Classical Mythology

ROMAN MYTHOLOGY AND SAGA^633

obscure Italian deity Lua. In the cult of Ops, her partner was Consus, an Italian
harvest deity, whose festival, the Consualia, was celebrated in both August and
December. Livy tells us that the seizure of the Sabine women took place at the
games held during the Consualia.
Agricultural deities were very prominent in early Roman religion, and oth-
ers besides Mars, Saturn, and their associates were connected with the fertility
of the land. The cult of Ceres at Rome went back to the earliest days of the Ro-
man Republic, when in 493 B.c. a temple on the Aventine was dedicated to Ceres,
Liber, and Libera. Ceres was identified with Demeter, Liber with Dionysus, and
Libera with Kore (i.e., Persephone, Demeter's daughter). Thus the Eleusinian
triad of Demeter, Kore, and Iacchus/Bacchus had its exact counterpart at Rome.
The mythology of Ceres and Liber is entirely Hellenized, and the ritual of wor-
ship in their temple was Greek, even the prayers being spoken in Greek. The
wine-god Liber, however, did not share in the ecstatic aspects of Dionysus.
The Aventine temple of Ceres, Liber, and Libera was also important as a po-
litical and commercial center. It was a center of plebeian activity, and was es-
pecially connected with the plebeian aediles and tribunes. In front of it was the
headquarters of the state-subsidized grain supply (statio annonae).
Also associated with Ceres was the Italian earth-goddess Tellus Mater, with
whom she shared the festival of the sowing of the seed (feriae sementivae) in
January. Thus the grain was watched over from seed to granary by three
divinities—Ceres before it was sown, Tellus Mater when it was put in the earth,
Consus when it was harvested and stored.
Two minor fertility goddesses were Flora and Pomona. The former was the
goddess of flowering, especially of grain and the vine. In Ovid she is the con-
sort of the West Wind, Zephyrus, who gave her a garden filled with flowers.
Here is how she describes it (Ovid, Fasti 5. 209-230):

f

l have a fertile garden in the lands that are my wedding gift, filled with noble

flowers by my husband, who said, "Be ruler, O goddess, over flowers." As soon

as the dewy frost is shaken from the leaves ... the Hours come together clothed

in many colors and gather my flowers in lightly woven baskets. Then come the

Graces, twining flowers into garlands. ... I was the first to make a flower from

the blood of the boy from Therapnae [Hyacinthus].... You too, Narcissus, keep

your name in my well-tended garden.... And need I tell of Crocus and Attis

and Adonis, the son of Cinyras, from whose wounds I caused the flowers to

spring that honor them?

In this passage Ovid uses Greek mythology to give substance to the Italian

fertility goddess. The Greek figures of Zephyrus, the Seasons (in Latin, Home)

and Charités (Latin, Gratiae or Graces), and the youths who were changed into

flowers give a narrative element to Flora, who otherwise has no myths. Ovid

has created a Roman mythology from the Greek stories. His description of the

garden of Flora, moreover, was the inspiration for Nicolas Poussin's famous