Roman365 Directory

Ceres is the roman name for the greek goddess DEMETER. The introduction of the cult to Ceres in Rome dates back to the year 496 BC and seems to follow from the siege of the city by the Etruscans, while Rome was threatened with famine.

The Roman goddess Ceres represented a seasonal transformation in the agricultural cycle, thus she inhabited the transition zone between life and death.

In Roman mythology, Ceres was the goddess of grain, agriculture, and harvest and was worshipped by farmers and common people of Rome in the early Roman times. There was a festival that honored her from April 12 to April 14th called the Cerealia.

615 feet above the streets of Chicago stands the Roman goddess, Ceres. High atop the Chicago Board of Trade building, her home since 1930, the 31-foot, 6-ton cast aluminum statue of Ceres has been a symbol of the close association between the Chicago Board of Trade and agriculture.

Ceres was the Earth goddess and goddess of corn. Her daughter was Proserpine.

In this thematic study of the Roman goddess Ceres, Barbette Spaeth explores the rich complexity of meanings and functions that grew up around the goddess from the prehistoric period to the Late Roman Empire. In particular, she examines two major concepts, fertility and liminality, and two social categories, the plebs and women, which were inextricably linked with Ceres in the Roman mind.

The grain goddesses in general tend to recieve less attention than their counterparts, even among ecofeminists. Both Ceres and her Greek counterpart Demeter are all-too-often simply summed up in the Demeter-Persephone story and left there in a psychological quagmire. However, not only are were these goddesses active parts of their respective pantheons, but there are important historical and religious differences between Demeter and the later Ceres.