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62-459: The feast celebrated the maturation of young boys to manhood. Roman boys, usually at age 15 or 16, would remove the bulla praetexta , a hollow charm of gold or leather, which parents placed about the necks of children to ward off evil spirits. At the Liberalia ceremony the young men might place the bulla on an altar (with a lock of hair or the stubble of a first shave placed inside) and dedicate it to

124-664: A Lares Augusti shrine was placed in the forum, which was ritually cleansed for the occasion. The Augustan model persisted until the end of the Western Empire, with only minor and local modifications, and the Lares Augusti would always be identified with the ruling emperor, the Augustus , whatever his personal or family name. Augustus officially confirmed the plebeian-servile character of Compitalia as essential to his "restoration" of Roman tradition , and formalised their offices;

186-408: A materfamilias , she took joint responsibility with her husband for aspects of household cult. The city of Rome was protected by a Lar, or Lares, housed in a shrine ( sacellum ) 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

248-568: A bulla per se, but another kind of amulet called a lunula , until the eve of her marriage , when it was removed along with her childhood toys and other things. She would then stop wearing child's clothes and start wearing women's Roman dress . A small number of bullae have been found in Ireland; they are called "bullae" based on their resemblance to the Roman form. The Irish bullae so far found were made of base metal – sometimes clay – covered with

310-439: A bulla until he came of age as a Roman citizen . Before he put on his toga virilis ("toga of manhood") he placed his boyhood bulla in the care of his parental household deities ( Lares ). Some modern sources interpret Macrobius 's single reference to an amulet worn by a triumphal general during his procession as evidence that the childhood bulla was also a standard item of triumphal regalia . A Roman girl did not wear

372-466: A drinking horn ( rhyton ) aloft as if to offer a toast or libation; the other bears a shallow libation dish ( patera ). Compitalia shrines of the same period show Lares 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 . Lares belonged within the "bounded physical domain" under their protection, and seem to have been as innumerable as

434-460: A focus for the religious, social, and political lives of their local, overwhelmingly plebeian communities. Their cult officials included freedmen and slaves, otherwise excluded by status or property qualifications from most administrative and religious offices. Compared to Rome's major deities , Lares had limited scope and potency, but archaeological and literary evidence attests to their central role in Roman identity and religious life. By analogy,

496-516: A folded over piece of gold foil. The Irish bullae date to the Late Bronze Age, about 1150–750 BCE. They were presumably worn suspended round the neck with a cord running through the hole below the flat top. The body of the bulla has roughly vertical sides before making a semi-circle or inverted pointed arch at the bottom. The gold is incised with geometrical decoration. Whether they were purely for adornment or had an amuletic or other function

558-478: A homeward-bound Roman could be described as returning ad Larem (to the Lar). Despite official bans on non-Christian cults from the late fourth century AD onwards, unofficial cults to Lares persisted until at least the early fifth century AD. Archaic Rome's Etruscan neighbours practiced domestic, ancestral, or family cults very similar to those offered by later Romans to their Lares. The word itself seems to derive from

620-501: A more ancient equivalence of Lar and Greek hero , based on his gloss of a fourth-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 (such as Plautus' singular Lar , above) suggest that cult could be offered to a single Lar, and sometimes many more; in the case of the obscure Lares Grundules , perhaps 30. By

682-399: A pregnant sow. By the early Imperial period, household shrines of any kind were known generically as lararia (s. lararium ) because they typically contained a Lares figure or two. Painted lararia from Pompeii show two Lares flanking a genius or ancestor-figure, who wears his toga in the priestly manner prescribed for sacrificers . Underneath this trio, a serpent, representing

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744-489: A religious hub for social and family life. Individuals who failed to attend to the needs of their Lares and their families should expect neither reward nor 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

806-473: A religiously sanctioned outlet for free speech and populist subversion. At some time between 85 and 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

868-463: 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. Probably in response to this, provincial cults to the Lares Augusti appear soon afterwards; in Ostia,

930-416: Is unclear. Despite the small weight of gold used they would have been available only for elite groups. Lares Lares ( / ˈ l ɛər iː z , ˈ l eɪ r iː z / LAIR -eez, LAY -reez , Latin: [ˈlareːs] ; archaic lasēs , singular lar ) were guardian deities in ancient Roman religion . Their origin is uncertain; they may have been hero-ancestors, guardians of

992-475: 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

1054-612: The Genius Augusti were inserted between the Lares of the Compitalia shrines. Whether or not Augustus replaced the public Lares with "his own" household Lares is questionable – the earliest reference to august Lares (58 BC, in provincial Cisalpine Gaul ) anticipates Octavian's adoption of Augustus as honorific by some thirty years – but when coupled with his new cult to the Genius Augusti , his donation of Lares Augusti statues for use at Compitalia shrines, and his association with

1116-500: The Argei celebration, 30 figures also called Argei were fashioned from rushes into shapes resembling men; later in the year they were tossed into the river(s). The origin of this celebration is not certain, but many scholars feel that it may have been a ritualistic offering meant to appease and praise the Numa and that the 30 argei probably represented the thirty elder Roman curiae , or possibly

1178-528: The Etruscan lar , lars , or larth , meaning 'lord'. Ancient Greek and Roman authors offer ' heroes ' and ' daimones ' as translations of Lares ; the early Roman playwright Plautus ( circa 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

1240-465: The Greek god Dionysus). Liber Pater was also a vegetation god, responsible for protecting seed. Again like Dionysus, he had female priestesses, but Liber's were older women known as Sacerdos Liberi . Wearing wreaths of ivy, they made special cakes, or libia , of oil and honey which passing devotees would have them sacrifice on their behalf. Over time this feast evolved and included the goddess Libera, and

1302-453: The Lares , the gods of the household and family. Mothers often retrieved the discarded bulla and kept it out of superstition. If the son ever achieved a public triumph, the mother could display the bulla to ward off any evil that might be wished upon the son by envious people. The celebration was meant to honor Liber Pater, an ancient god of fertility and wine (like Bacchus , the Roman version of

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1364-563: The 30 Latin townships. Other ancient scholars wrote that the use of the bulrush icons was meant to deter celebrants from human sacrifice, which was done to honor Saturn . Some historical documents indicate that the argei (the sacred places) took their names from the chieftains who came with Hercules , the Argive, to Rome and then occupied the Capitoline (Saturnian) Hill . There is no way at present to verify this information, but it does coincide with

1426-507: 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

1488-455: 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

1550-515: The Lares at the House of Menander suggest that the paterfamilias delegated this religious task to his villicus (bailiff). Care and cult attendance 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; in addition to the formal offerings that seem to have been their due, any food that fell to

1612-413: 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:

1674-578: The Late Republican and early Imperial eras, the priestly records of the Arval Brethren 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

1736-559: 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

1798-662: The Vettii in Pompeii had two lararia ; one was 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

1860-647: The belief that Rome was founded by the Pelasgians and the name Argos is linked to that group. While Liberalia is a relatively unknown event in modern times, references to Liberalia and the Roman goddess Libera are still found in astrology. Bulla (amulet) A bulla , an amulet worn like a locket, was given to male children in Ancient Rome nine days after birth. Rather similar objects are rare finds from Late Bronze Age Ireland. Roman bullae were enigmatic objects of lead, sometimes covered in gold foil, if

1922-417: The community Lares through the 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

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1984-592: 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. Traditional Roman households owned at least one protective Lares-figure, housed in a shrine along with the images of the household's penates , 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

2046-460: 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

2108-465: The crops from evil. At the end of the procession, a virtuous and respected matron placed a wreath upon the phallus. The Procession of the Argei , celebrated on March 16 and 17, was related to Liberalia. The Argei were 27 sacred shrines created by the Numina , very powerful gods without form or face, found throughout the regions of Rome. However, modern scholars have not discovered their meaning or use. In

2170-511: 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 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

2232-514: The early Imperial era, they had become paired divinities, probably through the influences of Greek religion – in particular, the heroic twin Dioscuri – and the iconography of Rome's semidivine founder-twins, Romulus and Remus . Lares are represented as two 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

2294-479: The family could afford it. A bulla was worn around the neck as a locket to protect against evil spirits and forces. Bullae were made of differing substances depending upon the wealth of the family. Before the age of manhood, Roman boys wore a bulla , a neckchain and round pouch containing protective amulets (usually phallic symbols ), and the bulla of an upper-class boy would be made of gold. Other materials included leather and cloth. A freeborn Roman boy wore

2356-408: The feast divided so that Liber governed the male seed and Libera the female. Ovid in his almanac entry for the festival identifies Libera as the celestial manifestation of Ariadne . The ceremony was a "country" or rustic ceremony. The processional featured a large phallus which the devotees carried throughout the countryside to bring the blessing of fertility to the land and the people and protect

2418-476: The fertility of fields or the principle of generative power, winds towards an altar. The essentials of sacrifice are depicted around and about; bowl and knife, incense box, libation vessels and parts of sacrificial animals. In households of modest means, small Lar statuettes were set in wall-niches, sometimes merely a tile-support projecting from a painted background. In wealthier households, they tend to be found in servant's quarters and working areas. At Pompeii,

2480-403: 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 30 piglets. The circumstances of this offering are otherwise unknown, Taylor conjectures the sacrifice of a pig, possibly

2542-433: The frightful larvae . The ubiquity of Lares seems to have offered considerable restraints on Christian participation in Roman public life. 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

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2604-452: 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 Dea 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

2666-497: The games at least were suppressed as "disorderly". As princeps , 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 Augustus as the anniversary of his victory at Actium . Statues representing

2728-437: 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. 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

2790-469: The hearth, fields, boundaries, or fruitfulness, 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 the 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

2852-405: 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 ( Compitalia ), which served as

2914-612: 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

2976-453: 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. With no traditional, systematic theology to limit their development, Lares became a single but 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

3038-512: The latter seems to have been a strong popular tradition. During the Augustan era, Dionysius of Halicarnassus reports Servius' fathering by a Lar and his pious founding of Compitalia as common knowledge, and the Lar as 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

3100-402: 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

3162-459: 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

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3224-413: 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

3286-508: 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 Mars 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

3348-426: 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

3410-420: 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 plebeians and slaves had antagonised Rome's ruling Patrician caste and ultimately caused his downfall; he

3472-421: 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

3534-475: The underworld abode of the dead ( ad Manes ); in this place of silence she is Dea 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

3596-422: 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

3658-551: 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

3720-427: 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. From

3782-533: 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 plebeians, but freedmen and slaves, to whom "even

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3844-418: 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

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