As the old saying goes, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Of course, there are a variety of popular breakfast foods, but perhaps none as ubiquitous (at least in the United States) as cereal. As you start your day with a bowl of Raisin Bran or Shredded Wheat, consider this: The word “cereal” comes from the name of the Roman goddess Ceres, who was associated with grain, agriculture, fertility, and motherhood. The Latin word cerealis, meaning "of grain," originally meant "of the goddess Ceres."
Though in everyday usage, the word "cereal" typically refers to the breakfast food, "cereal" more accurately describes a grass cultivated for its edible grain. These crops, which were first domesticated around 8,000 years ago in various parts of the world, include wheat, rye, barley, rice, oats, maize, and millet.
As a Roman deity, Ceres is listed among the Dii Consentes, the twelve major gods and goddesses in the ancient Roman pantheon, equivalent to the Twelve Olympians of Greek mythology. Her fellow gods include Juno, Vesta, Minerva, Diana, Venus, Mercury, Mars, Vulcan, Neptune, Apollo, and Jupiter; Ceres is often paired with the god Mercury.
Ceres was identified with the Greek goddess Demeter, whose myths and attributes she took on, especially her role in ensuring bountiful harvests. She was most commonly depicted as a mature woman and associated with agricultural symbols such as a sheaf of wheat, sickle, and cornucopia.
Searching for Ceres:
- The major Roman festival of Cerealia, celebrated every April, included circus games and religious theatrical performances. One of the festival's most striking events was a nighttime ritual that involved releasing foxes (possibly into the Circus Maximus) with lit torches attached to their tails.
- One of the best-known myths associated with Ceres mirrors the story of Demeter and Persephone (the Greek equivalents of Ceres and her daughter, Proserpina). In the myth, Proserpina is abducted by Pluto, the god of the underworld, causing her mother, Ceres, to search to the ends of the earth for her. According to the myth, Proserpina eats several pomegranate seeds offered by Pluto and thus has to stay for him for half the year before she can return with her mother to the world of the living. As a result, when Proserpina is with Ceres, from spring to autumn, crops blossom and are harvested, but when she returns to the underworld, it is winter and nothing can grow.
- Ceres has also made her mark in astronomy; in 1801, she became the namesake of a planet (later reclassified as an asteroid and then a dwarf planet) located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
