y 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. Most of
what the Fathers narrate of Cerdo's tenets has probably been transferred
to him from his famous pupil Marcion, like whom he is said to have
rejected the Old Testament and the New, except part of Luke's Gospel and
of Paul's Epistles. (See MARCION, and GNOSTICISM.)

CEREALIS (CERIALIS), PETILLIUS (1st century A.D.), Roman general, a near
relative of the emperor Vespasian. He is first heard of during the reign
of Nero in Britain, where he was completely defeated (A.D. 61) by
Boadicea. Eight years later he played an important part in the capture
of Rome by the supporters of Vespasian. In 70 he put down the revolt of
Civilis (q.v.). In 71, as governor of Britain, where he had as a
subordinate the famous Agricola, he inflicted severe defeats upon the
Brigantes, the most powerful of the tribes of Britain. Tacitus says that
he was a bold soldier rather than a careful general, and preferred to
stake everything on the issue of a single engagement. He possessed
natural eloquence of a kind that readily appealed to his soldiers. His
loyalty towards his superiors was unshakable.

Tacitus, _Annals_, xiv. 32; _Histories_, iii. 59, 78, iv. 71, 75, 86,
v. 21; _Agricola_, 8, 17.

CERES, an old Italian goddess of agriculture. The name probably means
the "creator" or "created," connected with _crescere_ and _creare_. But
when Greek deities were introduced into Rome on the advice of the
Sibylline books (in 495 B.C., on the occasion of a severe drought),
Demeter, the Greek goddess of seed and harvest, whose worship was
already common in Sicily and Lower Italy, usurped the place of Ceres in
Rome, or rather, to Ceres were added the religious rites which the
Greeks paid to Demeter, and the mythological incidents which originated
with her. At the same time the cult of Dionysus and Persephone (see
LIBER AND LIBERA) was introduced. The rites of Ceres were G