Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 3,1): Zeus god of the dark sky (earthquake, clouds, wind, dew, rain, meteorits): Text and notes (Cambridge, 1940)

43 8 The holed vessel in Italy

Warde Fowler's explanation of the mundus as essentially a sub-
terranean granary for the seed-corn commended itself to Professor
F. M. Cornford, who worked out an interesting parallel in Eleusinian
usage1. Boni too regarded the mundus that he found on the
Palatine as the sacred granary of early Rome and sought to elucidate
its arrangements on that assumption2. This granary-hypothesis,
which obviously suits the name Cereris mundus used by Festus ,
Apuleius4, etc.5 and can at least be made to fit the accounts of
Quadraia Roma given by Festus6 and Plutarch7, is in fact the
accepted solution of the problem.

Still, it must be borne in mind that other thdloi on the Palatine
are beyond question in the nature of early cisterns8, and that the

1 F. M. Cornford 'The 'ATTAPXAI and the Eleusinian Mysteries' in Essays
Studies presented to William Ridgeway Cambridge 1913 pp. 153—166. The seed-corn
buried in an underground granary (<np6s, cp. Dittenberger Sytt. inscr. Gr.3 no. 83, 10 ^
(c. 423/2 B.C.) cited supra p. 301 n. o (4)) and then taken out for sowing = Descent a
Ascent of the Corn-maiden or Kore {supra ii. 295 n. 2).

2 Supra p. 436 n. 11.

3 Supra p. 431 n. 4.

4 Apul. apol. 13 magis piaculum decernis speculum philosopho quam Cerens
profano videre. l)U

° On the schol. Bern, in Verg. eel. 3. 105 p. 774 Hagen (in the Jahrb.f. class-* ^
Suppl. 1867 iv) alii specum in Sicilia angusto ore, profunda altitudine, per quam
est Proserpina a Ditepatre. alii'mundum'insacroCereris,et caelum pro ' mundum P0^ ^
dicunt (cp. Philarg. expl. in Verg. eel. 3. 105 p. 68 Thilo—Hagen) see S. Weinsto ^
the Rom. Mitth. 1930 xlv. 1 14 f., L. Deubner in Hermes 1933 lxviii. 283, supra, p- * j
n. o. Cp. the Corp. inscr. Lat. x no. 3926= Dessau Inscr. Lat. sel. no. 334^ \ ^0
. . . icuria M. f. sacerdos | Cerialis mundalis | d. s. p. f. c. (de sua pecttnia ja
curavit).

.6 Supra p. 436 n. o. ^ and

7 Supra p. 436 n. 2. There is an important discrepancy here between ^u^j[S ai^
Ovid. Plutarch places the mundus, into which at the foundation of the city ^'^'^jd pu£s
earth were thrown, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the later Comitium. pa]ati.>-'
his corresponding fossa on the Palatine {fast. 4. 815 alter adit nemorosi saxa ' | foss*
821 ff. fossa fit ad solidum, fruges iaciuntur in ima | et de vicino terra petita s jt jg
repletur humo, plenaeque imponitur ara, | et novus accenso fungitur igne pur""
usually assumed that Plutarch has blundered. But A. L. Frothingham in the A • aflJ
Arch. 1914 xviii. 316 f. notes 'the transfer to the Comitium of so many of *e^ionS vr»s
traditions of the Palatine' and concludes: 'When the city of the Four ReS jn 0,ie
established and the new classification of the population was made that is assoc^e
tradition with the famous augur Attus Navius, it is reasonable to suppose that ^fag
of the new and larger urbs of Rome with its single and extended pomerium, ^ ^e nef
or near the Comitium, would be celebrated by a new mundus in the c.entl^0Iinects t!lS
urbs. It is curious that it is precisely with Attus Navius that tradition BelI1"Sg
transfer from the Palatine to the Comitium of the Ficus Ruminalis of Romulus ^ jn tli^
and also with him the establishment of the puteal or circular sacred enc ^ pal£ltI"f
Comitium. It seems, probable that when Plutarch wrote, the old mundus 0^ spe3icing
had long ceased to be used, and may even have been forgotten; and that
the mundus as in the Comitium he was not making any blunder.'

8 Supra p. 366 n. 1.