The Goddess Ceres in the Ara Pacis Augustae and the Carthage Relief

Abstract

This article offers a new interpretation for the relief panel located at the southeast corner of the Ara Pacis Augustae and for a related relief from Carthage based upon a detailed reexamination of their iconography. For the Ara Pacis relief, the type and attributes of the central figure point to her identification as Ceres, with possible polysemantic reference to this divinity's cultic connections with Tellus and Venus. The two side figures in the Ara Pacis relief are identified as a Nereid (sea nymph) and a Naiad (freshwater nymph). These divinities were associated in myth, cult, and art with Ceres. The identification of Ceres and the nymphs in this panel is shown to have significant implications for the interpretation of the sculptural decoration of the Ara Pacis as a whole, its place in the larger program of the Campus Martius, and Augustan political propaganda in general. In the similar relief from Carthage, Demeter/Ceres, Persephone, and Poseidon are identified in a scene that reflects the celebration of the Thesmophoria at the spring Kyane near Syracuse. The Syracusan cult of Demeter and Persephone was imported to Carthage in the fourth century and revived with the foundation of the Roman colony at Carthage in the middle of the first century B. C. It is proposed that the colonists erected a copy of the Ceres relief of the Ara Pacis, changing it to reflect the local cult of the Cereres.