CEREALIA. - Festivals in honour of Cerere, celebrated on 19 April.
It is not known how they were conducted in the primitive indigenous cult, to which there may belong the sacred-magical rite of releasing in the Circus Maximus foxes with torches attached to their tails, intended to intensify the sun’s heat upon the spirit of the grain embodied in the foxes (Ovid., Fast., VI, 681-82). But in Ovid’s account the festival is already absorbed into the Circus games celebrated on this day, which are connected with the assimilation of Cerere to Demetra. The ludi Ceriales, first mentioned by Livio (XXX, 39, 8) in 202 B.C., but certainly more ancient, were connected with the temple of Cerere, Libero and Libera and were prepared by the plebeian aediles, who had had their seat there since 449 B.C.
Dict. d. antiq. gr. et rom., I, II, pp. 1020-21; G. Wissowa, Cerialia, in Pauly-Wissowa, III, II, cols. 1980-81.