Lares- Roman RaceRace"Guardians of the Household"

The Lararium

Every Roman house had a lararium, a shrine that stood in the atrium or the kitchen. Inside it were small figures of the Lares, typically a pair of youths in short tunics, caught mid-dance, each holding a drinking horn and a pouring bowl. A painted serpent often coiled beneath them. In wealthy homes the lararium was an elaborate wooden cabinet. In a freedman's apartment it might be a shelf with a niche scratched into the plaster. The ones at Pompeii survive on the walls, their colors still visible.

Each morning the family made offerings there: wine and incense, a portion of the day's food. On the Kalends, Nones, and Ides of every month, they gave more. At meals, the first portion went to the Lares before anyone ate. Horace mentions the practice as something so ordinary it needed no explanation.

The lararium marked every passage in a household's life. When a bride crossed her husband's threshold for the first time, she made offerings to his Lares. When a soldier came home from campaign, he went to the shrine before he went to his bed. Slaves worshipped there alongside the family. The Lares protected everyone under the roof.

The Compitalia

Where property lines crossed, the Lares kept watch over the neighborhood. Shrines stood at the compita, the crossroads intersections, and in early January the Compitalia festival brought entire neighborhoods out to honor them. Varro records it as one of Rome's oldest celebrations.

Each household hung offerings at the crossroads shrine: a woolen doll for every free person in the house and a woolen ball for every slave. These were substitutes, stand-ins for the living, offered so the Lares would protect the real bodies they represented. The festival brought games and feasting, and for those few days the social order loosened. Slaves had time off. Neighbors who otherwise kept to themselves shared food at the crossroads.

The Lares Praestites

Rome itself had Lares. The Lares Praestites guarded the city's boundaries, and Ovid in the Fasti addresses them directly, asking them to watch over the walls. Under Augustus, the neighborhood cult was reorganized: the crossroads Lares became the Lares Augusti, and Augustus's own genius was worshipped beside them at every compitum in the city. The household religion of a single family now covered all of Rome.