Terra (mythology) - Festivals

Festivals

Festivals celebrated for Tellus were mainly concerned with agriculture and often connected with Ceres. In January, both goddesses were honored as "mothers of produce" at the moveable feast (feriae conceptivae) of Sementivae, a festival of sowing. On December 13, the anniversary of the Temple of Tellus was celebrated along with a lectisternium (banquet) for Ceres, who embodied "growing power" and the productivity of the earth.

Tellus received the sacrifice of a pregnant cow at the Fordicidia, a festival pertaining to fertility and animal husbandry held April 15, in the middle of the Cerealia (April 12–19). Festivals for deities of vegetation and the earth cluster in April on the Roman calendar. The institution of the Fordicidia was attributed to Numa Pompilius, the Sabine second king of Rome. During a time when Rome was struggling with harsh agricultural conditions, Numa was instructed by the rustic god Faunus in a dream that a sacrifice to Tellus was needed. As is often the case with oracles, the message required interpretation:

"By the death of cattle, King, Tellus must be placated: two cows, that is. Let a single heifer yield two lives (animae) for the rites."

Numa solved the riddle by instituting the sacrifice of a pregnant cow. The purpose of the sacrifice, as suggested by the Augustan poet Ovid and by the 6th-century antiquarian John Lydus, was to assure the fertility of the planted grain already growing in the womb of Mother Earth in the guise of Tellus. This public sacrifice was conducted in the form of a holocaust on behalf of the state at the Capitol, and also by each of the thirty curiae, the most ancient divisions of the city made by Romulus from the original three tribes. The state sacrifice was presided over by the Vestals, who used the ash from the holocaust to prepare suffimen, a ritual substance used later in April for the Parilia.

During the Secular Games held by Augustus in 17 BC, Terra Mater was among the deities honored in the Tarentum in the Campus Martius. Her ceremonies were conducted by "Greek rite" (ritus graecus), distinguishing her from the Roman Tellus whose temple was within the pomerium. She received the holocaust of a pregnant sow. The Secular Games of 249 BC had been dedicated to the underworld deities Dis pater and Proserpina, whose underground altar was in the Tarentum. Under Augustus, the Games (ludi) were dedicated to seven other deities, invoked as the Moerae, Iuppiter, Ilithyia, Iuno, Terra Mater, Apollo and Diana.