and Poseidon Hippios, Horse-Poseidon. These myths seem to be connected with the first Greek-speaking people who came from the north during the Bronze age. Poseidon represents the river spirit of the underworld and he appears as a horse as it often happens in northern-European folklore. He pursues the mare-Demeter and she bears one daughter who obviously originally had the form or the shape of a mare too. Demeter and Despoina were closely connected with springs and animals, related to Poseidon as a God of waters and especially with Artemis, the mistress of the animals and the goddess of, among others, the Hunt.
Demeter as mare-goddess was pursued by Poseidon, and hid from him among the horses of King Onkios, but could not conceal her divinity. In the form of a stallion, Poseidon caught and covered her. Demeter was furious (erinys) at Poseidon's assault; in this furious form, she is known as Demeter Erinys. But she washed away her anger in the River Ladon, becoming Demeter Lousia, the "bathed Demeter". "In her alliance with Poseidon," Karl Kerenyi noted, "she was Earth, who bears plants and beasts, and could therefore assume the shape of an ear of grain or a mare." She bore a daughter Despoina (Δέσποινα: the "Mistress"), whose name should not be uttered outside the Arcadian Mysteries, and a horse named Arion, with a black mane and tail.
In Arcadia, Demeter's mare-form was worshiped into historical times. Her xoanon of Phigaleia shows how the local cult interpreted her: a Medusa type with a horse's head with snaky hair, holding a dove and a dolphin, probably representing her power over air and water.

The second mountain, Mt. Elaios, is about 30 stades from Phigaleia, and has a cave sacred to Demeter Melaine ["Black"]... the Phigalians say, they accounted the cave sacred to Demeter, and set up a wooden image in it. The image was made in the following fashion: it was seated on a rock, and was like a woman in all respects save the head. She had the head and hair of a horse, and serpents and other beasts grew out of her head. Her chiton reached right to her feet, and she held a dolphin in one hand, a dove in the other. Why they made the xoanon like this should be clear to any intelligent man who is versed in tradition. They say they named her Black because the goddess wore black clothing. However, they cannot remember who made this xoanon or how it caught fire; but when it was destroyed the Phigalians gave no new image to the goddess and largely neglected her festivals and sacrifices, until finally barrenness fell upon the land.

— Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.42.1ff.

Titles and functions

Demeter's epithets show her many religious functions. She was the "Corn-Mother" who blesses the harvesters. Some cults interpreted her as "Mother-Earth". Demeter may be linked to goddess-cults of Minoan Crete, and embody aspects of a pre-Hellenic Mother Goddess. It is possible that the title "Mistress of the labyrinth", which appears in a Linear B inscription, belonged originally to Sito ("[she] of the grain"), the Great Mother Demeter and that in the Eleusinian mysteries this title was kept by her daughter Persephone (Kore or Despoina). However, there is no evidence that the name of Potnia in Eleusis was originally Demeter. Her other epithets include:  

• Aganippe ("the Mare who destroys mercifully", "Night-Mare")
• Potnia ("mistress") in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Hera especially, but also Artemis and Athena, are addressed as "potnia" as well.
• Despoina ("mistress of the house"), a Greek word similar to the Mycenean potnia. This title was also applied to Persephone, Aphrodite and Hecate.
• Thesmophoros ("giver of customs" or even "legislator"), a role that links her to the even more ancient goddess Themis, derived from thesmos, the unwritten law. This title was connected with the Thesmophoria, a festival of secret women-only rituals in Athens connected with marriage customs.
• Erinys ("implacable"), with a function similar with the function of the avenging Dike (Justice), goddess of moral justice based on custom rules who represents the divine retribution, and the Erinyes, female ancient chthonic deities of vengeance and implacable agents of retribution.
• Chloe ("the green shoot"), that invokes her powers of ever-returning fertility, as does Chthonia.
• Chthonia ("in the ground"), chthonic Demeter in Sparta.
• Anesidora ("sending up gifts from the earth") applied to Demeter in Pausanias 1.31.4, also appears inscribed on an Attic ceramic a name for Pandora on her jar. There was a temple of Demeter under this name in Phlius in Attica.
• Europa ("broad face or eyes") at Livadeia of Boeotia. She was the nurse of Trophonios to whom a chthonic cult and oracle was dedicated.
• Kidaria in the mysteries of Pheneos in Arcadia where the priest put on the mask of Demeter kept in a secret place. It seems that the cult was connected with the underworld and with an agrarian magic.

Demeter might also be invoked in the guises of:

• Malophoros ("apple-bearer" or "sheep-bearer", Pausanias 1.44.3)
• Lusia ("bathing", Pausanias 8.25.8)
• Thermasia ("warmth", Pausanias 2.34.6)
• Achaea, the name by which she was worshipped at Athens by the Gephyraeans who had emigrated from Boeotia.

• Poppy goddess:

Theocritus, wrote of an earlier role of Demeter as a poppy goddess:

For the Greeks Demeter was still a poppy goddess

Bearing sheaves and poppies in both hands. — Idyll vii.157

In a clay statuette from Gazi (Heraklion Museum, Kereny 1976 fig 15), the Minoan poppy goddess wears the seed capsules, sources of nourishment and narcosis, in her diadem. "It seems probable that the Great Mother Goddess, who bore the names Rhea and Demeter, brought the poppy with her from her Cretan cult to Eleusis, and it is certain that in the Cretan cult sphere, opium was prepared from poppies" (Kerenyi 1976, p 24).

Cult places

Major cults to Demeter are known at Eleusis in Attica, Hermion (in Crete), Megara, Celeae, Lerna, Aegila, Munychia, Corinth, Delos, Priene, Akragas, Iasos, Pergamon, Selinus, Tegea, Thoricus, Dion (in Macedonia) Lykosoura, Mesembria, Enna (Sicily), and Samothrace.
An ancient Amphictyony, probably the earliest centred on the cult of Demeter at Anthele (Ἀνθήλη), which lay on the coast of Malis south of Thessaly. This was the locality of Thermopylae.
After the "First Sacred War", the Anthelan body was known thenceforth as the Delphic Amphictyony
Demeter of Mysia had a seven-day festival at Pellené in Arcadia. Pausanias passed the shrine to Demeter at Mysia on the road from Mycenae to Argos but all he could draw out to explain the archaic name was a myth of an eponymous Mysius who venerated Demeter.^{[citation needed]}

Consorts and children

1. Zeus
   1. Persephone
2. Poseidon
   1. Despoina
   2. Arion
3. Iasion
   1. Plutus
   2. Philomelus
4. Karmanor
   1. Eubuleus
   2. Chrysothemis
5. Triptolemus
   1. Amphitheus I
6. Oceanus
   1. Dmia

Portrayals

• Demeter was frequently associated with images of the harvest, including flowers, fruit, and grain. She was also sometimes pictured with her daughter Persephone.
• The Black Demeter, a sculpture made by Onatas.
• Demeter is not generally portrayed with a consort: the exception is Iasion, the youth of Crete who lay with Demeter in a thrice-ploughed field, and was sacrificed afterwards by a jealous Zeus with a thunderbolt.
• Demeter is assigned the zodiac constellation Virgo the Virgin by Marcus Manilius in his 1st century Roman work Astronomicon. In art, constellation Virgo holds Spica, a sheaf of wheat in her hand and sits beside constellation Leo the Lion.^{[citation needed]}

 

Demeter. Coarse-grained marble, Roman artwork; the head is a modern restoration. 

Marie-Lan Nguyen (September 2009)

Ceres

In ancient Roman religion, Ceres (/ˈsɪəriːz/; Latin: Cerēs [ˈkɛreːs]) was a goddess of agriculture, grain crops, fertility and motherly relationships. She was originally the central deity in Rome's so-called plebeian or Aventine Triad, then was paired with her daughter Proserpina in what Romans described as "the Greek rites of Ceres". Her seven-day April festival of Cerealia included the popular Ludi Ceriales (Ceres' games). She was also honoured in the May lustratio of the fields at the Ambarvalia festival, at harvest-time, and during Roman marriages and funeral rites.
Ceres is the only one of Rome's many agricultural deities to be listed among the Dii Consentes, Rome's equivalent to the Twelve Olympians of Greek mythology. The Romans saw her as the counterpart of the Greek goddess Demeter whose mythology was reinterpreted for Ceres in Roman art and literature.

Etymology and origins

Ceres' name derives from the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root *ḱerh₃-, meaning "to satiate, to feed", which is also the root for Latin crescere "to grow" and through it, the English words create and increase. Roman etymologists thought ceres derived from the Latin verb gerere, "to bear, bring forth, produce", because the goddess was linked to pastoral, agricultural and human fertility. Archaic cults to Ceres are well-evidenced among Rome's neighbours in the Regal period, including the ancient Latins, Oscans and Sabellians, less certainly among the Etruscans and Umbrians. An archaic Faliscan inscription of c. 600 BC asks her to provide far (spelt wheat), which was a dietary staple of the Mediterranean world. Throughout the Roman era, Ceres' name was synonymous with grain and, by extension, with bread.

Cults and cult themes

Agricultural fertility

Ceres was credited with the discovery of spelt wheat (Latin far), the yoking of oxen and ploughing, the sowing, protection and nourishing of the young seed, and the gift of agriculture to humankind; before this, it was said, man had subsisted on acorns, and wandered without settlement or laws. She had the power to fertilise, multiply and fructify plant and animal seed, and her laws and rites protected all activities of the agricultural cycle. In January, Ceres was offered spelt wheat and a pregnant sow, along with the earth-goddess Tellus, at the movable Feriae Sementivae. This was almost certainly held before the annual sowing of grain. The divine portion of sacrifice was the entrails (exta) presented in an earthenware pot (olla). In a rural context, Cato the Elder describes the offer to Ceres of a porca praecidanea (a pig, offered before the sowing). Before the harvest, she was offered a propitiary grain sample (praemetium). Ovid tells that Ceres "is content with little, provided that her offerings are casta" (pure).
Ceres' main festival, Cerealia, was held from mid to late April. It was organised by her plebeian aediles and included circus games (ludi circenses). It opened with a horse-race in the Circus Maximus, whose starting point lay below and opposite to her Aventine Temple; the turning post at the far end of the Circus was sacred to Consus, a god of grain-storage. After the race, foxes were released into the Circus, their tails ablaze with lighted torches, perhaps to cleanse the growing crops and protect them from disease and vermin, or to add warmth and vitality to their growth. From c.175 BC, Cerealia included ludi scaenici (theatrical religious events) through April 12 to 18.

Helper gods

In the ancient sacrum cereale a priest, probably the Flamen Cerialis, invoked Ceres (and probably Tellus) along with twelve specialised, minor assistant-gods to secure divine help and protection at each stage of the grain cycle, beginning shortly before the Feriae Sementivae. W.H. Roscher lists these deities among the indigitamenta, names used to invoke specific divine functions.

• Vervactor, "He who ploughs"
• Reparator, "He who prepares the earth"
• Imporcitor, "He who ploughs with a wide furrow"
• Insitor, "He who plants seeds"
• Obarator, "He who traces the first ploughing"
• Occator, "He who harrows"
• Serritor, "He who digs"
• Subruncinator, "He who weeds"
• Messor, "He who reaps"
• Conuector (Convector), "He who carries the grain"
• Conditor, "He who stores the grain"
• Promitor, "He who distributes the grain"

Marriage, human fertility and nourishment

^{In Roman bridal processions, a young boy carried Ceres' torch to light the way; "the most auspicious wood for wedding torches came from the spina alba, the may tree, which bore many fruits and hence symbolised fertility". The adult males of the wedding party waited at the groom's house. A wedding sacrifice was offered to Tellus on the bride's behalf; a sow is the most likely victim. Varro describes the sacrifice of a pig as "a worthy mark of weddings" because "our women, and especially nurses" call the female genitalia porcus (pig). Spaeth (1996) believes Ceres may have been included in the sacrificial dedication, because she is closely identified with Tellus and, as Ceres legifera (law-bearer), she "bears the laws" of marriage. In the most solemn form of marriage, confarreatio, the bride and groom shared a cake made of far, the ancient wheat-type particularly associated with Ceres.}
From at least the mid-republican era, an official, joint cult to Ceres and Proserpina reinforced Ceres' connection with Roman ideals of female virtue. The promotion of this cult coincides with the rise of a plebeian nobility, an increased birthrate among plebeian commoners, and a fall in the birthrate among patrician families. The late Republican Ceres Mater (Mother Ceres) is described as genetrix (progenitress) and alma (nourishing); in the early Imperial era she becomes an Imperial deity, and receives joint cult with Ops Augusta, Ceres' own mother in Imperial guise and a bountiful genetrix in her own right. Several of Ceres' ancient Italic precursors are connected to human fertility and motherhood; the Pelignan goddess Angitia Cerealis has been identified with the Roman goddess Angerona (associated with childbirth).

Laws

Ceres was patron and protector of plebeian laws, rights and Tribunes. Her Aventine Temple served the plebeians as cult centre, legal archive, treasury and possibly law-court; its foundation was contemporaneous with the passage of the Lex Sacrata, which established the office and person of plebeian aediles and tribunes as inviolate representatives of the Roman people. Tribunes were legally immune to arrest or threat, and the lives and property of those who violated this law were forfeit to Ceres. The Lex Hortensia of 287 BC extended plebeian laws to the city and all its citizens. The official decrees of the Senate (senatus consulta) were placed in Ceres' Temple, under the guardianship of the goddess and her aediles. Livy puts the reason bluntly: the consuls could no longer seek advantage by arbitrarily tampering with the laws of Rome. The Temple might also have offered asylum for those threatened with arbitrary arrest by patrician magistrates. Ceres' temple, games and cult were at least part-funded by fines imposed on those who offended the laws placed under her protection; the poet Vergil later calls her legifera Ceres (Law-bearing Ceres), a translation of Demeter's Greek epithet, thesmophoros.
As Ceres' first plough-furrow opened the earth (Tellus' realm) to the world of men and created the first field and its boundary, her laws determined the course of settled, lawful, civilised life. Crimes against fields and harvest were crimes against the people and their protective deity. Landowners who allowed their flocks to graze on public land were fined by the plebeian aediles, on behalf of Ceres and the people of Rome. Ancient laws of the Twelve Tables forbade the magical charming of field crops from a neighbour's field into one's own, and invoked the death penalty for the illicit removal of field boundaries. An adult who damaged or stole field-crops should be hanged "for Ceres". Any youth guilty of the same offense was to be whipped or fined double the value of damage.
The killing of the tribune Tiberius Gracchus in 133 BC was justified by some as rightful punishment for attempted tyranny, an offense against Ceres' Lex sacrata. Others deplored it as murder, because the same Lex sacrata made his person sacrosanct. In 70 BC, Cicero refers to this killing in connection with Ceres' laws and cults, during his prosecution of Verres, Roman governor of Sicily, for extortion. The case included circumstantial details of Verres' irreligious exploitation and abuse of Sicilian grain farmers, who were naturally under Ceres' special protection at the very place of her "earthly home" – and his thefts from her temple, including an ancient image of the goddess herself. Faced by the mounting evidence against him, Verres abandoned his own defense and withdrew to a prosperous exile. Soon after, Cicero won election as aedile.
Ceres protected transitions of women from girlhood to womanhood, from unmarried to married life and motherhood. She also maintained the boundaries between the realms of the living and the dead, regardless of their sex. Given the appropriate rites, she helped the deceased into afterlife as an underworld shade (Di Manes), else their spirit might remain to haunt the living, as a wandering, vengeful ghost (Lemur). For this service, well-off families offered Ceres sacrifice of a pig. The poor could offer wheat, flowers, and a libation. The expected afterlife for the exclusively female initiates in the sacra Cereris may have been somewhat different; they were offered "a method of living" and of "dying with better hope".

The mundus of Ceres

The mundus cerialis (literally "the world" of Ceres or Caereris mundus) was a hemispherical pit or underground vault in Rome. Its location is uncertain. It was usually sealed by a stone lid known as the lapis manalis. On August 24, October 5 and November 8, it was opened with the official announcement "mundus patet" ("the mundus is open"), and offerings were made there to agricultural or underworld deities, including Ceres as goddess of the fruitful earth and guardian of its underworld portals. Its opening offered the spirits of the dead temporary leave from the underworld, to roam lawfully among the living, in what Warde Fowler describes as ‘holidays, so to speak, for the ghosts’. The days when the mundus was open were among the very few occasions that Romans made official contact with the collective spirits of the dead, the Di Manes (the others being Parentalia and Lemuralia). This secondary or late function of the mundus is attested no earlier than the Late Republican Era, by Varro. The jurist Cato understood the mundus' shape as a reflection or inversion of the dome of the upper heavens.
Roman tradition held that the mundus had been dug and sealed by Romulus as part of Rome's foundation; Plutarch compares it to pits dug by Etruscan colonists, containing soil brought from their parent city, used to dedicate the first fruits of the harvest. Warde Fowler speculates the mundus as Rome's first storehouse (penus) for seed-grain, later becoming the symbolic penus of the Roman state. In the oldest known Roman calendar, the days of the mundus are marked as C(omitiales) (days when the Comitia met). Later authors mark them as dies religiosus (when no official meetings could be held). Some modern scholars seek to explain this as the later introduction and accommodation of Greek elements, grafted onto the original mundus rites. The rites of August 24 were held between the agricultural festivals of Consualia and Opiconsivia; those of October 5 followed the Ieiunium Cereris, and those of November 8 took place during the Plebeian Games As a whole, the various days of the mundus suggest rites to Ceres as the guardian deity of seed-corn in the establishment of cities, and in her function as a door-warden of the afterlife, which was co-ruled during the winter months by her daughter Proserpina, queen-companion to Dis.

Expiations

In Roman theology, prodigies were abnormal phenomena that manifested divine anger at human impiety. In Roman histories, prodigies cluster around perceived or actual threats to the Roman state, in particular, famine, war and social disorder, and are expiated as matters of urgency. The establishment of Ceres' Aventine cult has itself been interpreted as an extraordinary expiation after the failure of crops and consequent famine. In Livy's history, Ceres is among the deities placated after a remarkable series of prodigies that accompanied the disasters of the Second Punic War: during the same conflict, a lighting strike at her temple was expiated. A fast in her honour is recorded for 191 BC, to be repeated at 5-year intervals. After 206, she was offered at least 11 further official expiations. Many of these were connected to famine and manifestations of plebeian unrest, rather than war. From the Middle Republic onwards, expiation was increasingly addressed to her as mother to Proserpina. The last known followed Rome's Great Fire of 64 AD. The cause or causes of the fire remained uncertain, but its disastrous extent was taken as a sign of offense against Juno, Vulcan, and Ceres-with-Proserpina, who were all were given expiatory cult. Champlin (2003) perceives the expiations to Vulcan and Ceres in particular as attempted populist appeals by the ruling emperor, Nero.

Myths and theology

The complex and multi-layered origins of the Aventine Triad and Ceres herself allowed multiple interpretations of their relationships; Cicero asserts Ceres as mother to both Liber and Libera, consistent with her role as a mothering deity. Varro's more complex theology groups her functionally with Tellus, Terra, Venus (and thus Victoria) and with Libera as a female aspect of Liber. No native Roman myths of Ceres are known. According to interpretatio romana, by which Roman deities were identified with their Greek counterparts, she was an equivalent to Demeter, one of the Twelve Olympians of Greek religion and mythology; this made Ceres one of Rome's twelve Di Consentes, daughter of Saturn and Ops, sister of Jupiter, mother of Proserpina by Jupiter and sister of Juno, Vesta, Neptune and Dis. Ceres' known mythology is indistinguishable from Demeter's:

"When Ceres sought through all the earth with lit torches for Proserpina, who had been seized by Dis Pater, she called her with shouts where three or four roads meet; from this it has endured in her rites that on certain days a lamentation is raised at the crossroads everywhere by the matronae."

Ovid likens Ceres' devotion to her own offspring to that of a cow to its calf; but she is also as the originator of bloody animal sacrifice, a necessity in the renewal of life. She has a particular enmity towards her own sacrificial animal, the pig. Pigs offend her by their destructive rooting-up of field crops under her protection; and in the myth of Proserpina's abduction on the plains of Henna (Enna), her tracks were obscured by their trampling. If not for them, Ceres might have been spared the toils and grief of her lengthy search and separation. Enna, in Sicily, had strong mythological connections with Ceres and Proserpina, and was the site of Ceres most ancient sanctuary. Flowers were said to bloom throughout the year on its "miraculous plain".

Temples

Vitruvius (c.80 – 15 BC) describes the "Temple of Ceres near the Circus Maximus" (her Aventine Temple) as typically Araeostyle, having widely spaced supporting columns, with architraves of wood, rather than stone. This species of temple is "clumsy, heavy roofed, low and wide, [its] pediments ornamented with statues of clay or brass, gilt in the Tuscan fashion". He recommends that temples to Ceres be sited in rural areas: "in a solitary spot out of the city, to which the public are not necessarily led but for the purpose of sacrificing to her. This spot is to be reverenced with religious awe and solemnity of demeanour, by those whose affairs lead them to visit it." During the early Imperial era, soothsayers advised Pliny the Younger to restore an ancient, "old and narrow" temple to Ceres, at his rural property near Como. It contained an ancient wooden cult statue of the goddess, which he replaced. Though this was unofficial, private cult (sacra privata) its annual feast on the Ides of September, the same day as the Epulum Jovis, was attended by pilgrims from all over the region. Pliny considered this rebuilding a fulfillment of his civic and religious duty.

Images of Ceres

No images of Ceres survive from her pre-Aventine cults; the earliest date to the middle Republic, and show the Hellenising influence of Demeter's iconography. Some late Republican images recall Ceres' search for Proserpina. Ceres bears a torch, sometimes two, and rides in a chariot drawn by snakes; or she sits on the sacred kiste (chest) that conceals the objects of her mystery rites. Sometimes she holds a caduceus, a symbol of Pax (Roman goddess of Peace). Augustan reliefs show her emergence, plant-like from the earth, her arms entwined by snakes, her outstretched hands bearing poppies and wheat, or her head crowned with fruits and vines. In free-standing statuary, she commonly wears a wheat-crown, or holds a wheat spray. Moneyers of the Republican era use Ceres' image, wheat ears and garlands to advertise their connections with prosperity, the annona and the popular interest. Some Imperial coin images depict important female members of the Imperial family as Ceres, or with some of her attributes.

Priesthoods

Ceres was served by several public priesthoods. Some were male; her senior priest, the flamen cerialis, also served Tellus and was usually plebeian by ancestry or adoption. Her public cult at the Ambarvalia, or "perambulation of fields" identified her with Dea Dia, and was led by the Arval Brethren ("The Brothers of the Fields"); rural versions of these rites were led as private cult by the heads of households. An inscription at Capua names a male sacerdos Cerialis mundalis, a priest dedicated to Ceres' rites of the mundus. The plebeian aediles had minor or occasional priestly functions at Ceres' Aventine Temple and were responsible for its management and financial affairs including collection of fines, the organisation of ludi Cerealia and probably the Cerealia itself. Their cure (care and jurisdiction) included, or came to include, the grain supply (annona) and later the plebeian grain doles (frumentationes), the organisation and management of public games in general, and the maintenance of Rome's streets and public buildings.
Otherwise, in Rome and throughout Italy, as at her ancient sanctuaries of Henna and Catena, Ceres' ritus graecus and her joint cult with Proserpina were invariably led by female sacerdotes, drawn from local and Roman elites: Cicero notes that once the new cult had been founded, its earliest priestesses "generally were either from Naples or Velia", cities allied or federated to Rome. Elsewhere, he describes Ceres' Sicilian priestesses as "older women respected for their noble birth and character". Celibacy may have been a condition of their office; sexual abstinence was, according to Ovid, required of those attending Ceres' major, nine-day festival. Her public priesthood was reserved to respectable matrons, be they married, divorced or widowed. The process of their selection and their relationship to Ceres' older, entirely male priesthood is unknown; but they far outnumbered her few male priests, and would have been highly respected and influential figures in their own communities.

Cult development

Archaic and Regal eras

Roman tradition credited Ceres' eponymous festival, Cerealia, to Rome's second king, the semi-legendary Numa. Ceres' senior, male priesthood was a minor flaminate whose priesthood 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' 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' "earthly home". Writers of the late Roman Republic and early Empire describe Ceres' 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. To complicate matters further, 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' original Aventine cult was led by male priests, her "Greek rites" (ritus graecus Cereris) were exclusively female.

Middle Republic

Towards the end of the Second Punic War, around 205 BC, an officially recognised joint cult to Ceres and her daughter Proserpina was brought to Rome from southern Italy (part of Magna Graecia) along with Greek priestesses to serve it. 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 cult 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' 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 rape and abduction into the underworld by Hades. The new cult to "mother and maiden" took its place alongside the old, but 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 identified its exclusively females 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 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' displeasure, the senate appeased her with a new festival, the ieiunium Cereris ("fast of Ceres").
In 133 BC, the plebeian noble 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' 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' 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' 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' 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", 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

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' 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' 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' 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' mother Antonia as an Augusta, wearing the corona spicea.
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' 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' successor Marcus Aurelius.
In Britain, a soldier's inscription of the 2nd century AD attests to Ceres' 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' 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

The word cereals derives from Ceres, commemorating her association with edible grains. Statues of Ceres top the domes of the Missouri State Capitol and the Vermont State House serving as a reminder of the importance of agriculture in the states' economies and histories. There is also a statue of her on top of the Chicago Board of Trade Building, which conducts trading in agricultural commodities.
The dwarf planet Ceres (discovered 1801), is named after this goddess. And in turn, the chemical element cerium (discovered 1803) was named after the dwarf planet. A poem about Ceres and humanity features in Dmitri's confession to his brother Alexei in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, Part 1, Book 3, Chapter 3.
Ceres appears as a character in William Shakespeare's play The Tempest (1611).
An aria in praise of Ceres is sung in Act 4 of the opera The Trojans by Hector Berlioz.
The 1937-1940 French 50 Francs bank note depicts Ceres in the Garden of Versailles.
The goddess Ceres is one of the three goddess offices held in The National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry. The other goddesses are Pomona, and Flora.
Ceres is depicted on the Seal of New Jersey as a symbol of prosperity.
Ceres was depicted on several ten and twenty Confederate States of America dollar notes.
Yuu Watase's manga is titled Ayashi no Ceres.

 Seated Ceres from Emerita Augusta, present-day Mérida, Spain (National Museum of Roman Art, 1st century AD)

Óscar Marín Repoller - User:Oscurecido. Original uploader was Cynwolfe at en.wikipedia - Transferred from en.wikipedia (Original text : Commons)

The goddess Ceres, seated. Marble sculpture from the latter part of the 1st century CE. National Museum of Roman Art of Mérida (ancient Emerita Augusta), where there is a copy in front of the magnificent ruins of the Roman theatre

Didrachme from Paros island, struck at the Cyclades and representing Demeter

cgb.fr

Nom de l'atelier : Cyclades, Paros Métal : argent Diamètre : 22,00mm Axe des coins : 12h. Poids : 7,71g. Titulature avers : Anépigraphe. Description avers : Tête voilée de Déméter couronnée d’épis à droite. Description revers : Légende dans une couronne dionysiaque, fermée par deux pommes de pin. Légende revers : PARI. Traduction revers : (de Paros).

Created: between circa 200 and circa 180 AC

Funerary statue of an unknown woman, depicted as Ceres holding wheat. Mid 3rd century AD. (Louvre)

Unknown - ChrisO (2004); AnonMoos (2005)

Unknown woman as Ceres. Marble, Roman artwork, ca. 235 - 250 CE. A talk-page comment on the en-wikipedia Ceres article states this as the portrait-statue of an unknown woman, not an image of the Goddess Ceres. The Louvre website describes it as an an unknown woman as (thus, with the attributes of) Ceres. 

A Greek fresco depicting the goddess Demeter, from Panticapaeum in the ancient Bosporan Kingdom (a client state of the Roman Empire), 1st century AD, Crimea.

Sovenok212 - Own work

A Greek fresco depicting the goddess Demeter, from Panticapaeum in the ancient Bosporan Kingdom (a client state of the Roman Empire), 1st century AD, Crimea. The following quotation is provided by The Perseus Catalog (Tufts University, the University of Leipzig), extracted from Stillwell, Richard, MacDonald, William L. McAlister, Marian Holland (1976). "PANTIKAPAION (Kerch) Bosporus," in The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites. Princeton, N.J. Princeton University Press. “The funerary architecture is monumental: a succession of kurgans 4th c. B.C.-2d c. A.D.—the Golden Kurgan, Royal Kurgan, Kul Oba and Melek Cesme—show the complete evolution of this type of tumulus tomb...The Demeter kurgan, which dates from the 1st c. A.D., is much smaller than these and has a well-preserved fresco. In the center of the cupola is a medallion containing the head of Demeter. A frieze on the walls represents Pluto, Demeter, the nymph Calypso, and Hermes. The frescos in still later tombs show mainly battle scenes, gradually giving way to more schematic, geometric designs. The rich grave gifts in the tombs indicate the wealth of the city and its inhabitants.”

 Porcelain model of Ceres with cereals by Dominik Auliczek of the Nymphenburg Porcelain Manufactory, late 18th century

Rufus46 - Own work

Dominikus Auliczek: Ceres, Nymphenburger Porzellanmanufaktur, Porzellanmuseum München

 Demeter drives her horse-drawn chariot containing her daughter Persephone-Kore at Selinunte, Sicily, 6th century BC.

83d40m, based on a work by G.dallorto - self-made edit of File:DSC00414 - Tempio Y di Selinunte sec. VIa.C. - Demetra e Kore su quadriga - Foto G. Dall'Orto.jpg

Category:Demeter photograph of a relief of Demeter in her horse drawn chariot with her daughter, Kore, and with rampant horses flanking the chariot

 Denarius picturing Quirinus on the obverse, and Ceres enthroned on the reverse, a commemoration by a moneyer in 56 BC of a Cerialia, perhaps her first ludi, presented by an earlier Gaius Memmius as aedile

Classical Numismatic Group, Inc. http://www.cngcoins.com

C. Memmius C. f. 56 BC. AR Denarius (3.93 gm, 7h). Rome mint. QVIRINVS behind, C. MEMMI. C. F before, laureate, long-haired, and bearded head of Quirinus (Romulus) right / MEMMIVS. AED. CERIALIA. PREIMVS. FECIT, Ceres seated right, holding torch and three grain-ears; serpent at her feet. Crawford 427/2; Sydenham 921; Kestner 3463; BMCRR Rome 3941; CNR Memmia 19; Memmia 9. Good VF, darkly toned.

 Demeter rejoiced, for her daughter was by her side.

Walter Crane - The story of Greece : told to boys and girls (1914) by Mary Macgregor

These stories from the history of ancient Greece begin with myths and legends of gods and heroes and end with the conquests of Alexander the Great. The book is accessible and well organized, but it is considerably more detailed than some other introductory texts. It covers Greek history from the age of Mythology to the rise of Alexander, but because of its length we do not recommend it for 5th grade or younger. It is an excellent reference, thoroughly engaging, and a good candidate for a somewhat older student's first foray into Greek history

 A 3-storey faceless depiction of Ceres rests atop the Chicago Board of Trade Building.

TonyTheTiger; recropped by Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:26, 1 October 2012 (UTC) - Own work

w:Chicago Board of Trade Building

 Eleusinian trio: Persephone, Triptolemos, and Demeter, on a marble bas-relief from Eleusis, 440–430 BC

Napoleon Vier

Emperors celebrated imperial and divine partnerships in grain import and provision. On this sestertius of 66 AD, Nero's garlanded head is left. Opposite, a standing Annona holds cornucopiae (horns of Plenty) and enthroned Ceres holds grain-ears and torch. Between them on a garlanded altar, a modius (grain measure), and in the background, a ship's stern.

Classical Numismatic Group, Inc. http://www.cngcoins.com

Nero. 54-68 AD. Æ Sestertius (27.02 g, 7h). Lugdunum (Lyon) mint. Struck 66 AD. Laureate head left, globe at point of bust; countermark: X with bar above, all in incuse square On left Annona standing, facing right, holding cornucopiae; on r. Ceres seated facing left, holding grain-ears and torch; modius on garlanded altar between them; ship's stern behind. RIC I 494; BMCRE –; Cohen – for c/m: D.W. MacDowall, "Two Roman Countermarks of A.D. 68," NC 1960, 5; BN pl. B, 7 n.b. This rare countermark of the Legio X Gemina is found solely on Aes coinage of Nero, usually from the mint of Lugdunum. MacDowall's analysis revealed that this countermark was applied during the Civil War in 68 AD while the legion was stationed at Carnuntum.

 Demeter, enthroned and extending her hand in a benediction toward the kneeling Metaneira, who offers the triune wheat (c. 340 BC)

Varrese Painter - User:Bibi Saint-Pol, own work, 2008

Demeter and Metanira. Detail of the belly of an Apulian red-figure hydria, ca. 340 BC.

 Ceres reclining on a cotton bale and holding a caduceus, on a 1861 $10 CSA banknote.

Image by Godot13

CSA-T46-$10-1861 (1862 in error)

 Triptolemus, Demeter and Persephone by the Triptolemos-painter, c. 470 BC, Louvre

Triptolemos Painter (eponymous vase) - Jastrow (2007)

Triptolemos' departure. Side A from an Attic red-figure stamnos, ca. 480 BC. From Canino.

 Official seal of New Jersey. Ceres is the figure on the right. She symbolizes the "Prosperity" aspect of the state Motto. (In Heraldry blazons: "'Sinister' the bearer's own left of the escutcheon", in this case that of the Garden State's Signer [U.S. Constitution]- and first Governor- William

Azes coin in India, with Demeter and Hermes.

Whitehead, R. B. (Richard Bertram) - Catalogue of coins in the Punjab museum, Lahore Published 1914 

Whitehead Coins of the Punjab Museum Plate XI Azes Demeter and Hermes

 10,000 Belgium francs (2,000 belgas) of 1929 (obverse, approximate size 220x134,5 mm). The left side depicts Ceres in chariot and three females, symbolizing the science and art. The white central circle contains a watermark, portraying King Leopold I. Below the watermark is Belgian Lion. The right side portrays Neptune in chariot and three females, symbolizing the trade (with caduceus) and industry. The banknote's full number is on top middle and the series is in top and bottom corners.

National Bank of Belgium - Obtained by e-mail from the Museum of the National Bank of Belgium

 Anonymous - Ceres - c. 1800

 £ 500 (Corona di grano) 

OneArmedMan - Own work

 Askalaphos 

Johann Ulrich Krauss

 Stamp of Portugal, 7,5 C, yellow-brown, issue 1912, Michel N°211. 

Constantino Fernandes (years to be determined) - Own work

 Italy, published 1606 Alternate Title: Deridens Cererem puer in stellionem abit Series: The Metamorphoses of Ovid, pl. 48 Edition: Second edition Prints; etchings Etching Los Angeles County Fund (65.37.132) Prints and Drawings

  Antonio Tempesta (Italy, Florence, 1555-1630), Wilhelm Janson (Holland, Amsterdam)

First french stamp : the 20 centimes Ceres 1849.

VT78 - collection privée

 Eugène Ernest Hillemacher: Cérès moquée par Ascalabos, 1877 Demeter moquée par Abas. Scène à l'Antique. Huile sur toile. Signée en bas à gauche et datée 1877. 74 x 91 cm.

 20 francs Cérès émise en 1851 

Le grand Albert - Own work

 Ceres is mocked by a boy, which is turned into a star lizard (Ovid. Met. V, 449ff). Engraving by Johann Ulrich Krauß, 1690. 

 Pièce en argent de 5 francs, frappée en 1870 àParis sous le Gouvernement de la Défense Nationale. Diamètre 37 mm, poids 25 g. Graveur Eugène-André Oudiné. 

Siren-Com - Own work

 Ceres is mocked by a boy, which is turned into a star lizard (Ovid. Met. V, 449ff). Engraving by Johann Wilhelm Bauer, 1659.

Italy, circa 1662 Prints; etchings Etching Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Lorser Feitelson (56.15.5) Prints and Drawings

Salvator Rosa (Italy, Naples, 1615-1673)

and workshop, Prado Museum

Adam Elsheimer and workshop - Prado

Ceres is mocked by a boy (Ovid. Met. V, 449-450).

 16o5

Ceres, Kupferstich; um 1800

Unknown - Universitätsbibliothek Salzburg, G 874 III, aus einem Klebeband "Malerakademie"

Demeter Temple on Naxos  

Holland, 1676 Prints; mezzotints Mezzotint Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Richard A. Simms in memory of Ernest Jacobson (M.75.125) Prints and Drawings

Abraham Blooteling (Holland, Amsterdam, 1640-1690)

 Flora, Bacchus and Ceres in the forest landscape.

 Jasper van der Lanen  (1585–1634)

first quarter of 17^th century

Headpiece by Adolphe Giraldon featuring Ceres, patron of the month of August

1911 

 Ceres.

Théo van Rysselberghe  (1862–1926)  

 turn of the 19/20^th century

 “Ceres, the goddess of seed and harvest,” uncredited illustration, after a Pompeii fresco, for “Mythical Stories of Our Food‐Giving Plants,” ch. 2 of The Story of Corn and the Westward Migration, by Eugene Clyde Brooks, Chicago: Rand McNally, 1916, p. 19. Digitized by Cornell University from their own collection.

 Cybele, Bacchus, Ceres and Flora on a chariot drawn by lions surrounded by all forms of natural abundance and cherubs: symbolising the element earth. Etching by F. Bartolozzi, 1796, after F. Albani. Iconographic Collections Keywords: Francesco Albani; Francesco Bartolozzi; ceres; BACCHUS; Bacchus; FLORA; cybele

 Abraham Brueghel, Guillaume Courtois - Ceres at a fountain, attended by putti

 Created: between 1665 and 1675

 Entdeckung des ersten Kleinplaneten Ceres am 1. Januar 1801 durch Giuseppe Piazzi von Francesco Ognibene (1785–1837). 

Francesco Ognibene - Giuseppe Piazzi: Praecipuarum stellarum inerrantium positiones mediae ineunte saeculo XIX.: ex observationibus habitis in specula Panormitana ab anno 1792 ad annum 1813. Palermo, 1814,

Ceres 1901

Alice Pike Barney 

Francesco Primaticcio - Ceres 

Created: between 1552 and 1556

 Callet - Jupiter and Ceres, 1777

 Antoine-François Callet

Frankfurt Palais Thurn und Taxis Kuppelsaal Ceres

 Frankfurt Palais Thurn und Taxis Kuppelsaal Ceres

Title page. Bucolic scene of harvest: mythological lady (Ceres?) holding a sheaf of corn and a sickle, young lady with flowers (Flora), a bee hive, apple tree, man carrying a basket with grapes. Figure with lance, handbow and arrows, a crescent moon symbol in his hair. Background of horses, a river with boat, a town wall with a castle on high.

Unknown - Peace Palace Library

 Cerere

 Wenceslas Hollar - The Greek gods. Ceres
Created: Unknown date (author lived 1607-1677)

Ceres and Pan 1615

Peter Paul Rubens

Woodcut illustration (leaf [b]6r, f. [vi]) of Ceres, hand-colored in red, green, yellow and black, from an incunable German translation by Heinrich Steinhöwel of Giovanni Boccaccio's De mulieribus claris, printed by Johannes Zainer at Ulm ca. 1474 (cf. ISTC ib00720000). One of 76 woodcut illustrations (1 on leaf [e]8v dated 1473), each 80 x 110 mm., depicting scenes from the life of the women chronicled (for a full list of subjects, cf. W.L. Schreiber, Handbuch der Holz- und Metallschnitte des XV. Jahrhunderts (Nendeln: Kraus Reprints, 1969), no. 3506). "Pour la première moitie le nom se trouve inscrit à côte de la tête de chaque femme, pour le reste il es ajouté entre les deux réglettes. Il n'y en a que trois, qui n'ont qu'un seul trait carré."--Schreiber. Established form: Zainer, Johannes, ‡d d. 1541?. Established form: Ceres (Roman deity) Penn Libraries call number: Inc B-720 

kladcat - Woodcut illustration of Ceres

 Ceres and two nymphs by Peter Paul Rubens 1624

Ceres and Two Nymphs with a Cornucopia by Peter Paul Rubens

 1608

 Boccacio-f13-Cérès sur son trône

Maître de Boèce - Des cleres et nobles femmes - BL Royal 20 C V 

 Ceres or Allegory of the Element Earth (Georg Engelhard Schröder) - Nationalmuseum - 18018
 Unknown date

Michelangelo Cerquozzi - Ceres 
Created: between 1620 and 1660

 Cosmè Tura - Allegory of August - Triumph of Ceres
Created: between 1476 and 1484

Cosimo Tura (c. 1430 – 1495)

 Ceres, allegory of summer

Philippe Alès - Own work

Cérès recadré Louis de Bologne.

 Demeter mourning Persephone (Evelyn de Morgan, 1906)

Giovanni da Udine Venus, Ceres and Juno
  1517

Jacob Jordaens - Allegory of Fertility 
Created: (1618 - 1628)