ABSTRACT
A major contribution to redressing the balance came from the splendid book on the cult of Ceres in Republican Rome by Henri Le Bonniec, who argued for a more sensitive approach to the study of Greek influences on the cult in Rome and Italy. In fact, speaking of an ‘Italic Ceres’ in opposition to the Roman one is ultimately unhelpful, and the cults of Ceres across Italy should be discussed as a differentiated and, at the same time, closely interconnected field. Interestingly, and perhaps surprisingly for a goddess whose cult is so widely attested across Italy, the prodigies that were expiated with the mediation of Ceres were mostly from the city of Rome; there is a consistent link between Ceres and the responses of the Sibylline Books. The distinction between the Roman cult of Ceres and its attestations across Italy is of course valid on some levels, but must be introduced with an important proviso.
