O Mothers of Fruitfulness, Earth and Ceres, please, with salted spelt cakes offered for Your mother's woe, in kind service have Earth and Ceres nurtured wheat, She who gave grain life, She who gave us room to grow.
May You grant tender seed abundant increase. Let not icy cold enwrap our new shoots with snow, while we sow let cloudless skies and fair winds blow. When the seed lies sprouting, sprinkle with gentle rains, may You ward off the feasting by birds from our grains.
Crops of wheat, of barley, of spelt grow on the farm, look now, Good Mothers, guard well the field, the seasons change, the earth by Your breath grows warm, with Your gentle touch may You increase our yield.
By Peace Ceres nursed, Her foster-child live in peace.
Commentarius · Commentary
Ovid's Fasti, the Paganalia in January — the country festival of sowing.
The prayer is long and thoroughly practical. It asks for growth; for clear weather at the sowing and rain once the seed is covered; that birds should not descend on the shoots; that rust should not touch them, and that the crop should not rot from excessive richness; that the field be clean of darnel and wild oats. An agronomist's checklist set to verse.
The petition to the ants stands apart: "And you, ants, spare the buried grain: after the harvest the plunder will be greater." Insects are addressed as a contracting party and offered a postponement with interest.
And it all ends in politics. Hoes were turned into spears and helmets forged from rakes — but now "bound in chains, the Wars have long lain beneath your feet". And the last line settles everything: "Peace nourishes Ceres, and Ceres is the nursling of Peace."
