Editing Ceres (mythology) (section)

====Ceres and Proserpina====
Towards the end of the [[Second Punic War]], around 205 BC, an officially recognised joint cult to Ceres and her daughter [[Proserpina]] was brought to Rome from [[Southern Italy]] (part of [[Magna Graecia]]) along with Greek priestesses to serve it.<ref>Spaeth, 1996, pp. 4, 6–13, citing [[Arnobius]], who mistakes this as the first Roman cult to Ceres. His belief may reflect the high profile and ubiquity of the "reformed" cult during the later Imperial period, and possibly the fading of older, distinctively Aventine forms of her cult.</ref> In Rome, this was known as the ''ritus graecus Cereris''; its priestesses were granted [[Roman citizenship]] so that they could pray to the gods "with a foreign and external knowledge, but with a domestic and civil intention"; the recruitment of respectable matrons seems to acknowledge the civic value of the cult. It was based on ancient, ethnically Greek cults to Demeter, most notably the [[Thesmophoria]] to [[Demeter]] and [[Persephone]], whose cults and myths also provided a basis for the [[Eleusinian mysteries]].

From the end of the 3rd century BC, Demeter's temple at [[Enna]], in [[Sicily]], was acknowledged as Ceres' oldest, most authoritative cult centre, and Libera was recognised as Proserpina, Roman equivalent to Demeter's daughter [[Persephone]].<ref>Scheid, p. 23.</ref> Their joint cult recalls Demeter's search for Persephone, after the latter's abduction into the underworld by [[Hades]]. The new, women-only  cult to "mother and maiden" took its place alongside the old; it made no reference to Liber. Thereafter, Ceres was offered two separate and distinctive forms of official cult at the Aventine. Both might have been supervised by the male [[Flamen#Flamines minores|flamen Cerialis]] but otherwise, their relationship is unclear. The older form of cult included both men and women, and probably remained a focus for plebeian political identity and discontent. The new form identified its exclusively females initiates and priestesses as upholders of Rome's traditional, [[Patrician (ancient Rome)|patrician]]-dominated social hierarchy and [[mos maiorum|morality]].<ref>Spaeth, 1996, pp. 13, 15, 60, 94–97.</ref>