CERES, goddess of the growth of food-plants, worshipped, alone or with the god Ceres, over a considerable part of Italy. (Oscan Keri—; probably connected with cre-are, cre-sco;? "crea tress") . Her cult was early overlaid by that of Demeter, who was widely worshipped in Sicily and Magna Graecia, cf. DEMETER. On the advice of the Sibylline Books, a cult of Ceres Liber and Libera was introduced into Rome in 496 B.C., to check a famine. Liber and Libera seem to represent the Iakc/ios and Kore of the Eleusinian cult. The ritual of this worship was largely if not wholly Greek. The temple, which was built on the Aventine in 493 B.C., and was of Etruscan shape, but decorated by Greek artists, became a centre of plebeian activities, religious and political. Ceres was regarded as the patroness of the corn-trade, which seems to have been early in plebeian hands. The chief festivals of this cult were : Ludi Ceriales, introduced before 202 B.C., and ultimately lasting from April 12-19; (2) An annual festival, instituted before 217 B.C., celebrated in secret by the women and apparently dealing with the union of Kore and Hades; (3) From 191 B.C. on a fast (ieiunium Cereris), held every five years, but later every year on Oct. 4. All these are on Greek lines. See Wissowa, Religion and Kultus (2nd ed.), pp. 192 et seq., 297 et seq.