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80-707: Maia is the daughter of Atlas and Pleione the Oceanid , and is the oldest of the seven Pleiades. They were born on Mount Cyllene in Arcadia , and are sometimes called mountain nymphs , oreads ; Simonides of Ceos sang of "mountain Maia" (Maiados oureias) "of the lovely black eyes." Because they were daughters of Atlas, they were also called the Atlantides. According to the Homeric Hymn to Hermes , Zeus, in

160-683: 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;

240-408: 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

320-589: A homonym independent of the Greek Maia, whose myths she absorbed through the Hellenization of Latin literature and culture . In an archaic Roman prayer, Maia appears as an attribute of Vulcan , in an invocational list of male deities paired with female abstractions representing some aspect of their functionality. She was explicitly identified with Earth ( Terra , the Roman counterpart of Gaia) and

400-465: A doublet of Coeus , the embodiment of the celestial axis around which the heavens revolve. A common misconception today is that Atlas was forced to hold the Earth on his shoulders, but Classical art shows Atlas holding the celestial spheres , not the terrestrial globe ; the solidity of the marble globe borne by the renowned Farnese Atlas may have aided the conflation, reinforced in the 16th century by

480-466: 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

560-512: 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,

640-552: A great number of goddesses into one original "Terra". The association with Juno, whose Etruscan counterpart was Uni , is suggested again by the inscription Uni Mae on the Piacenza Liver . The month of May (Latin Maius ) was named for Maia, though ancient etymologists also connected it to the maiores "ancestors", again from the adjective maius, maior , meaning those who are "greater" in terms of generational precedence. On

720-481: 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

800-508: 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

880-528: A mountain range, he flies over Aethiopia , the blood of Medusa's head giving rise to Libyan snakes. By the time of the Roman Empire , the habit of associating Atlas's home to a chain of mountains, the Atlas Mountains , which were near Mauretania and Numidia , was firmly entrenched. The identifying name Aril is inscribed on two 5th-century BC Etruscan bronze items: a mirror from Vulci and

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960-399: 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

1040-492: 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

1120-479: 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

1200-658: A ring from an unknown site. Both objects depict the encounter with Atlas of Hercle —the Etruscan Heracles —identified by the inscription; they represent rare instances where a figure from Greek mythology was imported into Etruscan mythology , but the name was not. The Etruscan name Aril is etymologically independent. Sources describe Atlas as the father, by different goddesses, of numerous children, mostly daughters. Some of these are assigned conflicting or overlapping identities or parentage in different sources. Hyginus , in his Fabulae , adds an older Atlas who

1280-559: A stellar formation, the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor , the Great and Little Bear. Her name is related to μαῖα ( maia ), an honorific term for older women related to μήτηρ ( mētēr ) 'mother', also meaning " midwife " in Greek. In ancient Roman religion and myth , Maia embodied the concept of growth, as her name was thought to be related to the comparative adjective maius, maior "larger, greater". Originally, she may have been

1360-574: A tortoise shell. Maia refused to believe Apollo when he claimed that Hermes was the thief, and Zeus then sided with Apollo. Finally, Apollo exchanged the cattle for the lyre, which became one of his identifying attributes. Although the Homeric Hymn has Maia as Hermes' caretaker and guardian, in Sophocles 's now lost satyr play Ichneutae , Maia entrusted the infant Hermes to Cyllene (the local mountain goddess) to nurse and raise, and thus it

1440-467: 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,

1520-554: Is durus , "hard, enduring", which suggested to George Doig that Virgil was aware of the Greek τλῆναι "to endure"; Doig offers the further possibility that Virgil was aware of Strabo 's remark that the native North African name for this mountain was Douris . Since the Atlas Mountains rise in the region inhabited by Berbers , it has been suggested that the name might be taken from one of the Berber languages , specifically from

1600-483: Is a Titan condemned to hold up the heavens or sky for eternity after the Titanomachy . Atlas also plays a role in the myths of two of the greatest Greek heroes : Heracles ( Hercules in Roman mythology ) and Perseus . According to the ancient Greek poet Hesiod , Atlas stood at the ends of the earth in the extreme west . Later, he became commonly identified with the Atlas Mountains in northwest Africa and

1680-455: Is a son of Zeus. Atlas, fearful of a prophecy that warned of a son of Zeus stealing his golden apples from his orchard, refuses Perseus hospitality. In this account, Atlas is turned not just into stone by Perseus, but an entire mountain range: Atlas's head the peak, his shoulders ridges and his hair woods. The prophecy did not relate to Perseus stealing the golden apples but to Heracles , another son of Zeus, and Perseus's great-grandson. One of

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1760-455: Is her that the satyrs and Apollo confront when looking for the god's missing cattle. Maia also raised the infant Arcas , the child of Callisto with Zeus. Wronged by the love affair, Zeus' wife Hera in a jealous rage had transformed Callisto into a bear. Arcas is the eponym of Arcadia , where Maia was born. The story of Callisto and Arcas, like that of the Pleiades, is an aition for

1840-547: Is the son of Aether and Gaia . Atlas' best-known cultural association is in cartography . The first publisher to associate the Titan Atlas with a group of maps was the print-seller Antonio Lafreri , who included a depiction of the Titan on the engraved titlepage he applied to his ad hoc assemblages of maps, Tavole Moderne di Geografia de la Maggior parte del Mondo di Diversi Autori (1572). However, Lafreri did not use

1920-531: 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 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

2000-481: 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

2080-623: 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

2160-485: 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

2240-511: The Kalends of May. On May 15, the Ides , Mercury was honored as a patron of merchants and increaser of profit (through an etymological connection with merx, merces , "goods, merchandise"), another possible connection with Maia his mother as a goddess who promoted growth. Atlas (mythology) In Greek mythology , Atlas ( / ˈ æ t l ə s / ; ‹See Tfd› Greek : Ἄτλας , Átlās )

2320-670: The Twelve Labours of the hero Heracles was to fetch some of the golden apples that grow in Hera 's garden, tended by Atlas's reputed daughters, the Hesperides (which were also called the Atlantides), and guarded by the dragon Ladon . Heracles went to Atlas and offered to hold up the heavens while Atlas got the apples from his daughters. Upon his return with the apples, however, Atlas attempted to trick Heracles into carrying

2400-630: The personality of someone whose childhood was characterized by excessive responsibilities . Ayn Rand's political dystopian novel Atlas Shrugged (1957) references the popular misconception of Atlas holding up the entire world on his back by comparing the capitalist and intellectual class as being "modern Atlases" who hold the modern world up at great expense to themselves. Lares 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

2480-515: 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

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2560-568: The Good Goddess ( Bona Dea ) in at least one tradition. Her identity became theologically intertwined also with the goddesses Fauna , Ops , Juno , Carna , and the Magna Mater ("Great Goddess", referring to the Roman form of Cybele but also a cult title for Maia), as discussed at some length by the late antiquarian writer Macrobius . This treatment was probably influenced by the 1st-century BC scholar Varro , who tended to resolve

2640-455: 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

2720-519: 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

2800-413: 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:

2880-591: 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

2960-574: 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

3040-671: 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

3120-417: 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

3200-592: 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

3280-460: 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

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3360-403: The dead of night, secretly made love to Maia, who avoided the company of the gods, in a cave of Cyllene. She became pregnant with Hermes . After giving birth to the baby, Maia wrapped him in blankets and went to sleep. The rapidly maturing infant Hermes crawled away to Thessaly , where, by nightfall of his first day, he stole some of his half-brother Apollo 's cattle and invented the lyre from

3440-511: The developing usage of atlas to describe a corpus of terrestrial maps . The Greek poet Polyidus c.  398 BC tells a tale of Atlas, then a shepherd, encountering Perseus who turned him to stone . Ovid later gives a more detailed account of the incident, combining it with the myth of Heracles. In this account Atlas is not a shepherd, but a king. According to Ovid, Perseus arrives in Atlas's Kingdom and asks for shelter, declaring he

3520-521: 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

3600-519: 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

3680-717: The extreme west of the world since Hesiod 's Theogony . Diodorus and Palaephatus mention that the Gorgons lived in the Gorgades, islands in the Aethiopian Sea . The main island was called Cerna, and modern-day arguments have been advanced that these islands may correspond to Cape Verde due to Phoenician exploration. The Northwest Africa region emerged as the canonical home of the King via separate sources. In particular, according to Ovid, after Perseus turns Atlas into

3760-476: The fertility of fields or 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,

3840-488: The first day of May, the Lares Praestites were honored as protectors of the city , and the flamen of Vulcan sacrificed a pregnant sow to Maia, a customary offering to an earth goddess that reiterates the link between Vulcan and Maia in the archaic prayer formula. In Roman myth , Mercury (Hermes), the son of Maia, was the father of the twin Lares, a genealogy that sheds light on the collocation of ceremonies on

3920-403: 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

4000-433: 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

4080-457: 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

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4160-504: 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

4240-437: 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

4320-405: 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 ( vici ) were housed in the crossroad shrines ( Compitalia ), which served as

4400-427: The heavens upon his shoulders again, Heracles took the apples and ran away. In some versions, Heracles instead built the two great Pillars of Hercules to hold the sky away from the earth, liberating Atlas much as he liberated Prometheus . Besides the Titan, there are other mythological characters who were also called Atlas: According to Plato , the first king of Atlantis was also named Atlas , but that Atlas

4480-616: 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

4560-453: 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

4640-521: The land of the Mauri in antiquity roughly corresponding with modern Morocco and Algeria . In the 16th century, Gerardus Mercator put together the first collection of maps to be called an " Atlas " and devoted his book to the "King of Mauretania". Atlas became associated with Northwest Africa over time. He had been connected with the Hesperides , or "Nymphs", which guarded the golden apples , and Gorgons both of which were said to live beyond Ocean in

4720-568: 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

4800-402: 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

4880-464: 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

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4960-497: The mythological Titan. The " Atlantic Ocean " is derived from "Sea of Atlas". The name of Atlantis mentioned in Plato's Timaeus ' dialogue derives from "Atlantis nesos" ( Ancient Greek : Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος ), literally meaning "Atlas's Island". The etymology of the name Atlas is uncertain. Virgil took pleasure in translating etymologies of Greek names by combining them with adjectives that explained them: for Atlas his adjective

5040-413: 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

5120-519: 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

5200-426: 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

5280-420: 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

5360-421: 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

5440-418: The sky permanently by offering to deliver the apples himself, as anyone who purposely took the burden must carry it forever, or until someone else took it away. Heracles, suspecting Atlas did not intend to return, pretended to agree to Atlas's offer, asking only that Atlas take the sky again for a few minutes so Heracles could rearrange his cloak as padding on his shoulders. When Atlas set down the apples and took

5520-668: The son of the Titan Iapetus and the Oceanid Asia or Clymene . He was a brother of Epimetheus and Prometheus . He had many children, mostly daughters, the Hesperides , the Hyades , the Pleiades , and the nymph Calypso who lived on the island Ogygia . The term " atlas " has been used to describe a collection of maps since the 16th century when Flemish geographer Gerardus Mercator published his work in honor of

5600-481: 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

5680-422: 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

5760-558: 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

5840-427: 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

5920-578: The word ádrār "mountain". Traditionally historical linguists etymologize the Ancient Greek word Ἄτλας ( genitive : Ἄτλαντος) as comprised from copulative α- and the Proto-Indo-European root *telh₂- 'to uphold, support' (whence also τλῆναι), and which was later reshaped to an nt-stem. However, Robert S. P. Beekes argues that it cannot be expected that this ancient Titan carries an Indo-European name, and he suggests instead that

6000-424: The word "Atlas" in the title of his work; this was an innovation of Gerardus Mercator , who named his work Atlas Sive Cosmographicae Meditationes de Fabrica Mundi et Fabricati (1585–1595), using the word Atlas as a dedication specifically to honor the Titan Atlas, in his capacity as King of Mauretania , a learned philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer. In psychology, Atlas is used metaphorically to describe

6080-556: The word is of Pre-Greek origin, as such words often end in -ant . Atlas and his brother Menoetius sided with the Titans in their war against the Olympians , the Titanomachy . When the Titans were defeated, many of them (including Menoetius) were confined to Tartarus , but Zeus condemned Atlas to stand at the western edge of the earth and hold up the sky on his shoulders. Thus, he was Atlas Telamon , "enduring Atlas", and became

6160-453: Was a son of Poseidon and the mortal woman Cleito. The works of Eusebius and Diodorus also give an Atlantean account of Atlas. In these accounts, Atlas' father was Uranus and his mother was Gaia . His grandfather was Elium "King of Phoenicia " who lived in Byblos with his wife Beruth . Atlas was raised by his sister, Basilia . Atlas was also a legendary king of Mauretania ,

6240-401: Was said to be the first King of Mauretania (modern-day Morocco and west Algeria , not to be confused with the modern-day country of Mauritania ). Atlas was said to have been skilled in philosophy , mathematics , and astronomy . In antiquity, he was credited with inventing the first celestial sphere . In some texts, he is even credited with the invention of astronomy itself. Atlas was

6320-541: 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

6400-418: 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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