1
Italic Ceres?*
Federico Santangelo
In his authoritative and idiosyncratic survey of Italic religions the late A. L. Prosdocimi pointed out that Ceres is the most complex âdivine figureâ in that domain.1 The symptoms of, and reasons for, such complexity are manifold, and are apparent even to those who do not share the methodological premises of Prosdocimiâs overview (such as the distinction he drew between âdocumentsâ and âhistorical sourcesâ) or disagree with specific aspects of his analysis (such as the heavy emphasis on the elusive âtheology of the Actâ as a cardinal principle in the study of religion in ancient Italy).2 There is, first of all, a relatively large and fascinatingly diverse body of evidence for cults of Ceres across Italy. Along with an impressive range of literary and iconographical material, three of the most important and intensely debated documents of Italic epigraphy â the Faliscan inscription from Falerii (Bakkum 2009: 393â406, no. 1), the Rapino Bronze (ImIt Teate Marrucinorum 2), and the Agnone Tablet (ImIt Terventum 34) â all mention Ceres and shed some light on the cults that she received, although they are rather unin-formative on matters of ritual, and of course belong to different chronological remits. Moreover, the cult of Ceres is widely attested across peninsular Italy. It has a prominent presence in Rome, where it also played a crucial role in the self-definition of the city as a political community (see below), it is mentioned in an elusive and much-debated bronze tablet from Lavinium, along with Vesperna, and it is attested in several Oscan-speaking communities.3 The adjectival form Ĺ erfio- occurs in the Iguvine Tables.4 The epigraphy of the Messapians also yields evidence â 13 inscriptions â for the existence of priestesses of Demeter, tabara Damatras.5
Third, this goddess confronts us with issues of definition, on several levels. First, the problem of how to compare various different cults in a range of different contexts: Ceres is worshipped in Rome, * Kerre- is mentioned in the Agnone Tablet (in the dative KerrĂ), * Keres Arentika is invoked in the curse tablet from the Fondo Patturelli at Capua (ImIt Capua 34).6 In modern scholarship it is customary to identify Ceres with the Etruscan deity, Vei, and of course with the Greek goddess Demeter, who is widely attested across Magna Graecia and Sicily. The analogies between these deities and their cults are beyond dispute; the extent to which their identification should be asserted, however, remains a matter for debate. On one level, this issue is part of the wider debate on Hellenisation in Rome and in Italy. There have been authoritative and influential attempts to explain the whole phenomenon of the cult of Ceres in Italy as a product of Greek influence. E. Pais used the many unconvincing features of the literary tradition to argue for a direct derivation of the cult of Ceres in Rome from the cult of Demeter at Syracuse, which also extended to its political implications: in his reading, the Roman aediles are closely equivalent to the Syracusan agoranomoi.7 F. Altheim argued that even the most substantial piece of evidence for the cult of Ceres in Italy, the Agnone Tablet, is the attestation of a Hellenised cult, strongly influenced by Campania.8 Behind any attestation of Ceres one can legitimately see Demeter.9 That argument was part of Altheimâs wider project, in which the whole Italic pantheon was viewed as deeply shaped by Greek influence. A major contribution to redressing the balance came from the splendid book on the cult of Ceres in Republican Rome by Henri Le Bonniec, who argued for a more sensitive approach to the study of Greek influences on the cult in Rome and Italy.10 Still, the tendency to straightforwardly assimilate Ceres and Demeter and to view the development of the cult of Ceres in Rome as a function of the degree of Hellenisation of the city occasionally resurfaces in modern scholarship.11 In some instances a more qualified approach is attempted, albeit with closely comparable outcomes. The important iconographic evidence for the cult of a goddess yielded by the Fondo Patturelli has been regarded as the complex outcome of a âfunctional dialecticâ (âdialettica funzionaleâ) between Italic, Etruscan, and Greek elements.12
Things are unduly complicated, in this respect, by a deep-seated tendency on the part of modern historiography. It is not unusual to find references to the âsphere of Ceresâ (âambito cererioâ) of several goddesses who are attested across the Italian peninsula and have no direct connection with Ceres or her cult, in the same way in which some speak of a âsphereâ of Jupiter, an âambito giovioâ, to refer to male deities.13 Prosdocimi, for instance, argued that Cererian features can be detected even where Ceres is not explicitly mentioned, e.g. in the evidence for Mefitis from Rossano di Vaglio.14 The underlying assumption of the âsphere of Ceresâ model is that, in any given cluster of gods, there is a female deity whose main remit is fertility and prosperity and who may fairly be assimilated with Ceres; similar considerations may be applied to assimilating male deities to Jupiter.
More broadly, the evidence for Ceres and the modern interpretations that have been put forward test the ways in which we categorise what is Italic, in relation to, and sometimes in opposition to, what is Roman or Greek. This is apparent in the case of Rome, where some sacra that are explicitly defined as Graeca are associated with Ceres and put under the charge of foreign priestesses.15 Even in Rome, however, there is a non-Greek level to the cult of Ceres that requires us to understand the Roman developments against an Italic background, and indeed squarely within an Italic context.16 In fact, speaking of an âItalic Ceresâ in opposition to the Roman one is ultimately unhelpful, and the cults of Ceres across Italy should be discussed as a differentiated and, at the same time, closely interconnected field (see Miano, this volume, for the tension between unity and diversity).17 Arguing, more or less implicitly, for a differentiation between a complex dimension at Rome and a simpler, indigenous dimension across Italy is misguided: such an operation would eventually lead to establishing an unhistorical hierarchy between these cults. There are in fact traces of Greek influence in a number of religious contexts across Italy, albeit along lines that differ considerably from those posited by Altheim. Hellenismus in Mittelitalien remains as productive (and complex) a research programme as it was 40 years ago.18 The appearance of a daughter along with Ceres in the Agnone Tablet is surely the most striking symptom of the penetration of a Greek strand of myth â that of Demeter and Kore â into an Italic context.19 However, distinctions between Italic, Roman, or Greek levels should not be applied too rigidly. This caveat also holds true for Le Bonniecâs model, in which the onset of Hellenisation or Hellenising phases is sometimes applied rather mechanically to the complexity of a prominent, if under-documented, cult like that of Ceres. As Prosdocimi pointed out in his discussion of the Herentas epitaph (ImIt Corfinium 6), by the beginning of the first century BC it makes little sense to speak of âitalicitĂ versus grecitĂ (e versus romanitĂ )â.20 Those who took up arms against Rome in 91 BC might have disagreed with that contention, but the view that disentangling different layers in the practice of cults in late Hellenistic Italy is a hopeless undertaking is very productive.
Having set these premises, the present discussion shall not engage any further with the notion of âambito cererioâ, or similar constructions, and will be confined to Ceres and to deities that have a demonstrable affinity with her, without establishing any hierarchies, and without viewing the âsphere of Ceresâ as a structural element of Italian religion. Its focus will be on the roles of Ceres in Republican Italy, a geographical context that is strongly affected by the growing influence of a regional power. It will end with a suggestion on a point of periodisation.
Before discussing some specific instances, however, it is worth addressing another general issue. Ceres has often been regarded as a typically âfunctionalâ deity, who is associated with the dimensions of fertility and generation (see Miano, this volume, on âfunctionsâ). G. Radke has even established a direct linguistic link between the theonym and the function of the goddess: Ceres is the personification of the idea of fertility that is conveyed in the stem *ker-, encapsulated in a feminine name.21 As Verrius Flaccus noted (p. 109.7 L), the name Ceres derives a creando, from âto createâ. The view that the name Ceres was originally feminine, however, is not uncontroversial: G. Devoto argued that, at least in Latin, there was an original neuter form, *Ceros,-eris, which eventually shifted to the feminine gender and was personified at that stage, in a process that closely matches the one that is known for Venus.22 As A. Clark has noted, the fact that the name of that goddess was originally a neuter noun, meaning âcharmâ, brings it into a conceptual domain that is closely cognate to the âabstract deitiesâ, the âdivine qualitiesâ to which she devoted her ground-breaking study.23 If Devotoâs hypothesis is correct, Ceres should also be included within this cluster of deities, and emerges as a divine figure that is eminently suited to the conceptual approach. Even if, on t...
