THE WILD WHEAT OF PALESTINE 283 



dignity seated upon a throne : her head is crowned with a 

 wheaten garland ; in her right hand she bears a torch ; upon 

 her left arm reclines a sheaf of wheat, while her relation to 

 the cereal she is supposed to have introduced is further em- 

 phasized by a basket of wheat which stands on the ground 

 at her feet. In the other painting, the goddess is repre- 

 sented to us in a standing posture; but again she wears 

 a wheaten crown, while she bears a torch in her right hand 

 and ears of wheat in her left.'* 



The people of ancient Italy, notwithstanding their 

 prayers to Ceres, found that their wheat and other cereal 

 crops were often affected by Eust; and mention of the 

 disease is made in the writings of Aristotle, Theophrastus, 

 Strabo, Varro, Columella, Ovid, and Pliny. Pliny states 

 that it was " the greatest pest of the crops." The 

 Romans believed in a Rust-god whom they called Robigus, 

 and they held that he had power to ward off the rust 

 disease. On the twenty-fifth of April, therefore, at the 

 time in each year when the rust usually attacked the 

 wheat, they celebrated a feast called the Robigalia with 

 the object of propitiating Robigus. The Quirinal flamen 

 presided over the ceremony, and the procession marched 

 out from Rome to the lucus Rohigi, situated at the fifth, 

 milestone along the Claudian Way. There, in the sacred 

 grove, before a crowd clad in white togas, the priest offered 

 up a prayer to the stern Rust-god, imploring him to spare 

 the crops of Ceres, a libation of wine was poured upon the 

 altar, incense was thrown into the flames, and the en- 

 trails of a sheep and of a dog were placed upon the altar 

 and burnt. The dog was reddish, this color being sym- 

 bolical of the pest to be avoided. Ovid, once, when re- 



* Cf. W. H. Roscher, article on Ceres, Lexicon, Leipzig ; also H. T. 

 Peck, articles on Demeter and Ceres in Harper's Dictionary of Classi- 

 cal Literature and Antiquities, New York, 1896. 



