CERERE. - Roman divinity of cereal vegetation, akin to Tellure; she is associated with the latter both in the feriae sementivae, celebrated in January at the end of sowing, and in the sacrifice of the porca praecidanea, at the beginning of the harvest (Catone, De Agr., 134). She had her own priest, the flamen cerialis.
Besides Rome and Latium, C., whose etymology is uncertain, although that already supposed by the ancients from “creare” should not be rejected, was also venerated in regions of central Italy. During a famine that broke out in the early years of the republic, the Sibylline Books suggested invoking the Greek triad, Demeter, Dionysos, and Kore, to whom the dictator Aulo Postumio vowed, in 496 B.C., according to the traditional chronology lowered by historians, a temple on the slopes of the Aventine hill overlooking the carceres of the Circus (H. Jordan-C. Hülsen, Topogr. der Stadt Rom., I, III, Berlino 1907, p. 117), or, less probably, near the Statio Annonae. The new triad, perhaps introduced from Magna Graecia, was immediately Latinized under the respective names of C., Libero, and Libera, among whom C. assumed the place of honor. From the beginning of the fifth century B.C., the Luedes Cereris was connected with the plebeian aediles, who appear to have derived their name from the temple, as would be shown by the designation Aediles plebei Ceriales, introduced by Cesare.