Penates- Roman RaceRace"Gods of the Storeroom"

Out of Troy

Virgil has Aeneas grab them on the night Troy fell. The city was burning, Priam was dead, and Hector's ghost had already appeared to say there was nothing left to save. But the Penates could be saved. Aeneas took them from their shrine, carried them through the flames alongside his father and son, and brought them aboard the ships.

On Crete, where Aeneas first tried to settle, the Penates came to him in a dream. They told him Crete was wrong. Italy was the destination, the ancient motherland from which Dardanus had originally come. They spoke with authority, and Aeneas obeyed. The Trojan Penates chose their own resting place, and the journey to Latium followed their command.

At Every Hearth

The Penates took their name from the penus, the innermost storeroom where a Roman family kept its grain and provisions. Varro traced the word directly. They were gods of the food supply, and every Roman household worshipped them daily at the hearth alongside the Lares and the Genius. At mealtimes a portion of food was thrown into the fire. That portion belonged to the Penates.

They had no fixed form. The Lares had their distinctive look, dancing youths with drinking horns, but the Penates might be any small figures set near the hearth, or no figures at all. What identified them was where they stood: near the fire, near the food. When a family moved, they packed the Penates and carried them to the new house. The phrase "to carry one's penates" meant to relocate. A house without them was a building. A house with them was a home.

The Penates of Rome

Rome had its own Penates, the Penates Publici, housed in the Temple of Vesta in the Forum and guarded by the Vestal Virgins alongside the sacred fire and the Palladium. If the household Penates kept a family fed, the Penates Publici kept the state alive.

The test came after the Gallic sack of 390 BCE. The Gauls had burned the city, and many Romans wanted to abandon the ruins and move to Veii, a conquered Etruscan city with intact walls and buildings. Camillus argued against it. Livy records the speech: Rome's temples and Penates Publici belonged to this ground. To leave was to abandon them. The Romans stayed. They rebuilt on the ashes because the Penates were not portable the way household gods were. Rome's Penates belonged to Rome.