Di Penates

Tradition identifies the public Penates of Rome as sacred objects rescued from Troy and carried to Italy by Aeneas; these Trojan Penates were later associated with Rome's public cult and housed in shrines such as those near Vesta and on the Velia. More generally the Penates originate as household guardians tied to the innermost storeroom (Latin penus) and the material provisions on which a family's life depends.

Public cult statuary is attested: ancient authors report that Rome's public Penates were represented as statues of two youths in an archaic style. For private/domestic cult the sources do not preserve a consistent anthropomorphic iconography; Penates in houses are attested as sacred objects or images and as interior presences associated with the hearth and storeroom rather than by a single fixed visual type.

The Penates are tutelary household divinities whose principal function is guardianship of the household's storeroom and supplies (food, wine, oil) and, by extension, support for the continuity and wellbeing of the family. They are invoked in domestic rituals (for example, a morsel thrown into the hearth fire at meals). They are also characteristically portable in cult identity (distinct from the more strictly localized Lares) and may serve as public sacred objects that bind household religion to civic ritual. In some theological readings reported by Varro (via Macrobius) the Penates are interpreted abstractly as principles 'through whom we breathe... through whom we possess a rational mind,' a metaphysical gloss found in learned sources rather than the practical domestic evidence.