r the next few lectures.

The last fact of Roman religious history which I mentioned last year was
the building of the great Capitoline temple of Jupiter, Juno, and
Minerva, and I then explained why this constituted a religious
revolution. The next temple of which tradition tells us was destined for
another trias, Ceres, Liber, and Libera; the traditional date was 493
B.C., the cause a famine, and the site was at the foot of the Aventine,
the plebeian quarter outside the pomoerium, close to the river where
corn-ships might be moored.[529] Ceres, Liber, and Libera are plainly
neither more nor less than the three Greek corn deities, Demeter,
Dionysus, and Persephone, in a Latin form,[530] whose worship was
prominent in South Italy and Sicily; and unless we throw tradition
overboard entirely, as indeed has often been done, the inference is
obvious that this trias came from the Greeks of the south with an
importation of corn to relieve a famine which pressed especially on the
plebs. It is a fact that the temple and its cult remained always closely
connected with the plebs; they were under the charge of the plebeian
aediles, who also in historical times had the care of the corn-supply
necessary for the city population.[531] Thus, though we need not accept
in full Livy's statement that the very next year corn was imported from
Etruria, Cumae, and Sicily, it cannot be denied that there is a strong
consensus in the various traditions about the temple, which taken
together suggest a Greek, non-patrician, and early origin. That the cult
had at all times a Greek character is undisputed fact.

But I am not so much concerned with the temple itself as with the date
and the manner of its foundation. It was said to have been founded in
the year 496, and dedicated in 493, in obedience to directions found in
"the Sibylline books," which books, according to the well-known
tradition, had been acquired by the last Tarquin, after some haggling,
from an old woman, and placed in the charge of _duoviri sacris
faciundis_. The story itself is worthless in detail; but the question
for us is whether it can be taken as showing that the Sibylline
influence then pervading the Greek world gained a footing at Rome in any
form so early as this. Was the temple really founded in 496, or at some
time thereabout? And was it founded in obedience to some Sibylline
direction? These questions are of real importance, for upon our answer
to them depends the date