Editing Ceres (mythology) (section)

===The ''mundus'' of Ceres===
The ''mundus cerialis'' or ''Caereris mundus'' ("the world of Ceres") was a hemispherical pit or underground vault in Rome, now lost.{{efn|Various candidates for its location include the site of Rome's [[Comitium]] and the [[Palatine Hill]], within the city's ritual boundary ([[pomerium]])}} It was usually sealed by a stone lid known as the ''[[lapis manalis]]''.{{efn|Apparently not the same [[Lapis manalis]] used by the pontifices to alleviate droughts.}} On August 24, October 5 and November 8, it was opened with the official announcement {{lang|la|mundus patet}} ("the ''mundus'' is open") and offerings were made there to agricultural or underworld deities, including Ceres as goddess of the fruitful earth and guardian of its underworld portals. Its opening offered the spirits of the dead temporary leave from the underworld to roam lawfully among the living, in what Warde Fowler describes as 'holidays, so to speak, for the ghosts'.<ref>W. Warde Fowler, "Mundus Patet" in ''Journal of Roman Studies'', 2, 1912, pp. 25–26: Warde Fowler notes the possibility that pigs were offered: also (pp. 35–36) seed-corn, probably ''far'', from the harvest.</ref> The days when the mundus was open were among the very few occasions that Romans made official contact with the collective spirits of the dead, the ''Di Manes'' (the others being [[Parentalia]] and [[Lemuralia]]). This possibly secondary or late function of the ''mundus'' is first attested in the Late Republican Era, by [[Varro]].<ref>Cited in Macrobius, 1.16.18.</ref> The jurist [[Marcus Porcius Cato Licinianus|Cato]] understood the shape of the ''mundus'' as a reflection or inversion of the dome of the upper heavens.<ref>Festus p. 261 L2, citing's Cato's commentaries on civil law.</ref> Di Luzio observes that the Roman ''mundus'' shared  functional and conceptual similarities with certain types of underground "pit altar" or [[megaron]], used in Demeter's Thesmophoria.<ref>DiLuzio, M. J., ''A Place at the Altar. Priestesses in Republican Rome''. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016, pp. 113-114</ref> 

Roman tradition held that the ''mundus'' had been dug and sealed by [[Romulus]] as part of Rome's foundation; Plutarch compares it to pits dug by Etruscan colonists, containing soil brought from their parent city, used to dedicate the first fruits of the harvest.<ref>Plutarch, ''Romulus'', 11.</ref> Warde Fowler speculates the ''mundus'' as Rome's first storehouse (''penus'') for seed-grain, later becoming the symbolic ''penus'' of the Roman state.<ref>See Spaeth, pp. 63–5: W. Warde Fowler, "Mundus Patet" in ''Journal of Roman Studies'', 2, (1912), pp. 25–33: [https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Journals/JRS/2/Mundus*.html available online at Bill Thayer's website]: M. Humm, "Le mundus et le Comitium : représentations symboliques de l'espace de la cité," Histoire urbaine, 2, 10, 2004. [http://www.cairn.info/revue-histoire-urbaine-2004-2-page-43.htm French language, full preview.]</ref> In the oldest known Roman calendar, the days of the ''mundus'' are marked as C(omitiales) (days when the [[Comitia]] met). Later authors mark them as ''dies [[Glossary of ancient Roman religion#religiosus|religiosus]]'' (when no official meetings could be held). Some modern scholars seek to explain this as the later introduction and accommodation of Greek elements, grafted onto the original ''mundus'' rites.<ref>M. Humm, "Le mundus et le Comitium : représentations symboliques de l'espace de la cité," Histoire urbaine, 2, 10, 2004. [http://www.cairn.info/revue-histoire-urbaine-2004-2-page-43.htm French language, full preview.]</ref> The rites of August 24 were held between the agricultural festivals of [[Consualia]] and [[Opiconsivia]]; those of October 5 followed the ''[[Ieiunium Cereris]]'', and those of November 8 took place during the [[Ludi Plebeii|Plebeian Games]]. As a whole, the various days of the ''mundus'' suggest rites to Ceres as the guardian deity of seed-corn in the establishment of cities, and as a door-warden of the afterlife, which was co-ruled during the winter months by her daughter Proserpina, queen-companion to [[Dis Pater|Dis]].<ref>In Festus, the ''mundus'' is an entrance to the underworld realm of [[Orcus]], broadly equivalent to Dis Pater and Greek [[Pluto (mythology)|Pluto]]. For more on Ceres as a [[liminal deity]], her earthly precedence over the underworld and the ''mundus'', see Spaeth, 1996, pp. 5, 18, 31, 63-5. For further connection between the ''mundus'', the penates, and agricultural and underworld deities, see W. Warde Fowler, "Mundus Patet" in ''Journal of Roman Studies'', 2, (1912), pp. 25–33: [https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Journals/JRS/2/Mundus*.html available online at Bill Thayer's website]</ref>