Lares
Encyclopedia
Lares archaically Lases, were guardian deities in ancient Roman religion. Their origin is uncertain; they may have been guardians of the hearth, fields, boundaries or fruitfulness, hero-ancestors, or an amalgam of these.
Lares were believed to observe, protect and influence all that happened within the boundaries of their location or function. The statues of domestic Lares were placed at table during family meals; their presence, cult and blessing seem to have been required at all important family events. Roman writers sometimes identify or conflate them with ancestor-deities, domestic Penates and the hearth. Because of these associations, Lares are sometimes categorised as household gods
but some had much broader domains. Roadways, seaways, agriculture, livestock, towns, cities, the state and its military were all under the protection of their particular Lar or Lares. Those who protected local neighbourhoods (vici
) were housed in the crossroad shrines (Compitales) which served as a focus for the religious, social and political life of their local, overwhelmingly plebeian communities. Their cult officials included freedmen and slaves, otherwise excluded by status or property qualification from most administrative and religious offices.
Compared to Rome's major deities, the scope and potency of Lares were limited but they were important, peculiarly Roman objects of cult. Archaeological and literary evidence attests to their central role in Roman identity and religious life throughout the Republic and empire. By analogy, a homeward-bound Roman could be described as returning ad Larem (to the Lar). Despite official bans on non-Christian cults from the late 4th century AD onwards, unofficial cults to Lares persisted until at least the early 5th century AD.
es" and "daimones" as translations of "Lares"; the early Roman playwright Plautus
(c. 254–184 BC) employs a Lar Familiaris as a guardian of treasure on behalf of a family, as a plot equivalent to the Greek playwright Menander
's use of a heroon
(as an ancestral hero-shrine). Weinstock proposes a more ancient equivalence of Lar and Greek hero, based on his gloss of a 4th century BC Latin dedication to the Roman ancestor-hero Aeneas as Lare (Lar).
No physical Lar images survive from before the Late Republican era, but literary references suggest that cult could be offered to a single Lar, and sometimes many more: in the case of the obscure Lares Grundules, perhaps thirty. Their development as paired divinities may have arisen through the influences of Greek religion – in particular, the heroic twin Dioscuri – and the iconography of Rome's semi-divine founder-twins, Romulus and Remus
. Domestic Lares statues from the early Imperial era show only minor stylistic variations from a common type; small, youthful, lively male figures clad in short, rustic, girdled tunics – made of dogskin, according to Plutarch. They take a dancer's attitude, tiptoed or lightly balanced on one leg. One arm raises a drinking horn (rhyton
) aloft as if to offer a toast or libation; the other bears a shallow libation dish (patera
). Carved representations of Lares on Compitalia shrines of the same period show figures of the same type. Painted shrine-images of paired Lares show them in mirrored poses to the left and right of a central figure, understood to be an ancestral genius
.
in the Carmen Arvale
are simply Lases (an archaic form of Lares), whose divine functions must be inferred from the wording and context of the Carmen itself. Likewise those invoked along with other deities by the consul Publius Decius Mus as an act of devotio before his death in battle are simply "Lares". The titles and domains given below cannot therefore be taken as exhaustive or definitive.
image and any other favoured deities. Their statues were placed at table during family meals and banquets. They were divine witnesses at important family occasions, such as marriages, births and adoptions, and their shrines provided a religious hub for social and family life.
Responsibility for household cult and the behaviour of family members ultimately fell to the family head, the paterfamilias but he could, and indeed should on certain occasions properly delegate the cult and care of his Lares to other family members, especially his servants. The positioning of the Lares at the House of Menander
suggest that the paterfamilias delegated this religious task to his villicus (bailif). Individuals who failed to attend to the needs of their Lares and their families should expect neither reward not good fortune for themselves. In Plautus' comedy Aulularia, the Lar of the miserly paterfamilias Euclio reveals a pot of gold long-hidden beneath his household hearth, denied to Euclio's father because of his stinginess towards his Lar. Euclio's own stinginess deprives him of the gold until he sees the error of his ways; then he uses it to give his virtuous daughter the dowry she deserves, and all is well.
Care and cult to domestic Lares could include offerings of spelt wheat and grain-garlands, honey cakes and honeycombs, grapes and first fruits, wine and incense. They could be served at any time and not always by intention: as well as the formal offerings that seem to have been their due, any food that fell to the floor during house banquets was theirs. On important occasions, wealthier households may have offered their own Lares a pig. A single source describes Romulus' provision of an altar and sacrifice to Lares Grundules ("grunting lares") after an unusually large farrowing of thirty piglets. The circumstances of this offering are otherwise unknown: Taylor conjectures the sacrifice of a pig, possibly a pregnant sow.
in the priestly manner prescribed for sacrificers. Positioned beneath this trio of figures is a serpent, which represents the fertility of fields or the principle of generative power. Arranged around or within the whole are representations of sacrificial essentials such as bowl and knife, incense box, libation vessels and parts of sacrificial animals.
Household shrines, with or without a Lar figure or two, could be sited in virtually any room of any house; bedrooms, private rooms of uncertain purpose and working areas such as kitchen and stores. The Lares figures and shrines of wealthy households are often, though not exclusively found in the servant's quarters, and resemble those found in households of more modest means: small Lar statuettes set in wall-niches, sometimes merely a tile-support projecting from a simply painted background. At Pompeii, the Lares and lararium of the sophisticated, unpretentious and artistically restrained House of Menander
were associated with its servant quarters and adjacent agricultural estate. Its statuary was unsophisticated, "rustic" and probably of ancient type or make. The placing of Lares in the public or semi-public parts of a house, such as its atrium
, enrolled them in the more outward, theatrical functions of household religion.
The House of the Vettii
in Pompeii had two lararia. One was a simple, traditionally Roman affair, positioned out of public view, and was probably used in private household rites. The other was placed boldly front-of-house, among a riot of Greek-inspired mythological wall-paintings and the assorted statuary of patron divinities. Its positioning in a relatively public part of the domus would have provided a backdrop for the probably interminable salutatio (formal greeting) between its upwardly mobile owners and their strings of clients and "an assorted group of unattached persons who made the rounds of salutationes to assure their political and economic security".
Domestic Lararia were also used as a sacred, protective depository for commonplace symbols of family change and continuity. In his coming-of-age, a boy gave his personal amulet (bulla) to his Lares before he put on his manly toga
(toga virilis). Once his first beard had been ritually cut off, it was placed in their keeping. On the night before her wedding, a Roman girl surrendered her dolls, soft balls and breastbands to her family Lares, as a sign she had come of age. On the day of her marriage, she transferred her allegiance to her husband's neighbourhood Lares (Lares Compitalici) by paying them a copper coin en route to her new home. She paid another to her new domestic Lares, and one to her husband. If the marriage made her a materfamilias, she took joint responsibility with her husband for aspects of household cult.
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) on the City's ancient, sacred boundary (pomerium
). Each Roman vicus (pl. vici – administrative districts or wards) had its own communal Lares, housed in a permanent shrine at a central crossroads of the district. These Lares Compitalicii were celebrated at the Compitalia
festival (from the Latin compitum, a crossroad) just after the Saturnalia
that closed the old year. In the "solemn and sumptuous" rites of Compitalia, a pig was led taken in celebratory procession through the streets of the vicus then sacrificed to the Lares at their Compitalia shrine. Cult offerings to these Lares were much the same as those to domestic Lares; in the late Republican era, Dionysius of Halicarnassus
describes the contribution of a honey-cake from each household as ancient tradition.
The Compitalia itself was explained as an invention of Rome's sixth king, Servius Tullius
, whose servile origins and favour towards plebians and slaves had antagonised Rome's ruling Patrician caste and ultimately caused his downfall: he was said to have been fathered by a Lar or some other divine being, on a royal slave-girl. So although the Lares Compitalicii were held to protect all the community, regardless of social class, their festival had a distinctly plebeian ambiance, and a measure of Saturnalia's reversal of the status quo. Tradition required that the Lares Compitalicii be served by men of very low legal and social status: not merely plebians, but freedmen and slaves, to whom "even the heavy-handed Cato recommended liberality during the festival". Dionysius' explains it thus:
While the supervision of the vici and their religious affairs may have been charged to the Roman elite who occupied most magistracies and priesthoods, management of the day-to-day affairs and public amenities of neighbourhoods – including their religious festivals – was the responsibility of freedmen and their slave-assistants. The Compitalia was an official festival but during the Republican era, its shrines appear to have been funded locally, probably by subscription among the plebeians, freedmen and slaves of the vici. Their support through private benefaction is nowhere attested, and official attitudes to the Republican Compitalia seem equivocal at best: The Compitalia games (Ludi Compitalicii) included popular theatrical religious performances of raucously subversive flavour: Compitalia thus offered a religiously sanctioned outlet for free speech and populist subversion. At some time between 85–82 BC, the Compitalia shrines were the focus of cult to the ill-fated popularist politician Marcus Marius Gratidianus
during his praetorship. What happened – if anything – to the Compitalia festivals and games in the immediate aftermath of his public, ritualised murder by his opponents is not known but in 68 BC the games at least were suppressed as "disorderly".
Augustus reformed Compitalia and subdivided the vici. From 7 BC a Lares' festival on 1 May was dedicated to the Lares Augusti and a new celebration of the Genius
Augusti was held on 1 August, the inaugural day for Roman magistracies and personally auspicious for Augutus as the anniversary of his victory at Actium
. Statues representing the Genius Augusti were inserted between the Lares of the Compitalia shrines. Whether or not Augustus substituted the public Lares with "his own" Lares is questionable; augusti can be interpreted as descriptive, a shared title and honour (the "august" Lares) but when coupled with his new cult to the Genius Augusti, Augustus' deliberate association with the popular Lares through their shared honorific makes the reformed Compitalia an unmistakable, local, "street level" aspect of cult to living emperors.
The iconography of these shrines celebrates their sponsor's personal qualities and achievements and evokes a real or re-invented continuity of practice from ancient times. Some examples are sophisticated, others crude and virtually rustic in style; taken as a whole, their positioning in every vicus (ward) of Rome symbolically extends the ideology of a "refounded" Rome to every part of the city. The Compitalia reforms were ingenious and genuinely popular; they valued the traditions of the Roman masses and won their political, social and religious support. Probabably in response to this, provincial cults to the Lares Augusti appear soon afterwards; in Ostia, a Lares Augusti shrine was placed in the forum, which was ritually cleansed for the occasion. The Augustan model persisted with only minor modifications until the end of the Western Empire, still dedicated to the Lares Augusti and associated with the ruling Emperor by title rather than name. Similar dedications and collegial arrangements are found elsewhere in the Empire.
Augustus officially confirmed the plebian-servile character of Compitalia as essential to his "restoration" of Roman tradition, and formalised their offices; the vici and their religious affairs were now the responsibility of official magistri vici, usually freedmen, assisted by ministri vici who were usually slaves. A dedication of 2 BC to the Augustan Lares lists four slaves as shrine-officials of their vicus. Given their slave status, their powers are debatable but they clearly constitute an official body. Their inscribed names, and those of their owners, are contained within an oak-wreath cartouche. The oak-leaf chaplet was voted to Augustus as "saviour" of Rome; He was symbolic pater (father) of the Roman state, and though his genius was owed cult by his extended family, its offer seems to have been entirely voluntary. Hardly any of the reformed Compital shrines show evidence of cult to the emperor's genius. Augustus acted with the political acumen of any responsible patronus (patron); his subdivision of the vici created new opportunities for his clients. It repaid honour with honours, which for the plebs meant offices, priesthood, and the respect of their peers; at least for some. In Petronius' Satyricon, a magistrate's lictor
bangs on Trimalchio's door; it causes a fearful stir but in comes Habinnas, one of Augustus' new priests, a stonemason by trade; dressed up in his regalia, perfumed and completely drunk.
and the speculative commentaries of a very small number of literate Romans attest to a Mother of the Lares
(Mater Larum). Her children are invoked by the obscure, fragmentary opening to the Arval Hymn (Carmen Arvale
); enos Lases iuvate ("Help us, Lares"). She is named as Mania
by Varro
(116–27 BC), who believes her an originally Sabine deity. The same name is used by later Roman authors with the general sense of a bogey or "evil spirit". Much later, Macrobius (fl. AD 395–430) describes the woolen figurines hung at crossroad shrines during Compitalia
as maniae, supposed as an ingenious substitution for child sacrifices to the Mater Larum, instituted by Rome's last monarch and suppressed by its first consul, L. Junius Brutus
. Modern scholarship takes the Arval rites to the Mother of the Lares as typically chthonic
, and the goddess herself as a dark or terrible aspect of the earth-mother, Tellus
. Ovid supplies or elaborates an origin-myth for the Mater Larum as a once-loquacious nymph
, Lara
, whose tongue is cut out as punishment for her betrayal of Jupiter's secret amours. Lara thus becomes Muta (the speechless one). Mercury leads her
to the underworld abode of the dead (ad Manes); in this place of silence she is Tacita (the silent one). En route, he impregnates her. She gives birth to twin boys as silent or speechless as she. In this context, the Lares can be understood as "manes
of silence" (taciti manes).
Ovid's poetic myth appears to draw on remnants of ancient rites to the Mater Larum, surviving as folk-cult among women at the fringes of the Feralia
: an old woman sews up a fish-head, smears it with pitch then pierces and roasts it to bind hostile tongues to silence: she thus invokes Tacita
. If, as Ovid proposes, the lemures are an unsatiated, malevolent and wandering form of Lares, then they and their mother also find their way into Lemuralia, when the hungry Lemures gather in Roman houses and claim cult from the living. The paterfamilias must redeem himself and his family with the offer of midnight libations of spring-water, and black beans spat onto the floor. Any lemures dissatisfied with these offerings are scared away by the loud clashing of bronze pots. Taylor notes the chthonic character of offerings made to fall – or deliberately expelled – towards the earth. If their mother's nature connects the Lares to the earth they are, according to Taylor, spirits of the departed.
Plutarch offers a legend of Servius Tullius, sixth king of Rome, credited with the founding of the Lares' public festival, Compitalia. Servius' virginal slave mother-to-be is impregnated by a phallus-apparition arising from the hearth, or some other divine being held to be a major deity or ancestor-hero by some, a Lar by others: the latter seems to have been a strong popular tradition. Dionysius of Halicarnassus
reports Servius' fathering by a Lar and his later pious founding of Compitalia as Roman commonplaces during the Augustan era. The Lar seems to him an equivalent to the Greek hero; semi-divine, ancestral and protective of place.
These stories connect the Lar to the hearth, the underworld, generative powers (however embodied), nourishment, forms of divine or semi-divine ancestry and the coupling of the divine with the servile, wherein those deprived by legal or birth-status of a personal gens could serve, and be served by, the cults attached to Compitalia and Larentalia. Mommsen's contention that Lares were originally field deities is not incompatible with their role as ancestors and guardians. A rural familia relied on the productivity of their estate and its soil: around the early 2nd century BC, Plautus's Lar Familiaris
protects the house, and familia as he has always done, and safeguards their secrets.
The little mythography that belongs to the Lares seems inventive and poetic; no traditional, systematic theology attaches to them. These limitations allow their development as single, usefully nebulous type with many functions. In Cicero's day, one's possession of domestic Lares laid moral claim of ownership and belonging to one's domicile. Festus
identifies them as "gods of the underworld" (di inferi). To Flaccus
, they are ancestral genii
(s. genius). Apuleius
considers them benevolent ancestral spirits; they belong both to the underworld and to particular places of the human world. To him, this distinguishes them from the divine and eternal genius
which inhabits, protects and inspires living men: and having specific physical domains, they cannot be connected with the malicious, vagrant lemures. In the 4th century AD the Christian polemicist Arnobius
, claiming among others Varro
(116–27 BC) as his source, describes them as once-human spirits of the underworld, therefore ancestral manes
-ghosts; but also as "gods of the air", or the upper world. He also – perhaps uniquely in the literature but still claiming Varro's authority – categorises them with the frightful larvae. The ubiquity of Lares seems to have set considerable restraints on Christian participation in Roman public life, and in the 3rd century AD, Tertullian remarks the inevitable presence of Lares in pagan households as good reason to forbid marriage between pagan men and Christian women: the latter would be "tormented by the vapor of incense each time the demons are honored, each solemn festivity in honor of the emperors, each beginning of the year, each beginning of the month." Yet their type proved remarkably persistent. In the early 5th century AD, after the official suppression of non-Christian cults, Rutilius Namatianus could write of a famine-stricken district whose inhabitants had no choice but to "abandon their Lares" (thus, to desert their rat-infested houses).
Lares were believed to observe, protect and influence all that happened within the boundaries of their location or function. The statues of domestic Lares were placed at table during family meals; their presence, cult and blessing seem to have been required at all important family events. Roman writers sometimes identify or conflate them with ancestor-deities, domestic Penates and the hearth. Because of these associations, Lares are sometimes categorised as household gods
Household deity
A household deity is a deity or spirit that protects the home, looking after the entire household or certain key members. It has been a common belief in pagan religions as well as in folklore across many parts of the world....
but some had much broader domains. Roadways, seaways, agriculture, livestock, towns, cities, the state and its military were all under the protection of their particular Lar or Lares. Those who protected local neighbourhoods (vici
Vicus
Vicus may refer to:*Vicus , plural vici, a neighborhood or local administrative unit of ancient Rome**Vicus Tuscus in Rome**Vicus Jugarius, leading into the Roman Forum** Gensis in Moesia Superior...
) were housed in the crossroad shrines (Compitales) which served as a focus for the religious, social and political life of their local, overwhelmingly plebeian communities. Their cult officials included freedmen and slaves, otherwise excluded by status or property qualification from most administrative and religious offices.
Compared to Rome's major deities, the scope and potency of Lares were limited but they were important, peculiarly Roman objects of cult. Archaeological and literary evidence attests to their central role in Roman identity and religious life throughout the Republic and empire. By analogy, a homeward-bound Roman could be described as returning ad Larem (to the Lar). Despite official bans on non-Christian cults from the late 4th century AD onwards, unofficial cults to Lares persisted until at least the early 5th century AD.
Origins and development
Archaic Rome's Etruscan neighbours practiced domestic, ancestral or family cults very similar to those offered by later Romans to their Lares. Ancient Greek and Roman and authors offer "heroHero
A hero , in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, their cult being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion...
es" and "daimones" as translations of "Lares"; the early Roman playwright Plautus
Plautus
Titus Maccius Plautus , commonly known as "Plautus", was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus...
(c. 254–184 BC) employs a Lar Familiaris as a guardian of treasure on behalf of a family, as a plot equivalent to the Greek playwright Menander
Menander
Menander , Greek dramatist, the best-known representative of Athenian New Comedy, was the son of well-to-do parents; his father Diopeithes is identified by some with the Athenian general and governor of the Thracian Chersonese known from the speech of Demosthenes De Chersoneso...
's use of a heroon
Heroon
A heroon , also called heroum, was a shrine dedicated to an ancient Greek or Roman hero and used for the commemoration or cult worship of the hero. It was often erected over his supposed tomb or cenotaph....
(as an ancestral hero-shrine). Weinstock proposes a more ancient equivalence of Lar and Greek hero, based on his gloss of a 4th century BC Latin dedication to the Roman ancestor-hero Aeneas as Lare (Lar).
No physical Lar images survive from before the Late Republican era, but literary references suggest that cult could be offered to a single Lar, and sometimes many more: in the case of the obscure Lares Grundules, perhaps thirty. Their development as paired divinities may have arisen through the influences of Greek religion – in particular, the heroic twin Dioscuri – and the iconography of Rome's semi-divine founder-twins, Romulus and Remus
Romulus and Remus
Romulus and Remus are Rome's twin founders in its traditional foundation myth, although the former is sometimes said to be the sole founder...
. Domestic Lares statues from the early Imperial era show only minor stylistic variations from a common type; small, youthful, lively male figures clad in short, rustic, girdled tunics – made of dogskin, according to Plutarch. They take a dancer's attitude, tiptoed or lightly balanced on one leg. One arm raises a drinking horn (rhyton
Rhyton
A rhyton is a container from which fluids were intended to be drunk, or else poured in some ceremony such as libation. Rhytons were very common in ancient Persia, where they were called takuk...
) aloft as if to offer a toast or libation; the other bears a shallow libation dish (patera
Patera
A patera was a broad, shallow dish used for drinking, primarily in a ritual context such as a libation. These paterae were often used in Rome....
). Carved representations of Lares on Compitalia shrines of the same period show figures of the same type. Painted shrine-images of paired Lares show them in mirrored poses to the left and right of a central figure, understood to be an ancestral genius
Genius (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion, the genius was the individual instance of a general divine nature that is present in every individual person, place or thing.-Nature of the genius:...
.
Lares and their domains
Lares belonged within the "bounded physical domain" under their protection, and seem to have been as innumerable as the places they protected. Some appear to have had overlapping functions and changes of name. Some have no particular or descriptive name: for example, those invoked along with MarsMars (mythology)
Mars was the Roman god of war and also an agricultural guardian, a combination characteristic of early Rome. He was second in importance only to Jupiter, and he was the most prominent of the military gods worshipped by the Roman legions...
in the Carmen Arvale
Carmen Arvale
The Carmen Arvale is the preserved chant of the Arval priests or Fratres Arvales of ancient Rome.The Arval priests were devoted to the goddess Dea Dia, and offered sacrifices to her to ensure the fertility of ploughed fields . There were twelve Arval priests, chosen from patrician families. ...
are simply Lases (an archaic form of Lares), whose divine functions must be inferred from the wording and context of the Carmen itself. Likewise those invoked along with other deities by the consul Publius Decius Mus as an act of devotio before his death in battle are simply "Lares". The titles and domains given below cannot therefore be taken as exhaustive or definitive.
- Lares Augusti: the Lares of AugustusAugustusAugustus ;23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14) is considered the first emperor of the Roman Empire, which he ruled alone from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD.The dates of his rule are contemporary dates; Augustus lived under two calendars, the Roman Republican until 45 BC, and the Julian...
, or perhaps "the august Lares", given public cult on the first of August, thereby identified with the inaugural day of Imperial Roman magistracies and with Augustus himself. Official Cult to the Lares Augusti continued from their institution through to the 4th century AD. They are identified with the Lares Compitalicii and Lares Praestites of Augustan religious reform. - Lares Compitalicii (also Lares Compitales): the Lares of local communities or neighbourhoods (vici), celebrated at the CompitaliaCompitaliaIn ancient Roman religion, the Compitalia was a festival celebrated once a year in honor of the Lares Compitales, household deities of the crossroads, to whom sacrifices were offered at the places where two or more ways meet. The word comes from the Latin compitum, a cross-way.This festival is...
festival. Their shrines were usually positioned at main central crossroads (compites) of their vici, and provided a focus for the religious and social life of their community, particularly for the plebeian and servile masses. The Lares Compitalicii are synonymous with the Lares Augusti of Augustan reform. Augustus' institution of cult to the Lares Praestites was held at the same Compitalia shrines, but on a different date. - Lares Domestici: Lares of the house, probably identical with Lares Familiares.
- Lares FamiliaresLares FamiliaresLares Familiares were household tutelary deities of ancient Roman religion. The singular form is Lar Familiaris....
: Lares of the family, probably identical with the Lares Domestici. - Lares Grundules: the thirty "grunting Lares", supposedly given an altar and cult by Romulus when a sow produced a prodigous farrow of thirty piglets.
- Lares Militares: "military Lares", named by Marcianus Capella as members of two cult groupings which include Mars, Jupiter and other major Roman deities. Palmer (1974) interprets the figure from a probable altar-relief as "something like a Lar Militaris": he is cloaked, and sits horseback on a saddle of panther skin.
- Lares Patrii: Lares "of the fathers", possibly equivalent to the dii patrii (deified ancestors) who received cult at ParentaliaParentaliaIn ancient Rome, the Parentalia or dies parentales was a nine-day festival held in honor of family ancestors, beginning February 13....
. - Lares Permarini: Lares who protected seafarers; also a temple to them (of which one is known at Rome's Campus martius).
- Lares Praestites: Lares of the city of Rome, later of the Roman state or community; literally, the "Lares who stand before", as guardians or watchmen. They were housed in the state RegiaRegiaThe Regia was a structure in Ancient Rome, located in the Roman Forum. It was originally the residence of the kings of Rome or at least their main headquarters, and later the office of the Pontifex Maximus, the high priest of Roman religion. It occupied a triangular patch of terrain between the...
, near the temple of Vesta, with whose worship and sacred hearth they were associated; they seem to have protected Rome from malicious or destructive fire. They may have also functioned as the neighbourhood Lares of Octavian (the later emperor AugustusAugustusAugustus ;23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14) is considered the first emperor of the Roman Empire, which he ruled alone from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD.The dates of his rule are contemporary dates; Augustus lived under two calendars, the Roman Republican until 45 BC, and the Julian...
), who owned a house between the Temple of Vesta and the Regia. Augustus later gave this house and care of its Lares to the Vestals: this donation reinforced the religious bonds between the Lares of his household, his neighbourhood and the State. His Compitalia reforms extended this identification to every neighbourhood Lares shrine. However, Lares Praestites and the Lares Compitales (renamed as Lares Augusti) should probably not be considered identical. Their local festivals were held at the same Compitalia shrines, but at different times. - Lares Privati
- Lares Rurales: Lares of the fields, identified as custodes agri – guardians of the fields – by TibullusTibullusAlbius Tibullus was a Latin poet and writer of elegies.Little is known about his life. His first and second books of poetry are extant; many other texts attributed to Tibullus are of questionable origins. There are only a few references to him in later writers and a short Life of doubtful authority...
. - Lares Viales: Lares of roads and those who travel them.
Domestic Lares
Traditional Roman households owned at least one protective Lares-figure, housed in a shrine along with the images of the household's penates, geniusGenius (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion, the genius was the individual instance of a general divine nature that is present in every individual person, place or thing.-Nature of the genius:...
image and any other favoured deities. Their statues were placed at table during family meals and banquets. They were divine witnesses at important family occasions, such as marriages, births and adoptions, and their shrines provided a religious hub for social and family life.
Responsibility for household cult and the behaviour of family members ultimately fell to the family head, the paterfamilias but he could, and indeed should on certain occasions properly delegate the cult and care of his Lares to other family members, especially his servants. The positioning of the Lares at the House of Menander
House of Menander
The House of Menander is a building in Pompeii, Italy. It is located in the southern half of the town, just northeast of the Little and Large Theaters, as well as the Gladiators’ barracks...
suggest that the paterfamilias delegated this religious task to his villicus (bailif). Individuals who failed to attend to the needs of their Lares and their families should expect neither reward not good fortune for themselves. In Plautus' comedy Aulularia, the Lar of the miserly paterfamilias Euclio reveals a pot of gold long-hidden beneath his household hearth, denied to Euclio's father because of his stinginess towards his Lar. Euclio's own stinginess deprives him of the gold until he sees the error of his ways; then he uses it to give his virtuous daughter the dowry she deserves, and all is well.
Care and cult to domestic Lares could include offerings of spelt wheat and grain-garlands, honey cakes and honeycombs, grapes and first fruits, wine and incense. They could be served at any time and not always by intention: as well as the formal offerings that seem to have been their due, any food that fell to the floor during house banquets was theirs. On important occasions, wealthier households may have offered their own Lares a pig. A single source describes Romulus' provision of an altar and sacrifice to Lares Grundules ("grunting lares") after an unusually large farrowing of thirty piglets. The circumstances of this offering are otherwise unknown: Taylor conjectures the sacrifice of a pig, possibly a pregnant sow.
Domestic shrines to the Lares
During the early Imperial period, household shrines acquired the generic name, lararia (s. lararium). The term was derived from Lar, probably due to the domestic ubiquity of Lares. Not all such shrines need house Lares figures but of those that did, Pompeian shrine paintings are thought to show a typical layout: paired Lares flank a genius or ancestor-figure, who wears a togaToga
The toga, a distinctive garment of Ancient Rome, was a cloth of perhaps 20 ft in length which was wrapped around the body and was generally worn over a tunic. The toga was made of wool, and the tunic under it often was made of linen. After the 2nd century BC, the toga was a garment worn...
in the priestly manner prescribed for sacrificers. Positioned beneath this trio of figures is a serpent, which represents the fertility of fields or the principle of generative power. Arranged around or within the whole are representations of sacrificial essentials such as bowl and knife, incense box, libation vessels and parts of sacrificial animals.
Household shrines, with or without a Lar figure or two, could be sited in virtually any room of any house; bedrooms, private rooms of uncertain purpose and working areas such as kitchen and stores. The Lares figures and shrines of wealthy households are often, though not exclusively found in the servant's quarters, and resemble those found in households of more modest means: small Lar statuettes set in wall-niches, sometimes merely a tile-support projecting from a simply painted background. At Pompeii, the Lares and lararium of the sophisticated, unpretentious and artistically restrained House of Menander
House of Menander
The House of Menander is a building in Pompeii, Italy. It is located in the southern half of the town, just northeast of the Little and Large Theaters, as well as the Gladiators’ barracks...
were associated with its servant quarters and adjacent agricultural estate. Its statuary was unsophisticated, "rustic" and probably of ancient type or make. The placing of Lares in the public or semi-public parts of a house, such as its atrium
Atrium (architecture)
In modern architecture, an atrium is a large open space, often several stories high and having a glazed roof and/or large windows, often situated within a larger multistory building and often located immediately beyond the main entrance doors...
, enrolled them in the more outward, theatrical functions of household religion.
House of the Vettii
In Pompeii one of the most famous of the luxurious residences is the so-called House of the Vettii, preserved like the rest of the Roman city by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. The house is named for its owners, two successful freedmen: Aulus Vettius Conviva, an Augustalis, and Aulus Vettius...
in Pompeii had two lararia. One was a simple, traditionally Roman affair, positioned out of public view, and was probably used in private household rites. The other was placed boldly front-of-house, among a riot of Greek-inspired mythological wall-paintings and the assorted statuary of patron divinities. Its positioning in a relatively public part of the domus would have provided a backdrop for the probably interminable salutatio (formal greeting) between its upwardly mobile owners and their strings of clients and "an assorted group of unattached persons who made the rounds of salutationes to assure their political and economic security".
Domestic Lararia were also used as a sacred, protective depository for commonplace symbols of family change and continuity. In his coming-of-age, a boy gave his personal amulet (bulla) to his Lares before he put on his manly toga
Toga
The toga, a distinctive garment of Ancient Rome, was a cloth of perhaps 20 ft in length which was wrapped around the body and was generally worn over a tunic. The toga was made of wool, and the tunic under it often was made of linen. After the 2nd century BC, the toga was a garment worn...
(toga virilis). Once his first beard had been ritually cut off, it was placed in their keeping. On the night before her wedding, a Roman girl surrendered her dolls, soft balls and breastbands to her family Lares, as a sign she had come of age. On the day of her marriage, she transferred her allegiance to her husband's neighbourhood Lares (Lares Compitalici) by paying them a copper coin en route to her new home. She paid another to her new domestic Lares, and one to her husband. If the marriage made her a materfamilias, she took joint responsibility with her husband for aspects of household cult.
Lares and the Compitalia
The city of Rome was protected by a Lar, or Lares, housed in a shrine (sacellumSacellum
In ancient Roman religion, a sacellum is a small shrine. The word is a diminutive from sacer . The numerous sacella of ancient Rome included both shrines maintained on private properties by families, and public shrines...
) on the City's ancient, sacred boundary (pomerium
Pomerium
The pomerium or pomoerium , was the sacred boundary of the city of Rome. In legal terms, Rome existed only within the pomerium; everything beyond it was simply territory belonging to Rome.-Location and extensions:Tradition maintained that it was the original line ploughed by Romulus around the...
). Each Roman vicus (pl. vici – administrative districts or wards) had its own communal Lares, housed in a permanent shrine at a central crossroads of the district. These Lares Compitalicii were celebrated at the Compitalia
Compitalia
In ancient Roman religion, the Compitalia was a festival celebrated once a year in honor of the Lares Compitales, household deities of the crossroads, to whom sacrifices were offered at the places where two or more ways meet. The word comes from the Latin compitum, a cross-way.This festival is...
festival (from the Latin compitum, a crossroad) just after the Saturnalia
Saturnalia
Saturnalia is an Ancient Roman festival/ celebration held in honour of Saturn , the youngest of the Titans, father of the major gods of the Greeks and Romans, and son of Uranus and Gaia...
that closed the old year. In the "solemn and sumptuous" rites of Compitalia, a pig was led taken in celebratory procession through the streets of the vicus then sacrificed to the Lares at their Compitalia shrine. Cult offerings to these Lares were much the same as those to domestic Lares; in the late Republican era, Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Dionysius of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Caesar Augustus. His literary style was Attistic — imitating Classical Attic Greek in its prime.-Life:...
describes the contribution of a honey-cake from each household as ancient tradition.
Servius Tullius
Servius Tullius was the legendary sixth king of ancient Rome, and the second of its Etruscan dynasty. He reigned 578-535 BC. Roman and Greek sources describe his servile origins and later marriage to a daughter of Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, Rome's first Etruscan king, who was assassinated in 579 BC...
, whose servile origins and favour towards plebians and slaves had antagonised Rome's ruling Patrician caste and ultimately caused his downfall: he was said to have been fathered by a Lar or some other divine being, on a royal slave-girl. So although the Lares Compitalicii were held to protect all the community, regardless of social class, their festival had a distinctly plebeian ambiance, and a measure of Saturnalia's reversal of the status quo. Tradition required that the Lares Compitalicii be served by men of very low legal and social status: not merely plebians, but freedmen and slaves, to whom "even the heavy-handed Cato recommended liberality during the festival". Dionysius' explains it thus:
- ... the heroes [Lares] looked kindly on the service of slaves. And [the Romans] still observe the ancient custom in connection with those sacrifices propitiating the heroes by the ministry of their servants and during these days removing every badge of their servitude, in order that the slaves, being softened by this instance of humanity, which has something great and solemn about it, may make themselves more agreeable to their masters and be less sensible of the severity of their condition.
While the supervision of the vici and their religious affairs may have been charged to the Roman elite who occupied most magistracies and priesthoods, management of the day-to-day affairs and public amenities of neighbourhoods – including their religious festivals – was the responsibility of freedmen and their slave-assistants. The Compitalia was an official festival but during the Republican era, its shrines appear to have been funded locally, probably by subscription among the plebeians, freedmen and slaves of the vici. Their support through private benefaction is nowhere attested, and official attitudes to the Republican Compitalia seem equivocal at best: The Compitalia games (Ludi Compitalicii) included popular theatrical religious performances of raucously subversive flavour: Compitalia thus offered a religiously sanctioned outlet for free speech and populist subversion. At some time between 85–82 BC, the Compitalia shrines were the focus of cult to the ill-fated popularist politician Marcus Marius Gratidianus
Marcus Marius Gratidianus
Marcus Marius Gratidianus was a praetor and a partisan of the popularist faction led by his uncle Gaius Marius during the Roman Republican civil wars of the 80s...
during his praetorship. What happened – if anything – to the Compitalia festivals and games in the immediate aftermath of his public, ritualised murder by his opponents is not known but in 68 BC the games at least were suppressed as "disorderly".
Lares and Augustan religious reforms
The princepsPrinceps
Princeps is a Latin word meaning "first in time or order; the first, chief, the most eminent, distinguished, or noble; the first man, first person."...
Augustus reformed Compitalia and subdivided the vici. From 7 BC a Lares' festival on 1 May was dedicated to the Lares Augusti and a new celebration of the Genius
Genius (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion, the genius was the individual instance of a general divine nature that is present in every individual person, place or thing.-Nature of the genius:...
Augusti was held on 1 August, the inaugural day for Roman magistracies and personally auspicious for Augutus as the anniversary of his victory at Actium
Actium
Actium was the ancient name of a promontory of western Greece in northwestern Acarnania, at the mouth of the Sinus Ambracius opposite Nicopolis, built by Augustus on the north side of the strait....
. Statues representing the Genius Augusti were inserted between the Lares of the Compitalia shrines. Whether or not Augustus substituted the public Lares with "his own" Lares is questionable; augusti can be interpreted as descriptive, a shared title and honour (the "august" Lares) but when coupled with his new cult to the Genius Augusti, Augustus' deliberate association with the popular Lares through their shared honorific makes the reformed Compitalia an unmistakable, local, "street level" aspect of cult to living emperors.
Augustus officially confirmed the plebian-servile character of Compitalia as essential to his "restoration" of Roman tradition, and formalised their offices; the vici and their religious affairs were now the responsibility of official magistri vici, usually freedmen, assisted by ministri vici who were usually slaves. A dedication of 2 BC to the Augustan Lares lists four slaves as shrine-officials of their vicus. Given their slave status, their powers are debatable but they clearly constitute an official body. Their inscribed names, and those of their owners, are contained within an oak-wreath cartouche. The oak-leaf chaplet was voted to Augustus as "saviour" of Rome; He was symbolic pater (father) of the Roman state, and though his genius was owed cult by his extended family, its offer seems to have been entirely voluntary. Hardly any of the reformed Compital shrines show evidence of cult to the emperor's genius. Augustus acted with the political acumen of any responsible patronus (patron); his subdivision of the vici created new opportunities for his clients. It repaid honour with honours, which for the plebs meant offices, priesthood, and the respect of their peers; at least for some. In Petronius' Satyricon, a magistrate's lictor
Lictor
The lictor was a member of a special class of Roman civil servant, with special tasks of attending and guarding magistrates of the Roman Republic and Empire who held imperium, the right and power to command; essentially, a bodyguard...
bangs on Trimalchio's door; it causes a fearful stir but in comes Habinnas, one of Augustus' new priests, a stonemason by trade; dressed up in his regalia, perfumed and completely drunk.
Lares origin myths and theology
From the Late Republican and early Imperial eras, the priestly records of the Arval BrethrenArval Brethren
In ancient Roman religion, the Arval Brethren or Arval Brothers were a body of priests who offered annual sacrifices to the Lares and gods to guarantee good harvests...
and the speculative commentaries of a very small number of literate Romans attest to a Mother of the Lares
The Mother of the Lares
The Mother of the Lares has been identified with any of several minor Roman deities. She appears twice in the records of the Arval Brethren as Mater Larum, elsewhere as Mania and Larunda...
(Mater Larum). Her children are invoked by the obscure, fragmentary opening to the Arval Hymn (Carmen Arvale
Carmen Arvale
The Carmen Arvale is the preserved chant of the Arval priests or Fratres Arvales of ancient Rome.The Arval priests were devoted to the goddess Dea Dia, and offered sacrifices to her to ensure the fertility of ploughed fields . There were twelve Arval priests, chosen from patrician families. ...
); enos Lases iuvate ("Help us, Lares"). She is named as Mania
Mania (mythology)
In Roman and Etruscan mythology, Mania was the goddess of the dead. She, along with Mantus, ruled the underworld. She was said to be the mother of ghosts, the undead, and other spirits of the night, as well as the Lares and the Manes...
by Varro
Marcus Terentius Varro
Marcus Terentius Varro was an ancient Roman scholar and writer. He is sometimes called Varro Reatinus to distinguish him from his younger contemporary Varro Atacinus.-Biography:...
(116–27 BC), who believes her an originally Sabine deity. The same name is used by later Roman authors with the general sense of a bogey or "evil spirit". Much later, Macrobius (fl. AD 395–430) describes the woolen figurines hung at crossroad shrines during Compitalia
Compitalia
In ancient Roman religion, the Compitalia was a festival celebrated once a year in honor of the Lares Compitales, household deities of the crossroads, to whom sacrifices were offered at the places where two or more ways meet. The word comes from the Latin compitum, a cross-way.This festival is...
as maniae, supposed as an ingenious substitution for child sacrifices to the Mater Larum, instituted by Rome's last monarch and suppressed by its first consul, L. Junius Brutus
Lucius Junius Brutus
Lucius Junius Brutus was the founder of the Roman Republic and traditionally one of the first consuls in 509 BC. He was claimed as an ancestor of the Roman gens Junia, including Marcus Junius Brutus, the most famous of Caesar's assassins.- Background :...
. Modern scholarship takes the Arval rites to the Mother of the Lares as typically chthonic
Chthonic
Chthonic designates, or pertains to, deities or spirits of the underworld, especially in relation to Greek religion. The Greek word khthon is one of several for "earth"; it typically refers to the interior of the soil, rather than the living surface of the land or the land as territory...
, and the goddess herself as a dark or terrible aspect of the earth-mother, Tellus
Tellus
Tellus is a Latin word meaning "earth" and may refer to:* Terra or Terra Mater, the Roman Earth Mother goddess* Tellus , a citizen of ancient Athens who was thought to be the happiest of men...
. Ovid supplies or elaborates an origin-myth for the Mater Larum as a once-loquacious nymph
Nymph
A nymph in Greek mythology is a female minor nature deity typically associated with a particular location or landform. Different from gods, nymphs are generally regarded as divine spirits who animate nature, and are usually depicted as beautiful, young nubile maidens who love to dance and sing;...
, Lara
Larunda
Larunda was a naiad or nymph, daughter of the river Almo in Ovid's Fasti. She was famous for both beauty and loquacity . She was incapable of keeping secrets, and so revealed to Jupiter's wife Juno his affair with Juturna...
, whose tongue is cut out as punishment for her betrayal of Jupiter's secret amours. Lara thus becomes Muta (the speechless one). Mercury leads her
Psychopomp
Psychopomps are creatures, spirits, angels, or deities in many religions whose responsibility is to escort newly deceased souls to the afterlife. Their role is not to judge the deceased, but simply provide safe passage...
to the underworld abode of the dead (ad Manes); in this place of silence she is Tacita (the silent one). En route, he impregnates her. She gives birth to twin boys as silent or speechless as she. In this context, the Lares can be understood as "manes
Manes
In ancient Roman religion, the Manes or Di Manes are chthonic deities sometimes thought to represent the souls of deceased loved ones. They were associated with the Lares, Genii, and Di Penates as deities that pertained to domestic, local, and personal cult...
of silence" (taciti manes).
Ovid's poetic myth appears to draw on remnants of ancient rites to the Mater Larum, surviving as folk-cult among women at the fringes of the Feralia
Feralia
Feralia was an ancient Roman public festival celebrating the Manes which fell on the 21st of February as recorded by Ovid in Book II of his Fasti. This day marked the end of Parentalia, a nine day festival honoring the dead ancestors...
: an old woman sews up a fish-head, smears it with pitch then pierces and roasts it to bind hostile tongues to silence: she thus invokes Tacita
Tacita
Tacita is a genus of sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks in the family Buccinidae, the true whelks.-Species:Species within the genus Tacita include:* Tacita abyssorum * Tacita danielsseni...
. If, as Ovid proposes, the lemures are an unsatiated, malevolent and wandering form of Lares, then they and their mother also find their way into Lemuralia, when the hungry Lemures gather in Roman houses and claim cult from the living. The paterfamilias must redeem himself and his family with the offer of midnight libations of spring-water, and black beans spat onto the floor. Any lemures dissatisfied with these offerings are scared away by the loud clashing of bronze pots. Taylor notes the chthonic character of offerings made to fall – or deliberately expelled – towards the earth. If their mother's nature connects the Lares to the earth they are, according to Taylor, spirits of the departed.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Dionysius of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Caesar Augustus. His literary style was Attistic — imitating Classical Attic Greek in its prime.-Life:...
reports Servius' fathering by a Lar and his later pious founding of Compitalia as Roman commonplaces during the Augustan era. The Lar seems to him an equivalent to the Greek hero; semi-divine, ancestral and protective of place.
These stories connect the Lar to the hearth, the underworld, generative powers (however embodied), nourishment, forms of divine or semi-divine ancestry and the coupling of the divine with the servile, wherein those deprived by legal or birth-status of a personal gens could serve, and be served by, the cults attached to Compitalia and Larentalia. Mommsen's contention that Lares were originally field deities is not incompatible with their role as ancestors and guardians. A rural familia relied on the productivity of their estate and its soil: around the early 2nd century BC, Plautus's Lar Familiaris
Lares Familiares
Lares Familiares were household tutelary deities of ancient Roman religion. The singular form is Lar Familiaris....
protects the house, and familia as he has always done, and safeguards their secrets.
The little mythography that belongs to the Lares seems inventive and poetic; no traditional, systematic theology attaches to them. These limitations allow their development as single, usefully nebulous type with many functions. In Cicero's day, one's possession of domestic Lares laid moral claim of ownership and belonging to one's domicile. Festus
Sextus Pompeius Festus
Sextus Pompeius Festus was a Roman grammarian, who probably flourished in the later 2nd century AD, perhaps at Narbo in Gaul.He made an epitome in 20 volumes of the encyclopedic treatise in many volumes De verborum significatu, of Verrius Flaccus, a celebrated grammarian who flourished in the...
identifies them as "gods of the underworld" (di inferi). To Flaccus
Granius Flaccus
Granius Flaccus was an antiquarian and scholar of Roman law and religion, probably in the time of Julius Caesar and Augustus.-Religious scholar:...
, they are ancestral genii
Genius (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion, the genius was the individual instance of a general divine nature that is present in every individual person, place or thing.-Nature of the genius:...
(s. genius). Apuleius
Apuleius
Apuleius was a Latin prose writer. He was a Berber, from Madaurus . He studied Platonist philosophy in Athens; travelled to Italy, Asia Minor and Egypt; and was an initiate in several cults or mysteries. The most famous incident in his life was when he was accused of using magic to gain the...
considers them benevolent ancestral spirits; they belong both to the underworld and to particular places of the human world. To him, this distinguishes them from the divine and eternal genius
Genius (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion, the genius was the individual instance of a general divine nature that is present in every individual person, place or thing.-Nature of the genius:...
which inhabits, protects and inspires living men: and having specific physical domains, they cannot be connected with the malicious, vagrant lemures. In the 4th century AD the Christian polemicist Arnobius
Arnobius
Arnobius of Sicca was an Early Christian apologist, during the reign of Diocletian . According to Jerome's Chronicle, Arnobius, before his conversion, was a distinguished Numidian rhetorician at Sicca Veneria , a major Christian center in Proconsular Africa, and owed his conversion to a...
, claiming among others Varro
Marcus Terentius Varro
Marcus Terentius Varro was an ancient Roman scholar and writer. He is sometimes called Varro Reatinus to distinguish him from his younger contemporary Varro Atacinus.-Biography:...
(116–27 BC) as his source, describes them as once-human spirits of the underworld, therefore ancestral manes
Manes
In ancient Roman religion, the Manes or Di Manes are chthonic deities sometimes thought to represent the souls of deceased loved ones. They were associated with the Lares, Genii, and Di Penates as deities that pertained to domestic, local, and personal cult...
-ghosts; but also as "gods of the air", or the upper world. He also – perhaps uniquely in the literature but still claiming Varro's authority – categorises them with the frightful larvae. The ubiquity of Lares seems to have set considerable restraints on Christian participation in Roman public life, and in the 3rd century AD, Tertullian remarks the inevitable presence of Lares in pagan households as good reason to forbid marriage between pagan men and Christian women: the latter would be "tormented by the vapor of incense each time the demons are honored, each solemn festivity in honor of the emperors, each beginning of the year, each beginning of the month." Yet their type proved remarkably persistent. In the early 5th century AD, after the official suppression of non-Christian cults, Rutilius Namatianus could write of a famine-stricken district whose inhabitants had no choice but to "abandon their Lares" (thus, to desert their rat-infested houses).
See also
- The Lares in Rome's Imperial cult
- CompitaliaCompitaliaIn ancient Roman religion, the Compitalia was a festival celebrated once a year in honor of the Lares Compitales, household deities of the crossroads, to whom sacrifices were offered at the places where two or more ways meet. The word comes from the Latin compitum, a cross-way.This festival is...
- GeniusGenius (mythology)In ancient Roman religion, the genius was the individual instance of a general divine nature that is present in every individual person, place or thing.-Nature of the genius:...
- Lemures
- Di PenatesDi PenatesIn ancient Roman religion, the Di Penates or Penates were among the dii familiares, or household deities, invoked most often in domestic rituals. When the family had a meal, they threw a bit into the fire on the hearth for the Penates...
- ManesManesIn ancient Roman religion, the Manes or Di Manes are chthonic deities sometimes thought to represent the souls of deceased loved ones. They were associated with the Lares, Genii, and Di Penates as deities that pertained to domestic, local, and personal cult...
- TuranTuran (mythology)Turan was the Etruscan goddess of love and vitality and patroness of the city of Velch. In art, she was usually depicted as a young winged girl. Turan appears in toilette scenes of Etruscan bronze mirrors. She is richly robed and jeweled in early and late depictions, but consistently appears nude...
, the Etruscan love goddess