LARES - Lares and Their Domains

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 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 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 Augustus, 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 Compitalia 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 Familiares: Lares of the family, probably identical with the Lares Domestici.
• Lares Grundules: the thirty "grunting Lares", supposedly given an altar and cult by Romulus or Aeneas when a sow produced a prodigous farrow of thirty piglets. According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus the place where the sow bore the piglets and Aeneas made the sacrifice was sacred, and forbidden to foreigners. The sow's body was said to be kept at Lavinium, preserved in salt as a sacred object. The thirty piglets would provide the theological justification for the thirty populi Albenses of the feriae Latinae (the thirty fortified boroughs supposedly founded by Aeneas at Lavinium), and the thirty curiae of Rome.
• Lar Militaris: "military Lar", named by Marcianus Capella as member 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 Parentalia.
• 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 Regia, 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 Augustus), 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 Tibullus.
• Lares Viales: Lares of roads (viae, singular via) and those who travel them.