Deities
Lares
Also Known As Lar · Lares Familiares
Roman Deities
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The Lares are the guardian spirits of the Roman household and its land, worshipped daily at a small shrine called the lararium beside the hearth fire. Each family kept its own Lares Familiares, usually shown as a pair of dancing youths holding a drinking horn and a dish, offered wine, incense and a portion of every meal. Distinct from the Penates, who guard the household's stores, the Lares guard the place itself: the house, the crossroads and the boundaries of the family's land. Rome also kept public Lares Compitales at crossroads shrines citywide and Lares Praestites for the city as a whole. Scholars debate whether the Lares began as spirits of place, deified ancestors, or both, but their role protecting home and family endured through the whole life of Roman religion.
History & Origin
The Lares were honored at crossroads shrines called compita as well as inside the home, and the compitalia festival, revived and reorganized by Augustus to include the emperor's own genius alongside the neighborhood Lares, tied domestic religion directly to the new imperial cult in a way that outlasted the Republic.
Facts
Function
Domain / Function Domain / FunctionProtection and guardianship 1 Cult
Principal Cult CentreEvery Roman household maintained its own lararium, a small shrine typically set near the hearth or in the atrium holding bronze or terracotta statuettes of the Lares, so that the domestic house itself was the Lares' most numerous and ordinary cult site. 2 Attributes and IconographyUsually a pair of youthful dancing figures in short, high-belted tunics, one hand raised holding a drinking horn or cup, the other holding a shallow dish, flanking a larger figure of the household's Genius on painted household shrines such as those preserved at Pompeii. 1 Worship and PracticeA slave granted freedom was traditionally brought before the household's Lares as witness to the act, and a new bride made her first offering to her husband's Lares on entering his house, both rites marking a change of household membership before the gods who guarded it. 2 Worship and PracticeOffered a small portion of the family meal, wine, incense and garlands daily at the lararium; honored at the Compitalia festival at crossroads shrines and on family occasions such as marriages, births and homecomings. 2 Identity
GenderCollective / plural, not a single figure 1 Attestation
Veneration TodayHistorically attested; no continuous cult 2 HistoricityNot a historical person: a divine or other-than-human being 1 Disputed
Mythic AssociationScholars debate whether the Lares began as spirits of place, as deified ancestors, or as both at once, with no single origin explaining every recorded cult of them. 2 Scholars debate whether the Lares began as spirits of place, as deified ancestors, or as both at once, a dispute that has never been resolved because the surviving evidence supports each reading in different contexts and no single origin explains every recorded cult of them. Point in DisputeScholars disagree about the fundamental nature of the Lares. One long standing view holds them to be the spirits of the household's own dead ancestors, continuing a kind of domestic cult of the departed, while another treats them as original spirits of place or of the land, only later drawn into family cult alongside the hearth. Beard, North and Price note that the ancient sources themselves never resolve the question, and that both readings can claim support from different strands of Roman practice. 2 Belief
TheologyPolytheistic: many gods 2 History
Historical NoteThe emperor Augustus reorganized the crossroads cult of the Lares Compitales into two hundred and sixty five city wards, pairing each ward's Lares with his own Genius, a religious reform that tied neighborhood worship directly to loyalty toward the emperor. 2 Origins
Origin of the NameEtymology debated: possibly from an Etruscan word for lord, or native to Latin as a term for a household or place spirit; no securely established origin outside Roman usage itself. 1 Life
Place of ActivityRoman households kept a small shrine called the lararium, typically near the hearth or the entrance, where the Lares were honoured daily alongside the Penates and the family's Genius, a domestic cult practice attested archaeologically in dozens of surviving household shrines excavated at Pompeii. 2 Position Profile
Key TextRoman household religion kept small shrines called lararia where the Lares were honored daily alongside the Penates with offerings of food and wine given at meals, while the Lares Compitales were additionally worshipped collectively at crossroads shrines serving whole neighborhoods rather than single households. 2 Learn More
The Lares and the Roman Household Shrine
The Lares were the guardian spirits of the Roman household, tended daily at a small shrine called the lararium set into a wall of the house, usually near the hearth or the entrance. A family's own Lares Familiares were shown as a pair of youthful dancing figures, tunics belted high, one hand raised with a drinking horn, the other holding a shallow dish, flanking a larger figure of the household's Genius, its guiding spirit. Every meal owed the Lares a small offering, a scrap of food set aside before the family ate, along with wine, incense and garlands on special days.
The cult reached beyond the house. Augustus reorganized the crossroads shrines of Rome as the Compitalia, dedicating them to the Lares Compitales, guardians of the neighborhood where several households' boundaries met, tended by freedmen appointed as magistrates of the local shrine. The state itself kept Lares Praestites, guardians of the city of Rome as a whole, distinct from any single household's Lares.
Where the Lares came from is not settled. Some ancient sources call them deified ancestors, ghosts of the dead who had become guardians of their descendants' homes; others treat them as spirits of place, tied to the land rather than to any lineage, closer in kind to the numen of a spring or a grove. What is not disputed is how long the cult lasted. Household shrines to the Lares are attested from the early Republic through the fall of the Western Empire, one of the most continuously documented private cults in Roman religion.
Lares and Penates: Two Kinds of Roman Household God
Roman writers rarely confused the Lares with the Penates, though both stood at the same household shrine and later readers sometimes blur them. The distinction was functional. The Lares guarded the place: the house itself, its threshold, its crossroads and the boundary of its land, and a family's Lares stayed with the house even when its occupants changed. The Penates guarded the store, the penus, the household's reserve of food, wine and oil kept in the innermost part of the house, and a family carried its own Penates with it when it moved, the way Aeneas is said to have carried the Penates of Troy to Italy.
Cicero and other writers pair the two so often that the household shrine is sometimes simply called the Lares' shrine even when Penates images stood on it too, which is exactly the conflation a careful reading corrects. The Penates could also be public, the great Penates of the Roman state kept first at Lavinium and later on the Velia in Rome, guardians of the state's own store and continuity, standing beside but never replacing the state's Vesta, whose flame was the public hearth the way the lararium was the private one.
The two cults reinforced rather than duplicated each other: a Roman household owed daily attention to both its place and its provisions, and kept a separate guardian for each.
Correspondences & Relations
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Both are hearth-associated household guardians tended at the domestic shrine, Hestia the Greek goddess of the hearth itself, the Lares the Roman guardian spirits of the household and its land; the two are analogues rather than the same figure.
The Lares are the paradigmatic Roman instance of household religion, guardians of the family shrine tended daily alongside the hearth.
Kept at the same household shrine and often paired by Roman writers, but distinct in function: the Lares guard the place, the Penates guard the store.
Kept at the same household shrine and often paired by Roman writers, but distinct in function: the Penates guard the store, the Lares guard the place.
Belongs to Tradition
Worshipped In
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