Editing Ceres (mythology) (section)

===Laws===
Ceres was patron and protector of [[Plebeian Council|plebeian laws]], rights and [[Tribune]]s. Her Aventine Temple served the plebeians as cult centre, legal archive, treasury and possibly law-court; its foundation was contemporaneous with the passage of the [[Lex Sacrata]], which established the office and person of plebeian aediles and tribunes as inviolate representatives of the Roman people. Tribunes were legally immune to arrest or threat, and the lives and property of [[Glossary of ancient Roman religion#sacer|those who violated this law]] were forfeit to Ceres.<ref>For discussion of the duties, legal status and immunities of plebeian tribunes and aediles, see Andrew Lintott, ''Violence in Republican Rome'', Oxford University Press, 1999,[https://books.google.com/books?id=QIKEpOP4lLIC&q=Ceres&pg=PA92 pp. 92–101]</ref> 

The [[Lex Hortensia]] of 287 BC extended plebeian laws to the city and all its citizens. The official decrees of the Senate (''senatus consulta'') were placed in Ceres' Temple, under the guardianship of the goddess and her aediles. Livy puts the reason bluntly: the consuls could no longer seek advantage for themselves by arbitrarily tampering with the laws of Rome.<ref>Livy's proposal that the ''senatus consulta'' were placed at the Aventine Temple more or less at its foundation (Livy, ''[[Ab Urbe Condita Libri (Livy)|Ab Urbe Condita]]'', 3.55.13) is implausible. See Spaeth, 1996, pp. 86–87, 90.</ref> The Temple might also have offered asylum for those threatened with [[arbitrary arrest and detention|arbitrary arrest]] by patrician magistrates.<ref>The evidence for the temple as asylum is inconclusive; discussion is in Spaeth, 1996, p. 84.</ref> Ceres' temple, games and cult were at least part-funded by fines imposed on those who offended the laws placed under her protection; the poet Vergil later calls her ''legifera Ceres'' (Law-bearing Ceres), a translation of Demeter's Greek epithet, ''[[Thesmophoria|thesmophoros]]''.<ref>Cornell, T., ''The beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c.1000–264 BC)'', Routledge, 1995, p. 264, citing Vergil, ''Aeneid'', 4.58.</ref>

As Ceres' first plough-furrow opened the earth (Tellus' realm) to the world of men and created the first field and its boundary, her laws determined the course of settled, lawful, civilised life. Crimes against fields and harvest were crimes against the people and their protective deity. Landowners who allowed their flocks to graze on public land were fined by the plebeian aediles, on behalf of Ceres and the people of Rome. Ancient laws of the [[Twelve Tables]] forbade the magical charming of field crops from a neighbour's field into one's own, and invoked the death penalty for the illicit removal of field boundaries.<ref>Ogden, in Valerie Flint, ''et al.'', ''Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Ancient Greece and Rome'', Vol. 2, Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd., 1998, p. 83: citing Pliny, Natural History, 28.17–18; Seneca, Natural Questions, 4.7.2</ref> An adult who damaged or stole field-crops should be hanged "for Ceres".<ref>Cereri necari, literally "killed for Ceres".</ref> Any youth guilty of the same offense was to be whipped or fined double the value of damage.<ref>Spaeth, 1996, p. 70, citing Pliny the elder, Historia naturalis, 18.3.13 on the Twelve Tables and ''cereri necari''; cf the terms of punishment for violation of the sancrosancticity of Tribunes.</ref>