page_title: Lares
section_title: Their domains
hierarchical_section_title: Lares / Their domains
caption_attribution_description: Ancient Roman inscription in D. Diogo de Sousa Museum, Braga, Portugal Español: 10Inscripción romana depositada en el Museo D. Diogo de Sousa de Braga (Portugal), procedente de esta ciudad, correspondiente con AE 1973, 310: Laribus/ Vialibus/ Mater/nus/ Rufi/ l(ibens) a(nimo) p(osuit) Deutsch: Epigraphische Datenbank Heidelberg HD011039
context_page_description: Lares were guardian deities in ancient Roman religion. Their origin is uncertain; they may have been hero-ancestors, guardians of the hearth, fields, boundaries, or fruitfulness, or an amalgamation 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 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 were housed in the crossroad shrines, which served as a focus for the religious, social, and political lives of their local, overwhelmingly plebeian communities.
context_section_description: 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 communities, 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, they were probably identical with Lares Familiares.
  Lares Familiares: Lares of the family, probably identical with the Lares Domestici
  Lares Grundules: the 30 "grunting Lares" or Lares of the eaves, supposedly were given an altar and cult by Romulus or Aeneas when a sow produced a prodigious farrow of 30 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 brine as a sacred object. The 30 piglets would provide the theological justification for the 30 populi Albenses of the feriae Latinae (the 30 fortified boroughs supposedly founded by Aeneas at Lavinium), and the 30 curiae  of Rome.
  Lar Militaris: "military Lar" were 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 are equivalent to the dii patrii (deified ancestors) who received cult at Parentalia.
  Lares Permarini: These Lares protected seafarers; also a temple was dedicated 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, id
caption: Inscription to the Lares Viales, the Lares of the roads
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