Terra- Roman PrimordialPrimordial"Terra Mater"
Also known as: Tellus
Description
Earth herself, worshipped under two names: Tellus when Romans meant the plowed soil, Terra when they meant everything underfoot. Pregnant cows bled for her each April. The Vestal Virgins burned the unborn calves and kept the ashes for the Parilia six days later.
Mythology & Lore
The Temple on the Carinae
In 268 BCE, after earthquakes shook Rome, the Senate vowed a temple to Tellus on the Carinae, the ridge above the later Forum. The logic was direct: the ground had moved, and the goddess who was the ground needed appeasing. The temple stood near where the Colosseum would later rise.
Varro calls Tellus one of the twelve gods who preside over agriculture, paired with Ceres for the work of growing grain. Farmers invoked her before plowing. They called her Tellus Mater when they wanted her attention and left offerings at the furrow's edge. The temple on the Carinae brought her into the city, where the Senate met in her house and conducted state business on the earth goddess's floor.
The Fordicidia
On April 15, the Fordicidia required thirty pregnant cows, one for each of Rome's thirty curiae, to be slaughtered for Tellus. Ovid records the origin: King Numa received the command from Faunus in a dream. The cattle were killed and cut open. The Vestal Virgins took the unborn calves from the wombs, burned them on Vesta's hearth, and stored the ashes.
Six days later, at the Parilia on April 21, those ashes were mixed with the dried blood of the October Horse, a stallion sacrificed the previous autumn in the Campus Martius. The mixture was distributed to shepherds, who leaped through bonfires and scattered the ash over their flocks. The cycle ran from one sacrifice to the next: a horse killed in October, calves taken in April, purification by fire on the birthday of Rome.
The Ara Pacis
On the south panel of the Ara Pacis Augustae, carved in 9 BCE, a woman sits with two children on her lap. Cattle and sheep rest at her feet. Grain and poppies grow around her. Two breezes, personified as women riding a swan and a sea creature, flank her on either side.
The figure has been called Tellus, Italia, Pax, and Venus. No identification has held. What the carving shows is unambiguous: a seated woman holding everything Rome wanted from its earth. Augustus commissioned the altar after returning from campaigns in Gaul and Spain. The woman on the stone, whoever she is, holds still.
Relationships
- Equivalent to