Lares and Penates

In Practice

The Lares guarded a family, its house and its land, and were also honoured at crossroads and for the city. The Penates guarded the household's store and the family's continuity. Ancient writers also gave the Penates a public role, as the sacred objects Aeneas carried from Troy. The Romans did not treat them as one pair. Sources use "Lar" and "Penates" for different jobs, and they sometimes disagree about who the Penates were.

The clearest picture of a Lar is comic. In Plautus's Aulularia a Lar familiaris opens the play. He says he has held and tended the house for the grandfather and father of its present owner (Plautus, Aulularia 2-5). The grandfather buried a treasure in the middle of the hearth and asked the Lar to guard it (Aulularia 6-8). The owner's daughter prays to him every day with incense, wine or something else, and gives him garlands (Aulularia 23-25). In gratitude he lets her father find the gold, so that he can marry her off (Aulularia 25-27). The joke is Plautus's, but the shape of the cult is plain. A Lar belongs to a house, and the household feeds him.

Cato shows the same cult on a farm. The bailiff's wife must sweep the hearth clean each evening. On the Kalends, Ides and Nones, and on any festival, she puts a garland on the hearth and makes an offering to the Lar familiaris as her means allow (Cato, De Agri Cultura 143). Cato adds that the master sees to the devotions for the whole household, so she may not worship without his leave (De Agri Cultura 143). The Lar sits at the hearth, and the calendar sets the days.

Lares also stood outside the house. Ovid makes the Lares twin sons of a nymph, and says they watch over the crossroads and keep guard in the city (Ovid, Fasti 2.615-616). Dionysius of Halicarnassus says King Servius Tullius ordered chapels built in every street, with an annual sacrifice at which each household gave a honey-cake and slaves served. He notes the festival, the Compitalia, was still kept in his day a few days after the Saturnalia (Roman Antiquities 4.14.3-4). Ovid's Lares Praestites, a name he derives from their standing guard, protect the city, and a stone dog stood at their feet (Fasti 5.129-142). Archaeology adds the domestic side. Pompeii has countless small household shrines, called lararia, some with traces of burning on the altar and the last offerings (Ostia-Antica.org, Private religion: introduction).

The Penates are harder to pin down. Dionysius says Romans call them Penates, and that Greek writers rendered the name in five ways: Patrooi (ancestral), Genethlioi (of the family line), Ktesioi (of property), Mychioi (of the inner room) and Herkeioi (of the courtyard) (Roman Antiquities 1.67.3). Macrobius reports a philosophical reading. The deeper inquirers said the Penates are the gods through whom we breathe and have bodies and minds (Macrobius, Saturnalia 3.4.8). That reading is not the Roman cult itself.

Their best-known role is Trojan. In Virgil the ghost of Hector tells Aeneas that Troy entrusts her sacred things and her Penates to him, to be taken as companions of his fate (Aeneid 2.293-295). On Crete the Phrygian Penates appear to him in a dream, the images he had carried from the burning city. They say Apollo has sent them and tell him to seek Italy (Aeneid 3.147-150; 3.154-171). Macrobius adds that Varro made Dardanus carry them from Samothrace to Phrygia, and Aeneas on to Italy, while Cassius Hemina identified them with the Samothracian gods (Saturnalia 3.4.7; 3.4.9). Dionysius says the Trojan sacred images at Lavinium moved home overnight when carried to Alba and had to be returned (Roman Antiquities 1.67.1-2). He describes a small shrine of the Penates on the Velia in Rome, holding statues of two seated youths with spears (Roman Antiquities 1.68.1-2).

So the Lares and Penates overlap and differ. Both were domestic, both were honoured at the hearth, and both had public counterparts. The Lares are tied to place: the house, the farm and the street. The Penates are tied to lineage and stores, and, in the epic tradition, to Rome's Trojan descent. Compare the public hearth kept by Vesta and her Vestal Virgins, and the god at every threshold, Janus, for the wider Roman pattern of gods tied to doorways and fires.

Where Accounts Differ

• who the Penates were
• Penates of the state and of the house
• Lares of the house and of the crossroads

• Who the Penates were: Virgil has Hector hand Aeneas Troy's sacred things and Penates, and has the Phrygian Penates speak to him as household images (Aeneid 2.293-295; 3.147-150). Macrobius gives rival accounts. Varro has Dardanus carry them from Samothrace to Phrygia, Cassius Hemina identifies them with the Samothracian gods, and others call them the gods through whom we breathe and have bodies (Saturnalia 3.4.7-3.4.9). Dionysius gives five Greek renderings of the name and declines to describe the hidden objects at Lavinium (Roman Antiquities 1.67.3). The sources do not agree on one identity.
• The Penates of Rome and of a house: Dionysius describes the Trojan images as belonging to Lavinium and Alba and a small shrine of the Penates on the Velia (Roman Antiquities 1.67.1-2; 1.68.1-2). Plautus and Cato speak only of the Lar familiaris at a single hearth (Aulularia 2-8; De Agri Cultura 143). This page does not claim the private and public cults were one, and the sources checked here do not say so.
• Lares at the crossroads and in the house: Ovid treats the Lares as twins who guard the crossroads and the city (Fasti 2.615-616), and the Lares Praestites as guardians of the city (Fasti 5.129-142). Plautus and Cato treat the Lar familiaris as belonging to a household. Dionysius describes the Compitalia chapels as shrines to "heroes" whose statues stood before the houses, and his editor identifies them with the Lares Compitales (Roman Antiquities 4.14.3). Whether Roman writers saw one kind of Lar or several is left open here.
• Verification: Plautus Aulularia (Latin, Latin Library, standard line numbers; Perseus numbers one higher because it counts the speaker heading), Cato 143 (Thayer, LacusCurtius, English; Latin phrase Lari familiari confirmed in a scholarly quotation), Dionysius 1.67-68 and 4.14 (Cary, Loeb, LacusCurtius), Ovid Fasti 2 and 5 (Latin Library), Macrobius Saturnalia 3.4.6-9 (Latin, LacusCurtius) and Aeneid 2 and 3 (Perseus and Latin Library) were read. Plautus, Cato and Ovid's Fasti have no machine-checkable English text. The date of the Caristia is not stated in the lines cited and is not asserted.

Where This Appears

• Character Vesta
• Character Aeneas
• Character Janus
• Term Vestal Virgins
• Term Saturnalia
• Character Jupiter
• Mythology Roman Mythology

Sources