Ceres
deity figure · 9 works · 13 mentions · 18 anchored passages
Demeter · Pharian Ceres · dusty one · the grain-crop
in the texts
De Rerum Natura
The grain-crop personified as the goddess Ceres, cited as an example of allegorical naming Lucretius permits.
The grain-crop Ceres, and prefers to abuse
She is "like Ceres when the goddess gave
Young Bacchus suck";
On the Nature of the Gods
Traditional Roman goddess of agriculture, allegorized by Chrysippus as the earth itself.
that the earth is what is called Ceres;
And her mother is Ceres, from the bearing of crops (a gerendis frugibus), as if geres, the first letter being likewise changed, as among the Greeks;
Yet, those fables despised and rejected, a god pervading the nature of each thing — through the lands Ceres, through the seas Neptune, others through others — may be understood, who and of what kind they are, and by what name custom has named them.
Clouds
Demeter/Ceres, invoked by Strepsiades in comic oaths.
And if they like, by Ceres, let them serve up a sausage out of me to the deep thinkers.
Then, by Ceres, you shall not eat any of my good!
Institutes of Roman Law
Goddess to whom the destroyer of standing corn was hanged as an expiatory offering under the Twelve Tables.
thus the man who destroyed standing corn by night was hanged as an offering to Ceres.
The Rights of War and Peace
Goddess of agriculture invoked by the ancients as a law-giver whose rites symbolize the birth of property rights.
And the ancients in styling Ceres a law-giver, and giving the name of Thesmophoria to her sacred rights, meant by this to signify that the division of lands had given birth to a new kind of right.
Ad Nationes
Goddess whose priest is ritually carried off in reference to a myth of her suffering.
Why is the priest of Ceres carried off, if Ceres did not suffer such a thing?
Apologeticum
Goddess of grain, cited both in the euhemerist argument and as an aniconic idol comparable to a wooden stake.
And yet how much is the Attic Pallas distinguished from the post of a cross, or the Pharian Ceres, which stand without effigy, a rude stake and a shapeless block of wood?
likewise that every fruit teemed forth from the earth before Liber and Ceres and Minerva — nay, before that first man — since nothing that was provided for the sustenance and preservation of man could be brought in after man.
But when you adore Larentina, a public harlot — would it were at least Lais or Phryne — among the Junos and Cereses and Dianas;
De Pallio
Goddess whose initiation rites involve distinctive white dress.
— when, for the sake of an all-white attire and the mark of the fillet and the privilege of the cap, women are initiated to Ceres;
De Testimonio Animae
A Roman goddess referenced through the ritual fillet worn in her worship.
Nay, very often, both wreathed with the fillet of Ceres, and clad in scarlet with the cloak of Saturn, and in the linen of the goddess Isis, and finally in the very temples, you implore God as judge.