Note 135 — Chapter VIII · TWINS

Core is a name of Proserpine; Liber, of Bacchus. And, although the mention here made of Ceres, Proserpine and Bacchus, as being the offspring of one and the same birth, does not accord with the usual notion of the genealogy of these divinities, it seems that Ptolemy did not so represent them without some reason. For, in cap. 24, lib. 2, De Nat. Deor., Cicero speaks of Liber as having been deified conjointly with Ceres and Libera (another name of Proserpine); and adds, that “it may be understood, from the rites and mysteries of the worship, how the deification took place.” It appears also, by Davies’s notes on Cicero, that Livy and Tacitus both speak of the copartnership in divinity exercised by Liber, Libera and Ceres. There is not, however, any occasion at present to dive deeper into the question of the generation of these deities; for our author has advertised to them only to point out that so many males or females will be produced at one birth, under certain configurations of the stars.