especially of Eastern Ceram, and furnishes a vast supply of^food, not only to Ceram itself, but to other islands to the east. The Dutch settlers at Amboyna have recently established cocoa plantations at various points, and the Government encourages their formation. The inhabitants are mostly gathered in villages along the coast ; they are partly native Alfuroes and partly immigrant Malays, with a considerable intermixture of Buginese, Macassars, Bali- nese, and other races of the archipelago. Christianity has been introduced in various districts, especially along the southern coast, but as yet with but little practical benefit. A baneful influence has been exerted by a secret society called the Kakian Union, to which pagans, Mahometans, and Christians indiscriminately attached themselves; and it has several times cost the Dutch authorities considerable efforts to frustrate their machina tions. A full account of the union will be found in the fifth year of the Tijdschrift van Ned. Ind, The total population is estimated at 195,000, of whom the lands on the south coast contain 65,000, the lands on the north coast 40,000, and the south-western peninsula a large portion of the remainder. There was a Dutch fort at Kambello, on the west side of Little Ceram, as early as 1646. See "Wallace s Malay Archipelago, and Bickmore s
Eastern Archipelago.CERBERUS (Ke>/3fpos), in Greek mythology, the dog which guarded the entrance to Hades, not against incomers, but against whoever might seek to escape. In Hesiod (Theog. 310), he is a many-headed monster with a fearful bark, but usually he was represented with three heads and the body of a dog such as haunted battlefields, sometimes also with the tail of a snake. The same number of heads occurs in other beings connected with the lower world, as in Hecate " triformis " and Hermes " trikephalos." The most difficult of the labours imposed on Hercules was to bring Cerberus to the upper world, and in this he was forbidden by Pluto to use any weapons. Of the various suggested derivations of the name perhaps the most satisfactory is that which connects it with pe/3os, the darkness of Hades.
CERDONIANS, a Gnostic sect, founded by Cerdo, a Syrian, who came to Rome about 140, but concerning whose history little is known. They held that there are two first causes the perfectly good and the perfectly evil. The latter is also the creator of the world, the god of the Jews, and the author of the Old Testament. Jesus Christ is the son of the good deity ; he was sent into the world to oppose the evil ; but his incarnation, and therefore his sufferings were a mere appearance. Regarding the body as the work of the evil deity, the Cerdonians formed a moral system of great severity, prohibiting marriage, wine, and the eating of flesh, and advocating fasting and other austerities. Origen attributes to Cerdo the opinion, which was certainly held by the more famous Marcion, his contemporary and, in some respects at least, his follower, that there are three first causes the perfectly good, the perfectly evil, and the imperfect, whom Marcion calls " the just" (TO OIKCUOV), and who is the creator of the world and the god of the Jews. Besides the Old Testament, Cerdo rejected also the New, except part of Luke s Gospel and of St Paul s Epistles. See Marcion and Gnostics.
CERES, in Mythology, was the Roman goddess of seed and harvest, worshipped jointly with Liber (Bacchus) and Libera (Proserpine). No special myth or personal history is known to have been attached to her. But early in the times of the Republic, when Greek deities were introduced into Rome on the advice of the Sibylline books, Demeter, the Greek goddess of seed and harvest, whose worship was largely spread in Sicily and Lower Italy, usurped in Rome the divine position which Ceres held before ; or rather to Ceres were added the religious rites which the Greeks paid to Demeter, and the mythological incidents which, originated with her. These rites were Greek in their language and forms, the priestesses were Greeks, and the temple was Greek in its architecture. Her principal festivals were (1) the Cerealia (April 12-19), corresponding in the main idea with the Eleusinia, and (2) the Jejunium Cereris (October 4), corresponding to the Thesmophoria of Demeter. The Cerealia included the spectacle of hunting a fox with a torch attached to his tail. Her temple in Rome had been destroyed by fire, and was rebuilt by Augustus. Claudius attempted to introduce the mysteries of Eleusis into Rome in connection with her worship.
As regards the Greek goddess, the chief interest of her worshippers was concentrated on the myth which told how her only daughter Persephone (Proserpine) had been carried off in a chariot by Pluto, the god of the lower world, from the fields of Enna in Sicily, where she was gathering flowers ; other districts also were assigned for this incident, but the Romans naturally preferred Enna as being the nearest. Demeter wandered over the earth searching for her daughter in vain, in her anguish refusing food or drink, and threatening a famine for mankind, till Zeus agreed to allow Persephone in future to live half the year with her mother on the earth. The other half she must remain with Pluto in the lower world. From the myth so far it was a? obvious step to think of Demeter as a mother always anxious for her child, yearning through half the year to see her again, and sad through the other half at the prospect of her leaving again. But a deeper meaning appears to have been found in the myth by those who were initiated into the mysteries of Eleusis, in which seems to have been taught the principle of a new life after death, founded on the return of Persephone to the upper world, or rather on the process of nature by v?hich seed sown in the ground must first die and rot before it can yield new life, a process which the annual going and coming of Persephone was designed to illustrate. To make more explicit this connection of Demeter with seed-sowing, the myth tells how, in searching for her daughter, she was hospitably received among other places at Eleusis in Attica, and how, when leaving Eleusis, she gave to Triptolemus, the king s son, her chariot drawn by winged snakes, with the injunction to travel over the world teaching men to cultivate grain as she had then begun to teach them. At the Thesmophoria, a festival in which only married women took part, Demeter was regarded as having instituted certain laws (6ca-/j.oi) for regulating life, in particular the married life of women. In the Cretan myth of Demeter she was connected with a hero Jasion, said to have been the first to sow grain, to whom she bore a son, Plutos. Poseidon, the god of the sea, appears as repugnant to her in the myth, according to which she took the form of a horse to escape him, but was overtaken, and finally bore to him the winged horse Arion. It may have been with reference to this that she was figured in .an ancient image at Phigaleia as having a horse s in place of a human head. Her attributes were a veil and diadem on her head, ears of corn or poppies in her hand. Her principal sacrifice consisted of pigs. Demeter was a daughter of Kronos and Rhea. Zeus was the father of Persephone.
Neapolitan province of Capitanata, 24 miles S.E. of Foggia, pleasantly situated on an eminence which commands an extensive view. The surrounding plain is well cultivated, and produces large quantities of almonds and cotton. Linen is manufactured by the inhabitants. Cerignola is divided into an old and new town, and contains a hospital, a college, and several convents. Here, on the 28th April
1503, the Spaniards, under Gonsalvo de Cordova, defeated
