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117-440: Lares ( / ˈ l ɛər iː z , ˈ l eɪ r iː z / LAIR -eez, LAY -reez , Latin: [ˈlareːs] ; archaic lasēs , singular lar ) 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 amalgam of these. Lares were believed to observe, protect, and influence all that happened within

234-681: A Lares Augusti shrine was placed in the forum, which was ritually cleansed for the occasion. The Augustan model persisted until the end of the Western Empire, with only minor and local modifications, and the Lares Augusti would always be identified with the ruling emperor, the Augustus , whatever his personal or family name. Augustus officially confirmed the plebeian-servile character of Compitalia as essential to his "restoration" of Roman tradition , and formalised their offices;

351-405: A materfamilias , she took joint responsibility with her husband for aspects of household cult. The city of Rome was protected by a Lar, or Lares, housed in a shrine ( sacellum ) on the city's ancient, sacred boundary ( pomerium ). Each Roman vicus (pl. vici – administrative districts or wards) had its own communal Lares, housed in a permanent shrine at a central crossroads of

468-448: A goddess of childbirth , occurred on the first day of Mars's month, which is also marked on a calendar from late antiquity as the birthday of Mars. In the earliest Roman calendar, March was the first month, and the god would have been born with the new year. Ovid is the only source for the story. He may be presenting a literary myth of his own invention, or an otherwise unknown archaic Italic tradition; either way, in choosing to include

585-588: A masculine word ) and tested it on a heifer who became fecund at once. Flora ritually plucked a flower, using her thumb, touched Juno's belly, and impregnated her. Juno withdrew to Thrace and the shore of Marmara for the birth. Ovid tells this story in the Fasti , his long-form poetic work on the Roman calendar . It may explain why the Matronalia , a festival celebrated by married women in honor of Juno as

702-540: A colossal statue of Mars and a nude Venus. The Campus Martius continued to provide venues for equestrian events such as chariot racing during the Imperial period , but under the first emperor Augustus it underwent a major program of urban renewal, marked by monumental architecture. The Altar of Augustan Peace ( Ara Pacis Augustae ) was located there, as was the Obelisk of Montecitorio , imported from Egypt to form

819-484: A deity and those that were prescribed as the correct sacrificial offerings for the god. Wild animals might be viewed as already belonging to the god to whom they were sacred, or at least not owned by human beings and therefore not theirs to give . Since sacrificial meat was eaten at a banquet after the gods received their portion – mainly the entrails ( exta ) – it follows that the animals sacrificed were most often, though not always, domestic animals normally part of

936-466: A drinking horn ( rhyton ) aloft as if to offer a toast or libation; the other bears a shallow libation dish ( patera ). Compitalia shrines of the same period show Lares figures of the same type. Painted shrine-images of paired Lares show them in mirrored poses to the left and right of a central figure, understood to be an ancestral genius . Lares belonged within the "bounded physical domain" under their protection, and seem to have been as innumerable as

1053-703: A few observances in October, the beginning and end of the season for military campaigning and agriculture. Festivals with horse racing took place in the Campus Martius. Some festivals in March retained characteristics of new year festivals, since Martius was originally the first month of the Roman calendar . Mars was also honored by chariot races at the Robigalia and Consualia , though these festivals are not primarily dedicated to him. From 217 BCE onward, Mars

1170-481: A guarantor of treaties, Mars Quirinus is thus a god of peace: "When he rampages, Mars is called Gradivus , but when he's at peace Quirinus ." The deified Romulus was identified with Mars Quirinus. In the Capitoline Triad of Jupiter , Mars, and Quirinus , however, Mars and Quirinus were two separate deities, though not perhaps in origin. Each of the three had his own flamen (specialized priest), but

1287-480: A homeward-bound Roman could be described as returning ad Larem (to the Lar). Despite official bans on non-Christian cults from the late fourth century AD onwards, unofficial cults to Lares persisted until at least the early fifth century AD. Archaic Rome's Etruscan neighbours practiced domestic, ancestral, or family cults very similar to those offered by later Romans to their Lares. The word itself seems to derive from

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1404-568: A man was his Genius , that of a woman her Juno . In the Imperial era , the Genius of the Emperor was a focus of Imperial cult . An emperor might also adopt a major deity as his personal patron or tutelary, as Augustus did Apollo . Precedents for claiming the personal protection of a deity were established in the Republican era , when for instance the Roman dictator Sulla advertised

1521-518: A manner that resembles Ares, youthful, beardless, and often nude. In the Renaissance, Mars's nudity was thought to represent his lack of fear in facing danger. The spear is the instrument of Mars in the same way that Jupiter wields the lightning bolt, Neptune the trident, and Saturn the scythe or sickle. A relic or fetish called the spear of Mars was kept in a sacrarium at the Regia ,

1638-559: A more ancient equivalence of Lar and Greek hero , based on his gloss of a fourth-century BC Latin dedication to the Roman ancestor-hero Aeneas as Lare (Lar). No physical Lar images survive from before the Late Republican era, but literary references (such as Plautus' singular Lar , above) suggest that cult could be offered to a single Lar, and sometimes many more; in the case of the obscure Lares Grundules , perhaps 30. By

1755-425: A pregnant sow. By the early Imperial period, household shrines of any kind were known generically as lararia (s. lararium ) because they typically contained a Lares figure or two. Painted lararia from Pompeii show two Lares flanking a genius or ancestor-figure, who wears his toga in the priestly manner prescribed for sacrificers . Underneath this trio, a serpent, representing the fertility of fields or

1872-577: A prelude to war. His cult title is most often taken to mean "the Strider" or "the Marching God", from gradus , "step, march." The poet Statius addresses him as "the most implacable of the gods," but Valerius Maximus concludes his history by invoking Mars Gradivus as "author and support of the name 'Roman'": Gradivus is asked – along with Capitoline Jupiter and Vesta , as the keeper of Rome's perpetual flame – to "guard, preserve, and protect"

1989-491: A religious hub for social and family life. Individuals who failed to attend to the needs of their Lares and their families should expect neither reward nor good fortune for themselves. In Plautus' comedy Aulularia , the Lar of the miserly paterfamilias Euclio reveals a pot of gold long-hidden beneath his household hearth, denied to Euclio's father because of his stinginess towards his Lar. Euclio's own stinginess deprives him of

2106-479: A religiously sanctioned outlet for free speech and populist subversion. At some time between 85 and 82 BC, the Compitalia shrines were the focus of cult to the ill-fated popularist politician Marcus Marius Gratidianus during his praetorship. What happened – if anything – to the Compitalia festivals and games in the immediate aftermath of his public, ritualised murder by his opponents is not known but in 68 BC

2223-475: A ritual to be carried out in silva , in the woods, an uncultivated place that if not held within bounds can threaten to overtake the fields needed for crops. Mars's character as an agricultural god may derive solely from his role as a defender and protector, or may be inseparable from his warrior nature, as the leaping of his armed priests the Salii was meant to quicken the growth of crops. It appears that Mars

2340-465: A series of abstract qualities, each paired with the name of a deity. The influence of Greek mythology and its anthropomorphic gods may have caused Roman writers to treat these pairs as "marriages." The union of Venus and Mars held greater appeal for poets and philosophers, and the couple were a frequent subject of art. In Greek myth, the adultery of Ares and Aphrodite had been exposed to ridicule when her husband Hephaestus (whose Roman equivalent

2457-459: A short curly beard and moustache. His helmet is a plumed neo-Attic - type . He wears a military cloak ( paludamentum ) and a cuirass ornamented with a gorgoneion . Although the relief is somewhat damaged at this spot, he appears to hold a spear garlanded in laurel , symbolizing a peace that is won by military victory. The 1st-century statue of Mars found in the Forum of Nerva (pictured at top)

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2574-485: A way to secure peace , and was a father (pater) of the Roman people. In Rome's mythic genealogy and founding , Mars fathered Romulus and Remus through his rape of Rhea Silvia . His love affair with Venus symbolically reconciled two different traditions of Rome's founding; Venus was the divine mother of the hero Aeneas , celebrated as the Trojan refugee who "founded" Rome several generations before Romulus laid out

2691-466: A whole, their positioning in every vicus (ward) of Rome symbolically extends the ideology of a "refounded" Rome to every part of the city. The Compitalia reforms were ingenious and genuinely popular; they valued the traditions of the Roman masses and won their political, social and religious support. Probably in response to this, provincial cults to the Lares Augusti appear soon afterwards; in Ostia,

2808-448: Is a voice which comes to me and always forbids me to do something which I am going to do, but never commands me to do anything, and this is what stands in the way of my being a politician. The Greeks also thought deities guarded specific places: for instance, Athena was the patron goddess of the city of Athens . Tutelary deities who guard and preserve a place or a person are fundamental to ancient Roman religion . The tutelary deity of

2925-418: Is among the several gods invoked in the ritual of devotio , by means of which a general sacrificed himself and the lives of the enemy to secure a Roman victory. Father Mars is the regular recipient of the suovetaurilia , the sacrifice of a pig (sus) , ram (ovis) and bull (taurus) , or often a bull alone. To Mars Pater other epithets were sometimes appended, such as Mars Pater Victor ("Father Mars

3042-490: Is an essential characteristic of Mars. As an agricultural guardian, he directs his energies toward creating conditions that allow crops to grow, which may include warding off hostile forces of nature. The priesthood of the Arval Brothers called on Mars to drive off "rust" (lues) , with its double meaning of wheat fungus and the red oxides that affect metal, a threat to both iron farm implements and weaponry. In

3159-486: Is depicted as either bearded and mature, or young and clean-shaven. Even nude or seminude, he often wears a helmet or carries a spear as emblems of his warrior nature. Mars was among the deities to appear on the earliest Roman coinage in the late 4th and early 3rd century BCE. On the Altar of Peace (Ara Pacis) , built in the last years of the 1st century BCE, Mars is a mature man with a "handsome, classicizing " face, and

3276-500: Is patron of yogis and renunciants. City gods and goddesses include: Influenced by the religion of Islam , Indonesian people believe in jinn , particularly on the island of Java. Those jinn who adhere to the religion of Islam are generally benevolent, however, non-Muslim jinn are considered to be mischievous. Some of them guard graves. If a pilgrim approaching the grave has evil intentions, they would cause severe illness or even death. Spirits called shedim are mentioned twice in

3393-522: Is similar. In this guise, Mars is presented as the dignified ancestor of the Roman people. The panel of the Ara Pacis on which he appears would have faced the Campus Martius, reminding viewers that Mars was the god whose altar Numa established there, that is, the god of Rome's oldest civic and military institutions. Particularly in works of art influenced by the Greek tradition , Mars may be portrayed in

3510-471: Is the god of war and also an agricultural guardian, a combination characteristic of early Rome . He is the son of Jupiter and Juno , and was pre-eminent among the Roman army's military gods . Most of his festivals were held in March, the month named for him ( Latin Martius ), and in October, the months which traditionally began and ended the season for both military campaigning and farming. Under

3627-565: Is the patron of military personnel and police, while Mazu is the patron of fishermen and sailors. A similar concept in Christianity would be the patron saint example of archangels "Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, etc." or to a lesser extent, the guardian angel . In Hinduism , personal tutelary deities are known as ishta-devata , while family tutelary deities are known as Kuladevata . Gramadevata are guardian deities of villages or regions. Devas can also be seen as tutelary. Shiva

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3744-590: Is thought to depict the census, and may show Mars himself standing by the altar as the procession of victims advances. The main Temple of Mars ( Aedes Martis) in the Republican period also lay outside the sacred boundary and was devoted to the god's warrior aspect. It was built to fulfill a vow ( votum ) made by a Titus Quinctius in 388 BCE during the Gallic siege of Rome . The founding day ( dies natalis )

3861-479: Is used by later Roman authors with the general sense of a bogey or "evil spirit". Much later, Macrobius ( fl. AD 395–430) describes the woolen figurines hung at crossroad shrines during Compitalia as maniae , supposed as an ingenious substitution for child sacrifices to the Mater Larum , instituted by Rome's last monarch and suppressed by its first consul, L. Junius Brutus . Modern scholarship takes

3978-622: The Genius Augusti were inserted between the Lares of the Compitalia shrines. Whether or not Augustus replaced the public Lares with "his own" household Lares is questionable – the earliest reference to august Lares (58 BC, in provincial Cisalpine Gaul ) anticipates Octavian's adoption of Augustus as honorific by some thirty years – but when coupled with his new cult to the Genius Augusti , his donation of Lares Augusti statues for use at Compitalia shrines, and his association with

4095-612: The civitas of the Remi in Gaul adopted Apollo as its tutelary, and at the capital of the Remi (present-day Rheims ), the tutelary was Mars Camulus . Tutelary deities were also attached to sites of a much smaller scale, such as storerooms, crossroads, and granaries. Each Roman home had a set of protective deities: the Lar or Lares of the household or familia , whose shrine was a lararium ;

4212-410: The genius , functions as the personal deity or daimon of an individual from birth to death. Another form of personal tutelary spirit is the familiar spirit of European folklore. Socrates spoke of hearing the voice of his personal spirit or daimonion : You have often heard me speak of an oracle or sign which comes to me … . This sign I have had ever since I was a child. The sign

4329-1006: The genius loci or guardian spirit of the site, Hercules , Silvanus , Fortuna Conservatrix ("Fortuna the Preserver") and in the Greek East Aphrodite and Agathe Tyche . The Lares Compitales were the tutelary gods of a neighborhood ( vicus ) , each of which had a compitum (shrine) devoted to these. Their annual public festival was the Compitalia . During the Republic, the cult of local or neighborhood tutelaries sometimes became rallying points for political and social unrest. Chinese folk religion , both past and present, includes myriad tutelary deities. Exceptional individuals, highly cultivated sages, and prominent ancestors can be deified and honored after death. Lord Guan

4446-689: The suovetaurilia , a triple offering of a pig (sus) , ram (ovis) and bull (taurus) , and the October Horse , the only horse sacrifice known to have been carried out in ancient Rome and a rare instance of a victim the Romans considered inedible. The earliest center in Rome for cultivating Mars as a deity was the Altar of Mars ( Ara Martis) in the Campus Martius ("Field of Mars") outside

4563-482: The Etruscan lar , lars , or larth , meaning 'lord'. Ancient Greek and Roman authors offer ' heroes ' and ' daimones ' as translations of Lares ; the early Roman playwright Plautus ( circa 254–184 BC) employs a Lar Familiaris as a guardian of treasure on behalf of a family, as a plot equivalent to the Greek playwright Menander 's use of a heroon (as an ancestral hero-shrine). Weinstock proposes

4680-516: The Hebrew Bible . In both of these instances ( Psalm 106 :37 and Deuteronomy 32:17) the shedim are associated with child sacrifice or animal sacrifice . The term " shedim " is believed by some to be a loan-word from the Akkadian shedu , which referred to a spirit which could be either protective or malevolent. In Korean shamanism , jangseung and sotdae were placed at

4797-486: The Latin town of Lanuvium and the Etruscan city of Veii , and was often housed in an especially grand temple on the arx (citadel) or other prominent or central location. The tutelary deity of Praeneste was Fortuna , whose oracle was renowned. The Roman ritual of evocatio was premised on the belief that a town could be made vulnerable to military defeat if the power of its tutelary deity were diverted outside

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4914-470: The Penates who guarded the storeroom (penus) of the innermost part of the house; Vesta , whose sacred site in each house was the hearth; and the Genius of the paterfamilias , the head of household. The poet Martial lists the tutelary deities who watch over various aspects of his farm. The architecture of a granary ( horreum ) featured niches for images of the tutelary deities, who might include

5031-399: The digestive or female reproductive systems ; those who sought to harvest it were advised to do so by night, lest the woodpecker jab out their eyes. The picus Martius seems to have been a particular species, but authorities differ on which one: perhaps Picus viridis or Dryocopus martius . The woodpecker was revered by the Latin peoples , who abstained from eating its flesh. It

5148-554: The goddess Victory as his tutelary by holding public games ( ludi ) in her honor. Each town or city had one or more tutelary deities, whose protection was considered particularly vital in time of war and siege. Rome itself was protected by a goddess whose name was to be kept ritually secret on pain of death (for a supposed case, see Quintus Valerius Soranus ). The Capitoline Triad of Juno , Jupiter , and Minerva were also tutelaries of Rome. The Italic towns had their own tutelary deities. Juno often had this function, as at

5265-480: The influence of Greek culture , Mars was identified with the Greek god Ares , whose myths were reinterpreted in Roman literature and art under the name of Mars. The character and dignity of Mars differs in fundamental ways from that of his Greek counterpart, who is often treated with contempt and revulsion in Greek literature . Mars's altar in the Campus Martius , the area of Rome that took its name from him,

5382-456: The picus who served as their guide animal during a ritual migration ( ver sacrum ) undertaken as a rite of Mars. In the territory of the Aequi , another Italic people, Mars had an oracle of great antiquity where the prophecies were supposed to be spoken by a woodpecker perched on a wooden column. Mars's association with the wolf is familiar from what may be the most famous of Roman myths ,

5499-464: The state of Rome , the peace, and the princeps (the emperor Tiberius at the time). A source from Late Antiquity says that the wife of Gradivus was Nereia , the daughter of Nereus , and that he loved her passionately. Mars Quirinus was the protector of the Quirites ("citizens" or "civilians") as divided into curiae (citizen assemblies), whose oaths were required to make a treaty. As

5616-472: The surviving text of their hymn , the Arval Brothers invoked Mars as ferus , "savage" or "feral" like a wild animal. Mars's potential for savagery is expressed in his obscure connections to the wild woodlands, and he may even have originated as a god of the wild, beyond the boundaries set by humans, and thus a force to be propitiated . In his book on farming , Cato invokes Mars Silvanus for

5733-601: The Archaic Triad, with Vofionus equivalent to Quirinus. Tables I and VI describe a complex ritual that took place at the three gates of the city. After the auspices were taken, two groups of three victims were sacrificed at each gate. Mars Grabovius received three oxen. "Father Mars" or "Mars the Father" is the form in which the god is invoked in the agricultural prayer of Cato, and he appears with this title in several other literary texts and inscriptions. Mars Pater

5850-515: The Arval rites to the Mother of the Lares as typically chthonic , and the goddess herself as a dark or terrible aspect of the earth-mother, Tellus . Ovid supplies or elaborates an origin-myth for the Mater Larum as a once-loquacious nymph , Lara , whose tongue is cut out as punishment for her betrayal of Jupiter's secret amours. Lara thus becomes Muta (the speechless one). Mercury leads her to

5967-453: The Lares and lararium of the sophisticated, unpretentious and artistically restrained House of Menander were associated with its servant quarters and adjacent agricultural estate. Its statuary was unsophisticated, "rustic" and probably of ancient type or make. The placing of Lares in the public or semi-public parts of a house, such as its atrium , enrolled them in the more outward, theatrical functions of household religion. The House of

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6084-517: The Lares at the House of Menander suggest that the paterfamilias delegated this religious task to his villicus (bailiff). Care and cult attendance to domestic Lares could include offerings of spelt wheat and grain-garlands, honey cakes and honeycombs, grapes and first fruits, wine, and incense. They could be served at any time and not always by intention; in addition to the formal offerings that seem to have been their due, any food that fell to

6201-411: The Lares to the earth they are, according to Taylor, spirits of the departed. Plutarch offers a legend of Servius Tullius, sixth king of Rome, credited with the founding of the Lares' public festival, Compitalia. Servius' virginal slave mother-to-be is impregnated by a phallus-apparition arising from the hearth, or some other divine being held to be a major deity or ancestor-hero by some, a Lar by others:

6318-590: The Late Republican and early Imperial eras, the priestly records of the Arval Brethren and the speculative commentaries of a very small number of literate Romans attest to a Mother of the Lares (Mater Larum). Her children are invoked by the obscure, fragmentary opening to the Arval Hymn ( Carmen Arvale ); enos Lases iuvate ('Help us, Lares'). She is named as Mania by Varro (116–27 BC), who believes her an originally Sabine deity. The same name

6435-514: The Republican era, its shrines appear to have been funded locally, probably by subscription among the plebeians, freedmen and slaves of the vici . Their support through private benefaction is nowhere attested, and official attitudes to the Republican Compitalia seem equivocal at best: The Compitalia games ( Ludi Compitalicii ) included popular theatrical religious performances of raucously subversive flavour: Compitalia thus offered

6552-402: The Roman diet. Gods often received castrated male animals as sacrifices, and the goddesses female victims ; Mars, however, regularly received intact males. Mars did receive oxen under a few of his cult titles, such as Mars Grabovius , but the usual offering was the bull, singly, in multiples, or in combination with other animals. The two most distinctive animal sacrifices made to Mars were

6669-670: The Vettii in Pompeii had two lararia ; one was positioned out of public view, and was probably used in private household rites. The other was placed boldly front-of-house, among a riot of Greek-inspired mythological wall-paintings and the assorted statuary of patron divinities. Its positioning in a relatively public part of the domus would have provided a backdrop for the probably interminable salutatio (formal greeting) between its upwardly mobile owners and their strings of clients and "an assorted group of unattached persons who made

6786-474: The Victorious"), to whom the Roman army sacrificed a bull on March 1. Although pater and mater were fairly common as honorifics for a deity, any special claim for Mars as father of the Roman people lies in the mythic genealogy that makes him the divine father of Romulus and Remus . In the section of his farming book that offers recipes and medical preparations, Cato describes a votum to promote

6903-419: The adulterous implications of their union, and take pleasure in the good-looking couple attended by Cupid or multiple Loves (amores) . Some scenes may imply marriage, and the relationship was romanticized in funerary or domestic art in which husbands and wives had themselves portrayed as the passionate divine couple. The uniting of deities representing Love and War lent itself to allegory , especially since

7020-505: 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,

7137-571: The city in a procession. In the 1st century AD, Quintilian remarks that the language of the Salian hymn was so archaic that it was no longer fully understood. In Classical Roman religion , Mars was invoked under several titles, and the first Roman emperor Augustus thoroughly integrated Mars into Imperial cult . The 4th-century Latin historian Ammianus Marcellinus treats Mars as one of several classical Roman deities who remained "cultic realities" up to his own time. Mars, and specifically Mars Ultor,

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7254-483: The city walls. The word Mārs (genitive Mārtis ), which in Old Latin and poetic usage also appears as Māvors ( Māvortis ), is cognate with Oscan Māmers ( Māmertos ). The oldest recorded Latin form, Mamart-, is likely of foreign origin . It has been explained as deriving from Maris , the name of an Etruscan child-god , though this is not universally agreed upon. Scholars have varying views on whether

7371-463: The city, perhaps by the offer of superior cult at Rome. The depiction of some goddesses such as the Magna Mater (Great Mother, or Cybele ) as " tower-crowned " represents their capacity to preserve the city. A town in the provinces might adopt a deity from within the Roman religious sphere to serve as its guardian, or syncretize its own tutelary with such; for instance, a community within

7488-524: The comic playwright Plautus has a reference to Mars greeting Nerio, his wife. A source from late antiquity says that Mars and Neriene were celebrated together at a festival held on March 23. In the later Roman Empire , Neriene came to be identified with Minerva . Nerio probably originates as a divine personification of Mars's power, as such abstractions in Latin are generally feminine . Her name appears with that of Mars in an archaic prayer invoking

7605-415: The community Lares through the shared honorific makes the reformed Compitalia an unmistakable, local, "street-level" aspect of cult to living emperors . The iconography of these shrines celebrates their sponsor's personal qualities and achievements and evokes a real or re-invented continuity of practice from ancient times. Some examples are sophisticated, others crude and virtually rustic in style; taken as

7722-591: The company of wolves. At the Battle of Sentinum in 295 BCE, the appearance of the wolf of Mars (Martius lupus) was a sign that Roman victory was to come. In Roman Gaul , the goose was associated with the Celtic forms of Mars , and archaeologists have found geese buried alongside warriors in graves. The goose was considered a bellicose animal because it is easily provoked to aggression. Ancient Greek and Roman religion distinguished between animals that were sacred to

7839-592: 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. Traditional Roman households owned at least one protective Lares-figure, housed in a shrine along with the images of the household's penates , genius image and any other favoured deities. Their statues were placed at table during family meals and banquets. They were divine witnesses at important family occasions, such as marriages, births, and adoptions, and their shrines provided

7956-460: The coupling of the divine with the servile, wherein those deprived by legal or birth-status of a personal gens could serve, and be served by, the cults attached to Compitalia and Larentalia. Mommsen's contention that Lares were originally field deities is not incompatible with their role as ancestors and guardians. A rural familia relied on the productivity of their estate and its soil: around the early 2nd century BC, Plautus's Lar Familiaris protects

8073-469: The district. These Lares Compitalicii were celebrated at the Compitalia festival (from the Latin compitum , a crossroad) just after the Saturnalia that closed the old year. In the "solemn and sumptuous" rites of Compitalia, a pig was led in celebratory procession through the streets of the vicus , then sacrificed to the Lares at their Compitalia shrine. Cult offerings to these Lares were much

8190-518: The early Imperial era, they had become paired divinities, probably through the influences of Greek religion – in particular, the heroic twin Dioscuri – and the iconography of Rome's semidivine founder-twins, Romulus and Remus . Lares are represented as two small, youthful, lively male figures clad in short, rustic, girdled tunics – made of dogskin, according to Plutarch. They take a dancer's attitude, tiptoed or lightly balanced on one leg. One arm raises

8307-642: The edge of villages to frighten off demons. They were also worshiped as deities. Seonangshin is the patron deity of the village in Korean tradition and was believed to embody the Seonangdang . In Meitei mythology and religion ( Sanamahism ) of Manipur , there are various types of tutelary deities, among which Lam Lais are the most predominant ones. In Philippine animism , Diwata or Lambana are deities or spirits that inhabit sacred places like mountains and mounds and serve as guardians. In Shinto ,

8424-476: The emperors, each beginning of the year, each beginning of the month." Yet their type proved remarkably persistent. In the early 5th century AD, after the official suppression of non-Christian cults, Rutilius Namatianus could write of a famine-stricken district whose inhabitants had no choice but to "abandon their Lares" (thus, to desert their rat-infested houses). Tutelary deity#Ancient Rome In late Greek and Roman religion , one type of tutelary deity,

8541-543: The end of Julian's reign. As represented by Ammianus, Julian swore never to make sacrifice to Mars again—a vow kept with his death a month later. Gradivus was one of the gods by whom a general or soldiers might swear an oath to be valorous in battle. His temple outside the Porta Capena was where armies gathered. The archaic priesthood of Mars Gradivus was the Salii , the "leaping priests" who danced ritually in armor as

8658-402: The floor during house banquets was theirs. On important occasions, wealthier households may have offered their own Lares a pig. A single source describes Romulus' provision of an altar and sacrifice to Lares Grundules ('grunting lares') after an unusually large farrowing of 30 piglets. The circumstances of this offering are otherwise unknown, Taylor conjectures the sacrifice of a pig, possibly

8775-514: The former residence of the Kings of Rome . The spear was said to move, tremble or vibrate at impending war or other danger to the state, as was reported to occur before the assassination of Julius Caesar . When Mars is pictured as a peace-bringer, his spear is wreathed with laurel or other vegetation, as on the Ara Pacis or a coin of Aemilianus . The high priest of Mars in Roman public religion

8892-431: The frightful larvae . The ubiquity of Lares seems to have offered considerable restraints on Christian participation in Roman public life. In the 3rd century AD, Tertullian remarks the inevitable presence of Lares in pagan households as good reason to forbid marriage between pagan men and Christian women: the latter would be "tormented by the vapor of incense each time the demons are honored, each solemn festivity in honor of

9009-457: The fringes of the Feralia : an old woman sews up a fish-head, smears it with pitch then pierces and roasts it to bind hostile tongues to silence: she thus invokes Dea Tacita. If, as Ovid proposes, the lemures are an unsatiated, malevolent and wandering form of Lares, then they and their mother also find their way into Lemuralia , when the hungry Lemures gather in Roman houses and claim cult from

9126-639: The functions of the Flamen Martialis and Flamen Quirinalis are hard to distinguish. Mars is invoked as Grabovius in the Iguvine Tablets , bronze tablets written in Umbrian that record ritual protocols for carrying out public ceremonies on behalf of the city and community of Iguvium . The same title is given to Jupiter and to the Umbrian deity Vofionus. This triad has been compared to

9243-503: The games at least were suppressed as "disorderly". As princeps , Augustus reformed Compitalia and subdivided the vici . From 7 BC a Lares' festival on 1 May was dedicated to the Lares Augusti and a new celebration of the Genius Augusti was held on 1 August, the inaugural day for Roman magistracies and personally auspicious for Augustus as the anniversary of his victory at Actium . Statues representing

9360-435: The gold until he sees the error of his ways; then, he uses it to give his virtuous daughter the dowry she deserves, and all is well. Responsibility for household cult and the behaviour of family members ultimately fell to the family head, the paterfamilias , but he could, and indeed should on certain occasions properly delegate the cult and care of his Lares to other family members, especially his servants. The positioning of

9477-614: The heavy-handed Cato recommended liberality during the festival". Dionysius' explains it thus: ... the heroes [Lares] looked kindly on the service of slaves. And [the Romans] still observe the ancient custom in connection with those sacrifices propitiating the heroes by the ministry of their servants and during these days removing every badge of their servitude, in order that the slaves, being softened by this instance of humanity, which has something great and solemn about it, may make themselves more agreeable to their masters and be less sensible of

9594-451: The house, and familia as he has always done, and safeguards their secrets. The little mythography that belongs to the Lares seems inventive and poetic. With no traditional, systematic theology to limit their development, Lares became a single but usefully nebulous type, with many functions. In Cicero's day, one's possession of domestic Lares laid moral claim of ownership and belonging to one's domicile. Festus identifies them as "gods of

9711-514: The latter seems to have been a strong popular tradition. During the Augustan era, Dionysius of Halicarnassus reports Servius' fathering by a Lar and his pious founding of Compitalia as common knowledge, and the Lar as equivalent to the Greek hero ; semi-divine, ancestral and protective of place. These stories connect the Lar to the hearth, the underworld, generative powers (however embodied), nourishment, forms of divine or semi-divine ancestry and

9828-574: The legionary standards lost to the Parthians were recovered, they were housed in the new temple. The date of the temple's dedication on May 12 was aligned with the heliacal setting of the constellation Scorpio , the sign of war. The date continued to be marked with circus games as late as the mid-4th century AD. A large statue of Mars was part of the short-lived Arch of Nero , which was built in 62 CE but dismantled after Nero 's suicide and disgrace ( damnatio memoriae ) . In Roman art , Mars

9945-402: The living. The paterfamilias must redeem himself and his family with the offer of midnight libations of spring-water, and black beans spat onto the floor. Any lemures dissatisfied with these offerings are scared away by the loud clashing of bronze pots. Taylor notes the chthonic character of offerings made to fall – or deliberately expelled – towards the earth. If their mother's nature connects

10062-416: The lovers were the parents of Concordia . The Renaissance philosopher Marsilio Ficino notes that "only Venus dominates Mars, and he never dominates her". In ancient Roman and Renaissance art, Mars is often shown disarmed and relaxed, or even sleeping, but the extramarital nature of their affair can also suggest that this peace is impermanent. Virility as a kind of life force (vis) or virtue (virtus)

10179-463: The malicious, vagrant lemures . In the 4th century AD the Christian polemicist Arnobius , claiming among others Varro (116–27 BC) as his source, describes them as once-human spirits of the underworld, therefore ancestral manes -ghosts; but also as "gods of the air", or the upper world. He also – perhaps uniquely in the literature but still claiming Varro's authority – categorises them with

10296-413: The night before her wedding, a Roman girl surrendered her dolls, soft balls, and breastbands to her family Lares, as a sign she had come of age. On the day of her marriage, she transferred her allegiance to her husband's neighbourhood Lares ( Lares Compitalici ) by paying them a copper coin en route to her new home. She paid another to her new domestic Lares, and one to her husband. If the marriage made her

10413-519: 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

10530-535: The pointer ( gnomon ) of the Solarium Augusti , a giant sundial . With its public gardens, the Campus became one of the most attractive places in the city to visit. Augustus made the centrepiece of his new forum a large Temple to Mars Ultor, a manifestation of Mars he cultivated as the avenger (ultor) of the murder of Julius Caesar and of the military disaster suffered at the Battle of Carrhae . When

10647-448: The principle of generative power, winds towards an altar. The essentials of sacrifice are depicted around and about; bowl and knife, incense box, libation vessels and parts of sacrificial animals. In households of modest means, small Lar statuettes were set in wall-niches, sometimes merely a tile-support projecting from a painted background. In wealthier households, they tend to be found in servant's quarters and working areas. At Pompeii,

10764-424: The rounds of salutationes to assure their political and economic security". Domestic Lararia were also used as a sacred, protective depository for commonplace symbols of family change and continuity. In his coming-of-age, a boy gave his personal amulet ( bulla ) to his Lares before he put on his manly toga ( toga virilis ). Once his first beard had been ritually cut off, it was placed in their keeping. On

10881-467: The sacred boundary of Rome ( pomerium ) . The Romans thought that this altar had been established by the semi-legendary Numa Pompilius , the peace-loving successor of Romulus. According to Roman tradition, the Campus Martius had been consecrated to Mars by their ancestors to serve as horse pasturage and an equestrian training ground for youths. During the Roman Republic (509–27 BCE), the Campus

10998-419: The same as those to domestic Lares; in the late Republican era, Dionysius of Halicarnassus describes the contribution of a honey-cake from each household as ancient tradition. The Compitalia itself was explained as an invention of Rome's sixth king, Servius Tullius , whose servile origins and favour towards plebeians and slaves had antagonised Rome's ruling Patrician caste and ultimately caused his downfall; he

11115-419: The severity of their condition. While the supervision of the vici and their religious affairs may have been charged to the Roman elite who occupied most magistracies and priesthoods, management of the day-to-day affairs and public amenities of neighbourhoods – including their religious festivals – was the responsibility of freedmen and their slave-assistants. The Compitalia was an official festival but during

11232-426: The son of Zeus and Hera , Mars is usually considered to be the son of Jupiter and Juno . In Ovid 's version of Mars' origin, he was the son of Juno alone. Jupiter had usurped the accepted function of women as mothers when he gave birth to Minerva directly from his forehead (or mind). Juno sought the advice of the goddess Flora on how to do the same. Flora obtained a magic flower (Latin flos , plural flores ,

11349-639: The spirits, or kami , which give life to human bodies come from nature and return to it after death. Ancestors are therefore themselves tutelaries to be worshiped. Some tutelary deities are known to exist in Slavic Europe, a more prominent example being that of the Leshy . In Vietnamese folk religion , Thành hoàng are gods who protect and bring good things to the village. Mars (mythology) In ancient Roman religion and mythology , Mars ( Latin : Mārs , pronounced [maːrs] )

11466-675: The state, and its military were all under the protection of their particular Lar or Lares. Those who protected local neighbourhoods ( vici ) were housed in the crossroad shrines ( Compitalia ), which served as a focus for the religious, social, and political lives of their local, overwhelmingly plebeian communities. Their cult officials included freedmen and slaves, otherwise excluded by status or property qualifications from most administrative and religious offices. Compared to Rome's major deities , Lares had limited scope and potency, but archaeological and literary evidence attests to their central role in Roman identity and religious life. By analogy,

11583-478: The story of how a she-wolf (lupa) suckled his infant sons when they were exposed by order of King Amulius , who feared them because he had usurped the throne from their grandfather, Numitor . The woodpecker also brought nourishment to the twins. The wolf appears elsewhere in Roman art and literature in masculine form as the animal of Mars. A statue group that stood along the Appian Way showed Mars in

11700-407: The story, he emphasizes that Mars was connected to plant life and was not alienated from female nurture. The consort of Mars was Nerio or Neriene, "Valor." She represents the vital force (vis) , power (potentia) and majesty (maiestas) of Mars. Her name was regarded as Sabine in origin and is equivalent to Latin virtus , "manly virtue" (from vir , "man"). In the early 3rd century BCE,

11817-470: The two gods are related, and if so how. Latin adjectives from the name of Mars are martius and martialis , from which derive English "martial" (as in "martial arts" or " martial law ") and personal names such as "Marcus", "Mark" and "Martin". Mars may ultimately be a thematic reflex of the Proto-Indo-European god Perkwunos , having originally a thunderer character. Like Ares who was

11934-479: The underworld abode of the dead ( ad Manes ); in this place of silence she is Dea Tacita ('the silent one'). En route, he impregnates her. She gives birth to twin boys as silent or speechless as she. In this context, the Lares can be understood as " manes of silence" ( taciti manes ). Ovid's poetic myth appears to draw on remnants of ancient rites to the Mater Larum, surviving as folk-cult among women at

12051-421: The underworld" ( di inferi ). To Flaccus , they are ancestral genii (s. genius ). Apuleius considers them benevolent ancestral spirits; they belong both to the underworld and to particular places of the human world. To him, this distinguishes them from the divine and eternal genius which inhabits, protects and inspires living men: and having specific physical domains, they cannot be connected with

12168-557: The vici and their religious affairs were now the responsibility of official magistri vici , usually freedmen, assisted by ministri vici who were usually slaves. A dedication of 2 BC to the Augustan Lares lists four slaves as shrine-officials of their vicus . Given their slave status, their powers are debatable but they clearly constitute an official body. Their inscribed names, and those of their owners, are contained within an oak-wreath cartouche. The oak-leaf chaplet

12285-425: The vici created new opportunities for his clients. It repaid honour with honours, which for the plebs meant offices, priesthood, and the respect of their peers; at least for some. In Petronius' Satyricon , a magistrate's lictor bangs on Trimalchio's door; it causes a fearful stir but in comes Habinnas, one of Augustus' new priests, a stonemason by trade; dressed up in his regalia, perfumed and completely drunk. From

12402-448: The woodpecker (picus) is sacred to Mars because "it is a courageous and spirited bird and has a beak so strong that it can overturn oaks by pecking them until it has reached the inmost part of the tree." As the beak of the picus Martius contained the god's power to ward off harm, it was carried as a magic charm to prevent bee stings and leech bites. The bird of Mars also guarded a woodland herb ( paeonia ) used for treatment of

12519-399: Was Vulcan ) caught them in the act by means of a magical snare. Although not originally part of the Roman tradition, in 217 BCE Venus and Mars were presented as a complementary pair in the lectisternium , a public banquet at which images of twelve major gods of the Roman state were presented on couches as if present and participating. Scenes of Venus and Mars in Roman art often ignore

12636-504: Was a largely open expanse. No temple was built at the altar, but from 193 BCE a covered walkway connected it to the Porta Fontinalis , near the office and archives of the Roman censors . Newly elected censors placed their curule chairs by the altar, and when they had finished conducting the census, the citizens were collectively purified with a suovetaurilia there. A frieze from the so-called "Altar" of Domitius Ahenobarbus

12753-530: Was among the gods honored at the lectisternium , a banquet given for deities who were present as images. Roman hymns ( carmina ) are rarely preserved, but Mars is invoked in two. The Arval Brothers , or "Brothers of the Fields", chanted a hymn to Mars while performing their three-step dance. The Carmen Saliare was sung by Mars's priests the Salii while they moved twelve sacred shields ( ancilia ) throughout

12870-456: Was among the gods who received sacrifices from Julian , the only emperor to reject Christianity after the conversion of Constantine I . In 363 AD, in preparation for the Siege of Ctesiphon , Julian sacrificed ten "very fine" bulls to Mars Ultor. The tenth bull violated ritual protocol by attempting to break free, and when killed and examined , produced ill omens , among the many that were read at

12987-543: Was commemorated on June 1, and the temple is attested by several inscriptions and literary sources. The sculpture group of Mars and the wolves was displayed there. Soldiers sometimes assembled at the temple before heading off to war, and it was the point of departure for a major parade of Roman cavalry held annually on July 15. A temple to Mars in the Circus Flaminius was built around 133 BCE, funded by Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus from war booty. It housed

13104-504: Was one of the most important birds in Roman and Italic augury , the practice of reading the will of the gods through watching the sky for signs. The mythological figure named Picus had powers of augury that he retained when he was transformed into a woodpecker; in one tradition, Picus was the son of Mars. The Umbrian cognate peiqu also means "woodpecker", and the Italic Picenes were supposed to have derived their name from

13221-412: Was originally a thunderer or storm deity, which explains some of his mixed traits in regards to fertility. This role was later taken in the Roman pantheon by several other gods, such as Summanus or Jupiter . The wild animals most sacred to Mars were the woodpecker and the wolf, which in the natural lore of the Romans were said always to inhabit the same foothills and woodlands. Plutarch notes that

13338-540: Was said to have been fathered by a Lar or some other divine being, on a royal slave-girl. So although the Lares Compitalicii were held to protect all the community, regardless of social class, their festival had a distinctly plebeian ambiance, and a measure of Saturnalia's reversal of the status quo. Tradition required that the Lares Compitalicii be served by men of very low legal and social status, not merely plebeians, but freedmen and slaves, to whom "even

13455-453: Was supposed to have been dedicated by Numa , the peace-loving semi-legendary second king of Rome ; in Republican times it was a focus of electoral activities. Augustus shifted the focus of Mars' cult to within the pomerium (Rome's ritual boundary), and built a temple to Mars Ultor as a key religious feature of his new forum . Unlike Ares, who was viewed primarily as a destructive and destabilizing force, Mars represented military power as

13572-472: Was the Flamen Martialis , who was one of the three major priests in the fifteen-member college of flamens . Mars was also served by the Salii , a twelve-member priesthood of patrician youths who dressed as archaic warriors and danced in procession around the city in March. Both priesthoods extend to the earliest periods of Roman history, and patrician birth was required. The festivals of Mars cluster in his namesake month of March (Latin: Martius ), with

13689-416: Was voted to Augustus as "saviour" of Rome; He was symbolic pater ('father') of the Roman state, and though his genius was owed cult by his extended family, its offer seems to have been entirely voluntary. Hardly any of the reformed Compital shrines show evidence of cult to the emperor's genius . Augustus acted with the political acumen of any responsible patronus ('patron'); his subdivision of

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