We may be satisfied, then, that the oldest Ceres was not simply an importation from Greece. It is curious however, that Ceres is not found exactly where we should expect to find her, viz. in the ritual of the Fratres Arvales[229]. Yet this very fact may throw further light on the primitive nature of Ceres. The central figure of the Arval ritual was the nameless Dea Dia; and in a ritual entirely relating to the fruits of the earth we can fairly account for the absence of Ceres by supposing that she is there represented by the Dea Dia—in fact, that the two are identical[230]. No one at all acquainted with Italian ideas of the gods will be surprised at this. It is surely a more reasonable hypothesis than that of Birt, who thinks that an old name for seed and bread (i. e. Ceres) was transferred to the Greek deity who dispensed seed and bread when she was introduced in Rome[231]. It is, in fact, only the name Ceres that is wanting in the Arval ritual, not the numen itself; and this is less surprising if we assume that the names given by the earliest Romans to supernatural powers were not fixed but variable, representing no distinctly conceived personalities; in other words, that their religion was pandaemonic rather than polytheistic, though with a tendency to lend itself easily to the influence of polytheism. We may agree, then, with Preller[232], that Ceres, with Tellus, and perhaps Ops and Acca Larentia, are different names for, and aspects of, the numen whom the Arval brothers called Dea Dia. At the same time we cannot entirely explain why the name Ceres was picked out from among these to represent the Greek Demeter. Some light may, however, be thrown on this point by studying the early history of the Ceres-cult.
The first temple of Ceres was founded, according to tradition, in consequence of a famine in the year 496 B.C., in obedience to a Sibylline oracle[233]. It was at the foot of the Aventine, by the Circus Maximus[234], and was dedicated on April 19, 493, to Ceres, Liber and Libera, representing Demeter, Dionysus, and Persephone.[235] Thus from the outset the systematized cult of Ceres in the city was not Roman but Greek. The temple itself was adorned in Greek style instead of the Etruscan usual at this period[236]. How is all this to be accounted for?