Lares

Roman houses had shrines called lararia, where daily offerings were placed before statuettes of the Lares and the Penates. The Lares were protective Roman deities, household gods, ancestral spirits, or good spirits. Some sources treat them as a form of Lemur. Their precise origin is disputed. They may have developed from deified ancestors or guardians of farmland, and some accounts describe them as originally Etruscan. They could appear as statuettes, while images associated with them might show youths, snakes, cornucopias, or heralds’ rods and thyrsi.

The Lares belonged wherever protection was required. Lares Familiares guarded the house and family. Public Lares watched over city districts, villages, streets, roads, crossroads, military expeditions, and the state. In myth, their clearest place is among the sacred objects of Aeneas, who carried the Lares and Penates with his father Anchises from burning Troy to Italy. One account makes the Lares two sons of Lara and Mercury. Another names Lara, a Roman nymph and daughter of Alcmon, as their mother.