[2][3] The scholar Varro (1st century BC) lists Tellus as one of the di selecti, the twenty principal gods of Rome, and one of the twelve agricultural deities.

Michael Lipka has argued that the Terra Mater who appeared during the reign of Augustus, is a direct transfer of the Greek Ge Mater into Roman religious practice, while Tellus, whose ancient temple was within Rome's sacred boundary (pomerium), represents the original earth goddess cultivated by the state priests.

Terra, he says, is properly used of the elementum, earth as one of the four classical elements with air (Ventus), water (Aqua), and fire (Ignis).

[12] Tellus may be an aspect of the spirit called Dea Dia by the Arval priests,[14] or at least a close collaborator with her as "divinity of the clear sky.

It was believed that those who cultivated her led a pious and useful life (piam et utilem ... vitam), and that they were the sole survivors from the line of King Saturn.

[44] On December 13, the anniversary of the Temple of Tellus was celebrated along with a lectisternium (banquet) for Ceres, who embodied "growing power" and the productivity of the earth.

During a time when Rome was struggling with harsh agricultural conditions, Numa was instructed by the rustic god Faunus in a dream that a sacrifice to Tellus was needed.

[48] The purpose of the sacrifice, as suggested by the Augustan poet Ovid and by the 6th-century antiquarian John Lydus, was to assure the fertility of the planted grain already growing in the womb of Mother Earth in the guise of Tellus.

[18]: 4.633 ff [49][46]: 53  This public sacrifice was conducted in the form of a holocaust on behalf of the state at the Capitol, and also by each of the thirty curiae, the most ancient divisions of the city made by Romulus from the original three tribes.

Under Augustus, the Games (ludi) were dedicated to seven other deities, invoked as the Moerae, Iuppiter, Ilithyia, Iuno, Terra Mater, Apollo and Diana.

"[61] In the provincial mining area of Pannonia, at present-day Ljubija, votive inscriptions record dedications to Terra Mater from vilici, imperial slave overseers who ran operations at ore smelting factories (ferrariae).

[63]: 59–60  The emperor Septimius Severus restored a temple of Terra Mater at Rudnik, a silver mining area of Moesia Superior.

[63]: 78 Tellus is often identified as the central figure on the so-called Italia relief panel of the Ara Pacis, which is framed by bucrania (ornamental ox heads) and motifs of vegetative and animal fertility and abundance.

Earth is sometimes referred to as "Terra" by speakers of English to match post-classical Latin astronomical naming conventions, and to distinguish the planet from the soil covering part of it.