1.
Proserpina
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Proserpina or Proserpine is an ancient Roman goddess whose cult, myths and mysteries were based on those of Greek Persephone and her mother Demeter, the Greek goddess of grain and agriculture. The Romans identified Proserpina with their native fertility goddess Libera, daughter of the grain and agriculture goddess Ceres, just as Persephone was thought to be a daughter of Demeter, Romans made Proserpina a daughter of Demeters Roman equivalent, Ceres. Her name is a Latinisation of Persephone, perhaps influenced by the Latin proserpere, the cult originated in southern Italy and was probably based on the women-only Greek Thesmophoria, a mystery cult to Demeter and Persephone as Mother and Maiden. It arrived along with its Greek priestesses, who were granted Roman citizenship so that they could pray to the gods with a foreign and external knowledge and their joint cult recalls Demeters search for Persephone, after the latters rape and abduction into the underworld by Hades. At the Aventine, the new cult took its place alongside the old and it made no reference to Liber, whose open and gender-mixed cult continued to play a central role in plebeian culture, as a patron and protector of plebeian rights, freedoms and values. Unmarried girls should emulate the chastity of Proserpina, the maiden, married women should seek to emulate Ceres and their rites were intended to secure a good harvest, and increase the fertility of those who partook in the mysteries. A Temple of Proserpina was located in a suburb of Melite, in modern Mtarfa, the temples ruins were quarried between the 17th and 18th centuries, and only a few fragments survive. The best-known myth surrounding Proserpina is of her abduction by the god of the Underworld, her mother Ceres frantic search for her, renamed thus, the king of the underworld is distanced from his consorts violent abduction. In the early 1st century Ovid gives two versions of the myth in Latin, one in Book 5 of his Metamorphoses. Venus, in order to bring love to Pluto, sent her son Amor to hit Pluto with one of his arrows and he abducted her in order to marry her and live with her in the underworld of which he was the ruler. In her desperation Ceres angrily stopped the growth of fruits and vegetables, Ceres refused to go back to Mount Olympus and started walking on the Earth, making a desert at every step. Worried, Jupiter sent Mercury to order Pluto to free Proserpina, Pluto obeyed, but before letting her go he made her eat six pomegranate seeds, because those who have eaten the food of the dead could not return to the world of the living. This meant that she would have to live six months of year with him. In another version of the story, Proserpina ate only four pomegranate seeds, when Jupiter ordered her return, Pluto struck a deal with Jupiter, saying that since she had stolen his pomegranate seeds, she must stay with him four months of the year in return. For this reason, in spring when Ceres receives her back, the crops blossom. In the autumn Ceres changes the leaves to shades of brown, during the time that Proserpina resides with Pluto, the world goes through winter, a time when the earth is barren. The most extensive myth of Proserpina in Latin is Claudians and it is closely connected with that of Orpheus and Eurydice. But Orpheus could not resist a backward glance, so Eurydice was forever lost to him
2.
Asteroid belt
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The asteroid belt is the circumstellar disc in the Solar System located roughly between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter. It is occupied by numerous irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids or minor planets, the asteroid belt is also termed the main asteroid belt or main belt to distinguish it from other asteroid populations in the Solar System such as near-Earth asteroids and trojan asteroids. About half the mass of the belt is contained in the four largest asteroids, Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, the total mass of the asteroid belt is approximately 4% that of the Moon, or 22% that of Pluto, and roughly twice that of Plutos moon Charon. Ceres, the belts only dwarf planet, is about 950 km in diameter, whereas Vesta, Pallas. The remaining bodies range down to the size of a dust particle, the asteroid material is so thinly distributed that numerous unmanned spacecraft have traversed it without incident. Nonetheless, collisions between large asteroids do occur, and these can form a family whose members have similar orbital characteristics. Individual asteroids within the belt are categorized by their spectra. The asteroid belt formed from the solar nebula as a group of planetesimals. Planetesimals are the precursors of the protoplanets. Between Mars and Jupiter, however, gravitational perturbations from Jupiter imbued the protoplanets with too much energy for them to accrete into a planet. Collisions became too violent, and instead of fusing together, the planetesimals, as a result,99. 9% of the asteroid belts original mass was lost in the first 100 million years of the Solar Systems history. Some fragments eventually found their way into the inner Solar System, Asteroid orbits continue to be appreciably perturbed whenever their period of revolution about the Sun forms an orbital resonance with Jupiter. At these orbital distances, a Kirkwood gap occurs as they are swept into other orbits. Classes of small Solar System bodies in other regions are the objects, the centaurs, the Kuiper belt objects, the scattered disc objects, the sednoids. On 22 January 2014, ESA scientists reported the detection, for the first definitive time, of water vapor on Ceres, the detection was made by using the far-infrared abilities of the Herschel Space Observatory. The finding was unexpected because comets, not asteroids, are considered to sprout jets. According to one of the scientists, The lines are becoming more and more blurred between comets and asteroids. This pattern, now known as the Titius–Bode law, predicted the semi-major axes of the six planets of the provided one allowed for a gap between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter
3.
IRAS
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The Infrared Astronomical Satellite was the first-ever space telescope to perform a survey of the entire night sky at infrared wavelengths. Launched on 25 January 1983, its mission lasted ten months, the telescope was a joint project of the United States, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Over 250,000 infrared sources were observed at 12,25,60, support for the processing and analysis of data from IRAS was contributed from the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology. Currently, the Infrared Science Archive at IPAC holds the IRAS archive, the success of early infrared space astronomy led to further missions, such as the Infrared Space Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescopes NICMOS instrument. IRAS was the first observatory to perform a survey at infrared wavelengths. It mapped 96% of the sky four times, at 12,25,60 and 100 micrometers and it discovered about 350,000 sources, many of which are still awaiting identification. About 75,000 of those are believed to be starburst galaxies, many other sources are normal stars with disks of dust around them, possibly the early stage of planetary system formation. New discoveries included a dust disk around Vega and the first images of the Milky Ways core, IRASs life, like that of most infrared satellites that followed, was limited by its cooling system. To effectively work in the domain, a telescope must be cooled to cryogenic temperatures. In IRASs case,73 kilograms of superfluid helium kept the telescope at a temperature of 2 K, the on-board supply of liquid helium was depleted after 10 months on 21 November 1983, causing the telescope temperature to rise, preventing further observations. The spacecraft continues to orbit the Earth, IRAS was designed to catalog fixed sources, so it scanned the same region of sky several times. Jack Meadows led a team at Leicester University, including John Davies and Simon Green and this led to the discovery of three asteroids, including 3200 Phaethon, six comets, and a huge dust trail associated with comet 10P/Tempel. The comets included 126P/IRAS, 161P/Hartley–IRAS, and comet IRAS–Araki–Alcock, which made an approach to the Earth in 1983. Out of the six comets IRAS found, four were long period, further analysis revealed that, of several unidentified objects, nine were distant galaxies and the tenth was intergalactic cirrus. None were found to be Solar System bodies, during its mission, IRAS detected odd infrared signatures around several stars. This led to the systems being targeted by the Hubble Space Telescopes NICMOS instrument between 1999 and 2006, but nothing was detected, in 2014, using new image processing techniques on the Hubble data, researchers discovered planetary disks around these stars. A next generation of infrared space telescopes began when NASAs Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer launched on 14 December 2009 aboard a Delta II rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base. A. Neugebauer, G. Habing, H. J. Clegg, P. E. Chester, Infrared Astronomical Satellite, Catalogs and Atlases
4.
Mass
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In physics, mass is a property of a physical body. It is the measure of a resistance to acceleration when a net force is applied. It also determines the strength of its gravitational attraction to other bodies. The basic SI unit of mass is the kilogram, Mass is not the same as weight, even though mass is often determined by measuring the objects weight using a spring scale, rather than comparing it directly with known masses. An object on the Moon would weigh less than it does on Earth because of the lower gravity and this is because weight is a force, while mass is the property that determines the strength of this force. In Newtonian physics, mass can be generalized as the amount of matter in an object, however, at very high speeds, special relativity postulates that energy is an additional source of mass. Thus, any body having mass has an equivalent amount of energy. In addition, matter is a defined term in science. There are several distinct phenomena which can be used to measure mass, active gravitational mass measures the gravitational force exerted by an object. Passive gravitational mass measures the force exerted on an object in a known gravitational field. The mass of an object determines its acceleration in the presence of an applied force, according to Newtons second law of motion, if a body of fixed mass m is subjected to a single force F, its acceleration a is given by F/m. A bodys mass also determines the degree to which it generates or is affected by a gravitational field and this is sometimes referred to as gravitational mass. The standard International System of Units unit of mass is the kilogram, the kilogram is 1000 grams, first defined in 1795 as one cubic decimeter of water at the melting point of ice. Then in 1889, the kilogram was redefined as the mass of the prototype kilogram. As of January 2013, there are proposals for redefining the kilogram yet again. In this context, the mass has units of eV/c2, the electronvolt and its multiples, such as the MeV, are commonly used in particle physics. The atomic mass unit is 1/12 of the mass of a carbon-12 atom, the atomic mass unit is convenient for expressing the masses of atoms and molecules. Outside the SI system, other units of mass include, the slug is an Imperial unit of mass, the pound is a unit of both mass and force, used mainly in the United States
5.
Asteroid
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Asteroids are minor planets, especially those of the inner Solar System. The larger ones have also been called planetoids and these terms have historically been applied to any astronomical object orbiting the Sun that did not show the disc of a planet and was not observed to have the characteristics of an active comet. As minor planets in the outer Solar System were discovered and found to have volatile-based surfaces that resemble those of comets, in this article, the term asteroid refers to the minor planets of the inner Solar System including those co-orbital with Jupiter. There are millions of asteroids, many thought to be the remnants of planetesimals. The large majority of known asteroids orbit in the belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, or are co-orbital with Jupiter. However, other orbital families exist with significant populations, including the near-Earth objects, individual asteroids are classified by their characteristic spectra, with the majority falling into three main groups, C-type, M-type, and S-type. These were named after and are identified with carbon-rich, metallic. The size of asteroids varies greatly, some reaching as much as 1000 km across, asteroids are differentiated from comets and meteoroids. In the case of comets, the difference is one of composition, while asteroids are composed of mineral and rock, comets are composed of dust. In addition, asteroids formed closer to the sun, preventing the development of the aforementioned cometary ice, the difference between asteroids and meteoroids is mainly one of size, meteoroids have a diameter of less than one meter, whereas asteroids have a diameter of greater than one meter. Finally, meteoroids can be composed of either cometary or asteroidal materials, only one asteroid,4 Vesta, which has a relatively reflective surface, is normally visible to the naked eye, and this only in very dark skies when it is favorably positioned. Rarely, small asteroids passing close to Earth may be visible to the eye for a short time. As of March 2016, the Minor Planet Center had data on more than 1.3 million objects in the inner and outer Solar System, the United Nations declared June 30 as International Asteroid Day to educate the public about asteroids. The date of International Asteroid Day commemorates the anniversary of the Tunguska asteroid impact over Siberia, the first asteroid to be discovered, Ceres, was found in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi, and was originally considered to be a new planet. In the early half of the nineteenth century, the terms asteroid. Asteroid discovery methods have improved over the past two centuries. This task required that hand-drawn sky charts be prepared for all stars in the band down to an agreed-upon limit of faintness. On subsequent nights, the sky would be charted again and any moving object would, hopefully, the expected motion of the missing planet was about 30 seconds of arc per hour, readily discernible by observers
6.
Roman mythology
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Roman mythology is the body of traditional stories pertaining to ancient Romes legendary origins and religious system, as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans. Roman mythology may also refer to the study of these representations. The Romans usually treated their traditional narratives as historical, even when these have miraculous or supernatural elements, the stories are often concerned with politics and morality, and how an individuals personal integrity relates to his or her responsibility to the community or Roman state. When the stories illuminate Roman religious practices, they are concerned with ritual, augury. Romes early myths and legends also have a relationship with Etruscan religion. In particular, the versions of Greek myths in Ovids Metamorphoses, written during the reign of Augustus, because ritual played the central role in Roman religion that myth did for the Greeks, it is sometimes doubted that the Romans had much of a native mythology. This perception is a product of Romanticism and the scholarship of the 19th century. From the Renaissance to the 18th century, however, Roman myths were an inspiration particularly for European painting, the Roman tradition is rich in historical myths, or legends, concerning the foundation and rise of the city. These narratives focus on human actors, with only occasional intervention from deities, in Romes earliest period, history and myth have a mutual and complementary relationship. As T. P. Wiseman notes, The Roman stories still matter, as they mattered to Dante in 1300 and Shakespeare in 1600, what does it take to be a free citizen. Can a superpower still be a republic, how does well-meaning authority turn into murderous tyranny. Major sources for Roman myth include the Aeneid of Vergil and the first few books of Livys history as well as Dionysius s Roman Antiquities. Other important sources are the Fasti of Ovid, a six-book poem structured by the Roman religious calendar, scenes from Roman myth also appear in Roman wall painting, coins, and sculpture, particularly reliefs. The Aeneid and Livys early history are the best extant sources for Romes founding myths, material from Greek heroic legend was grafted onto this native stock at an early date. By extension, the Trojans were adopted as the ancestors of the Roman people. Rape of the Sabine women, explaining the importance of the Sabines in the formation of Roman culture, numa Pompilius, the Sabine second king of Rome who consorted with the nymph Egeria and established many of Romes legal and religious institutions. Servius Tullius, the king of Rome, whose mysterious origins were freely mythologized. The Tarpeian Rock, and why it was used for the execution of traitors, lucretia, whose self-sacrifice prompted the overthrow of the early Roman monarchy and led to the establishment of the Republic
7.
Goddess
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A goddess is a female deity in polytheistic religions. Goddesses most often have characteristics that are apotheosize in their pure form. However, in some cases goddesses may embody neutral forms personifying both male and female characteristics, or they may even exhibit traits that are associated with the male gender. In some faiths, a female figure holds a central place in religious prayer. For example, Shaktism, the worship of the force that animates the world, is one of the three major sects of Hinduism. Polytheist religions, including Polytheistic reconstructionists, honour multiple goddesses and gods and these deities may be part of a pantheon, or different regions may have tutelary deities. The reconstructionists, like their ancient forebears, honour the deities particular to their country of origin, the noun goddess is a secondary formation, combining the Germanic god with the Latinate -ess suffix. It first appeared in Middle English, from about 1350, the English word follows the linguistic precedent of a number of languages—including Egyptian, Classical Greek, and several Semitic languages—that add a feminine ending to the languages word for god. Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth, a 1988 interview with Bill Moyers, links the image of the Earth or Mother Goddess to symbols of fertility and reproduction. For example, Campbell states that, There have been systems of religion where the mother is the prime parent, and in Egypt you have the Mother Heavens, the Goddess Nut, who is represented as the whole heavenly sphere. Joseph Campbell, Well that was associated primarily with agriculture and the agricultural societies and it has to do with the earth. The human woman gives birth just as the earth gives birth to the plants. so woman magic, and the personification of the energy that gives birth to forms and nourishes forms is properly female. It is in the world of ancient Mesopotamia, the Egyptian Nile. Campbell also argues that the image of the Virgin Mary was derived from the image of Isis and her child Horus, other Mesopotamian goddesses include Ninhursag, Ninlil, Antu, Gaga Goddesses of the Canaanite religion, Baalat Gebal, Astarte, Anat. Cybele, Her Hittite name was Kubaba, but her name changed to Cybele in Phrygian and Roman culture and her effect can be also seen on Artemis as the Lady of Ephesus. Hebat, Mother Goddess of the Hittite pantheon and wife of the sky god. She was the origin of the Hurrian cult, arinniti, Hittite Goddess of the sun. She became patron of the Hittite Empire and monarchy, leto, A mother Goddess figure in Lykia
8.
Terre Haute, Indiana
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Terre Haute is a city in and the county seat of Vigo County, Indiana, United States, near the states western border with Illinois. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 60,785. Located along the Wabash River, Terre Haute is the capital of the Wabash Valley. The city is home to higher education institutions, including Indiana State University, Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College. Terre Haute is notable for being the home of Socialist Party of America leader and five-time presidential nominee, Debs and the Federal Correctional Complex. Terre Haute is located alongside the bank of the Wabash River in western Indiana. The city lies about 75 miles west of Indianapolis, according to the 2010 census, Terre Haute has a total area of 35.272 square miles, of which 34.54 square miles is land and 0.732 square miles is water. The Wabash River dominates the geography of the city, forming its western border. Small bluffs on the east side of city mark the edge of the flood plain. Lost Creek and Honey Creek drain the northern and southern sections of the city, in the late 19th century, several oil and mineral wells were productive in and near the center of the city. That well produced oil into the 1920s, Terre Haute is at the intersection of two major roadways, U. S.40 from California to Maryland and US41 from Copper Harbor, Michigan to Miami, Florida. Terre Haute is located 77 miles southwest of Indianapolis and within 185 miles of Chicago, St. Louis, Louisville, Climate is characterized by relatively high temperatures and evenly distributed precipitation throughout the year. The Köppen Climate Classification subtype for this climate is Dfa, Terre Hautes name was derived from the French phrase terre haute, meaning Highland. It was likely named by French explorers in the area in the early 18th century to describe the unique location above the Wabash River, at the time the area was claimed by the French and British, these highlands were considered the border between Canada and Louisiana. The construction of Fort Harrison in 1811 marked the beginning of a permanent population of European-Americans. A Wea Indian village already existed near the fort, and the orchards, the village of Terre Haute, then a part of Knox County, Indiana, was platted in 1816. Growth really began when the founders won the bid to make it the county seat when Vigo County was formed in March 1818. When the villages 1,000 residents voted to incorporate in 1832, Terre Haute became a town, early Terre Haute was a center of farming, milling and pork processing
9.
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in La Cañada Flintridge, California and Pasadena, California, United States. The JPL is managed by the nearby California Institute of Technology for NASA, the laboratorys primary function is the construction and operation of planetary robotic spacecraft, though it also conducts Earth-orbit and astronomy missions. It is also responsible for operating NASAs Deep Space Network and they are also responsible for managing the JPL Small-Body Database, and provides physical data and lists of publications for all known small Solar System bodies. The JPLs Space Flight Operations Facility and Twenty-Five-Foot Space Simulator are designated National Historic Landmarks, JPL traces its beginnings to 1936 in the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology when the first set of rocket experiments were carried out in the Arroyo Seco. Malinas thesis advisor was engineer/aerodynamicist Theodore von Kármán, who arranged for U. S. Army financial support for this GALCIT Rocket Project in 1939. In 1941, Malina, Parsons, Forman, Martin Summerfield, in 1943, von Kármán, Malina, Parsons, and Forman established the Aerojet Corporation to manufacture JATO motors. The project took on the name Jet Propulsion Laboratory in November 1943, during JPLs Army years, the laboratory developed two deployed weapon systems, the MGM-5 Corporal and MGM-29 Sergeant intermediate range ballistic missiles. These missiles were the first US ballistic missiles developed at JPL and it also developed a number of other weapons system prototypes, such as the Loki anti-aircraft missile system, and the forerunner of the Aerobee sounding rocket. At various times, it carried out testing at the White Sands Proving Ground, Edwards Air Force Base. A lunar lander was developed in 1938-39 which influenced design of the Apollo Lunar Module in the 1960s. The team lost that proposal to Project Vanguard, and instead embarked on a project to demonstrate ablative re-entry technology using a Jupiter-C rocket. They carried out three successful flights in 1956 and 1957. Using a spare Juno I, the two organizations then launched the United States first satellite, Explorer 1, on February 1,1958, JPL was transferred to NASA in December 1958, becoming the agencys primary planetary spacecraft center. JPL engineers designed and operated Ranger and Surveyor missions to the Moon that prepared the way for Apollo, JPL also led the way in interplanetary exploration with the Mariner missions to Venus, Mars, and Mercury. In 1998, JPL opened the Near-Earth Object Program Office for NASA, as of 2013, it has found 95% of asteroids that are a kilometer or more in diameter that cross Earths orbit. JPL was early to employ women mathematicians, in the 1940s and 1950s, using mechanical calculators, women in an all-female computations group performed trajectory calculations. In 1961, JPL hired Dana Ulery as their first woman engineer to work alongside male engineers as part of the Ranger and Mariner mission tracking teams, when founded, JPLs site was a rocky flood-plain just outside the city limits of Pasadena. Almost all of the 177 acres of the U. S, the city of La Cañada Flintridge, California was incorporated in 1976, well after JPL attained international recognition with a Pasadena address
10.
Magnitude (astronomy)
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In astronomy, magnitude is a logarithmic measure of the brightness of an object, measured in a specific wavelength or passband, usually in the visible or near-infrared spectrum. An imprecise but systematic determination of the magnitude of objects was introduced in ancient times by Hipparchus, astronomers use two different definitions of magnitude, apparent magnitude and absolute magnitude. This distance is 10 parsecs for stars and 1 astronomical unit for planets, a minor planets size is typically estimated based on its absolute magnitude in combination with its presumed albedo. The brighter an object appears, the lower the value of its magnitude, with the brightest objects reaching negative values. The Sun has an apparent magnitude of −27, the full moon −13, the brightest planet Venus measures −5, and Sirius, an apparent magnitude can also be assigned to man-made objects in Earth orbit. The brightest satellite flares are ranked at −9, and the International Space Station, ISS, the scale is logarithmic, and defined such that each step of one magnitude changes the brightness by a factor of the fifth root of 100, or approximately 2.512. For example, a magnitude 1 star is exactly a hundred times brighter than a magnitude 6 star, the magnitude system dates back roughly 2000 years to the Greek astronomer Hipparchus who classified stars by their apparent brightness, which they saw as size. To the unaided eye, a prominent star such as Sirius or Arcturus appears larger than a less prominent star such as Mizar. For all the other Stars, which are seen by the Help of a Telescope. Note that the brighter the star, the smaller the magnitude, Bright first magnitude stars are 1st-class stars, the system was a simple delineation of stellar brightness into six distinct groups but made no allowance for the variations in brightness within a group. He concluded that first magnitude stars measured 2 arc minutes in apparent diameter, with second through sixth magnitude stars measuring 1 1⁄2′, 1 1⁄12′, 3⁄4′, 1⁄2′, the development of the telescope showed that these large sizes were illusory—stars appeared much smaller through the telescope. However, early telescopes produced a spurious disk-like image of a star that was larger for brighter stars, early photometric measurements demonstrated that first magnitude stars are about 100 times brighter than sixth magnitude stars. Thus in 1856 Norman Pogson of Oxford proposed that a scale of 5√100 ≈2.512 be adopted between magnitudes, so five magnitude steps corresponded precisely to a factor of 100 in brightness. Every interval of one magnitude equates to a variation in brightness of 5√100 or roughly 2.512 times. Consequently, a first magnitude star is about 2.5 times brighter than a second star,2.52 brighter than a third magnitude star,2.53 brighter than a fourth magnitude star. This is the modern system, which measures the brightness, not the apparent size. Using this logarithmic scale, it is possible for a star to be brighter than “first class”, so Arcturus or Vega are magnitude 0, and Sirius is magnitude −1.46. As mentioned above, the scale appears to work in reverse, the larger the negative value, the brighter
11.
Ceres (mythology)
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In ancient Roman religion, Ceres was a goddess of agriculture, grain crops, fertility and motherly relationships. She was originally the central deity in Romes so-called plebeian or Aventine Triad and her seven-day April festival of Cerealia included the popular Ludi Ceriales. She was also honoured in the May lustratio of the fields at the Ambarvalia festival, at harvest-time, Ceres is the only one of Romes many agricultural deities to be listed among the Dii Consentes, Romes equivalent to the Twelve Olympians of Greek mythology. The Romans saw her as the counterpart of the Greek goddess Demeter, whose mythology was reinterpreted for Ceres in Roman art and literature. Roman etymologists thought ceres derived from the Latin verb gerere, to bear, bring forth, produce, because the goddess was linked to pastoral, agricultural and human fertility. Archaic cults to Ceres are well-evidenced among Romes neighbours in the Regal period, including the ancient Latins, Oscans and Sabellians, an archaic Faliscan inscription of c.600 BC asks her to provide far, which was a dietary staple of the Mediterranean world. Throughout the Roman era, Ceres name was synonymous with grain and, by extension and she had the power to fertilise, multiply and fructify plant and animal seed, and her laws and rites protected all activities of the agricultural cycle. In January, Ceres was offered spelt wheat and a pregnant sow and this was almost certainly held before the annual sowing of grain. The divine portion of sacrifice was the entrails presented in an earthenware pot, in a rural context, Cato the Elder describes the offer to Ceres of a porca praecidanea. Before the harvest, she was offered a propitiary grain sample, Ovid tells that Ceres is content with little, provided that her offerings are casta. Ceres main festival, Cerealia, was held from mid to late April and it was organised by her plebeian aediles and included circus games. From c.175 BC, Cerealia included ludi scaenici through April 12 to 18, W. H. Roscher lists these deities among the indigitamenta, names used to invoke specific divine functions. The adult males of the party waited at the grooms house. A wedding sacrifice was offered to Tellus on the brides behalf, Varro describes the sacrifice of a pig as a worthy mark of weddings because our women, and especially nurses call the female genitalia porcus. Spaeth believes Ceres may have included in the sacrificial dedication, because she is closely identified with Tellus and, as Ceres legifera. In the most solemn form of marriage, confarreatio, the bride and groom shared a cake made of far, from at least the mid-republican era, an official, joint cult to Ceres and Proserpina reinforced Ceres connection with Roman ideals of female virtue. The promotion of this cult coincides with the rise of a nobility, an increased birthrate among plebeian commoners. Several of Ceres ancient Italic precursors are connected to fertility and motherhood
12.
Underworld
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The underworld or netherworld is an otherworld thought to be deep underground or beneath the surface of the world in most religions and mythologies. Typically it is a place where the souls of the departed go, chthonic is the technical adjective for things of the underworld. This list includes underworlds in mythology, with links to corresponding articles. This list includes rulers or guardians of the underworld in various mythologies, otherworld World Tree — A tree that connects the heavens, the earth, and the underworld in a number of spiritual belief systems
, Bibcode:2012P&SS...73...98C, doi:10.1016/j.pss.2012.03.009. See Table 1.
