The cited source does not provide a single, unified mythic origin for the Lares. Within the scope of the provided material, Lares are presented as traditional household tutelaries embedded in Roman domestic practice rather than as the product of a single founding myth. The source frames them as enduring elements of household religion whose status derives from continual domestic cult and civic observance; it does not supply an origin narrative or attribute their emergence to a specific mythic event.
The provided excerpt contains no detailed description of Lar iconography or fixed physical appearance. What the source makes clear is that Lares are identified with the household to such an extent that the term functions spatially — a Roman could be described as going ad larem when returning home — indicating that their 'appearance' is effectively coextensive with the domestic space and its cultic focal points (e.g., shrines within the home). The source does not attempt to standardize visual form, and offers no specific attributes, dress, or iconographic motifs.
According to the source, Lares influence all that occurs within their sphere of influence or location — primarily the household and activities taking place within it. Their role is both protective and normative: Lares receive daily offerings and are regularly celebrated at annual festivals in well-regulated households, establishing a reciprocal relationship in which human caretaking (cult and food-offerings) sustains the Lar's ongoing beneficial influence over the home's welfare and fortunes. The source emphasizes this practical, domestic function rather than cataloguing supernatural feats beyond household guardianship.
Weaknesses
None recorded.
Wards
- ritualdaily cult and food-offerings
Abundantia
Abundantia is the Roman divine personification of abundance and material plenty, used primarily in imperial propaganda and public iconography to signify secure grain supplies, wealth, and the promise of a 'Golden Age' under the emperor. She also appears in later medieval European folklore as Domina Abundia / Dame Habonde, a household benefactor in accounts condemned by ecclesiastical writers.
Aeternitas
Aeternitas is the Roman divine personification of eternity, cultivated as an abstract virtue in the official Imperial cult and invoked especially to express the perpetual duration of imperial rule (Aeternitas Imperii). She appears on coinage and in temple cult from the 1st through the 3rd centuries AD and is treated in later intellectual tradition as the Latin term for divine duration.
Agenoria
Agenoria is a minor Roman personification attested in modern summaries and late-antique citation as the faculty or divinity associated with activity, the capacity to respond and to act. She appears in at least one allegorical tableau (the wedding of Labor and Agenoria) and is reported in secondary sources to have had a sanctuary on Rome's Aventine Hill.
Angerona
Angerona (also Angeronia; local form Ancharia at Faesulae) is a polyvalent goddess in ancient Roman religion associated with relief from pain and sorrow, protection of Rome (including custody of the city's "sacred name"), and a calendrical role at the year's turning (Angeronalia/Divalia near the winter solstice). She is attested in state cult practice (pontiff-offered sacrifice) and in local altars, and is discussed by modern scholars as a tutelary, healing, and liminal deity.
Averruncus
Averruncus (also Auruncus) is an ancient Roman divine name/agent associated with averting harm. Attested in Roman antiquarian discussion as a power invoked to ward off disaster to people and harvests, Averruncus appears both as a specialized protective function and as an indigitamentum (a ritual name or aspect) applied to greater gods to secure their local, protective action.
Bona Dea
Bona Dea (Latin: "Good Goddess") is an honorific Roman goddess and protective cult figure primarily associated with married women, fertility, healing, and the welfare of the Roman people. Her cult employed a respectful pseudonym, female-exclusive rites, and a polyvalent identity that was variously conflated with other earth/fertility and prophetic goddesses in Roman literary tradition.
Bonus Eventus
Bonus Eventus is the Roman divine personification of a 'Good Outcome', originally attested within agricultural ritual contexts and later represented more broadly in public religion, imperial imagery, and private amulets as an embodied principle invoked for success and favorable results.
Caca
Caca is an ancient Roman female deity associated with the sacred hearth, attested in late sources as possessing a sacellum (shrine) in Rome where sacrifices were made through the agency of the Vestal priesthood. Later tradition and modern summaries report that her cult was succeeded or replaced by Vesta, and some secondary accounts link her mythically to Cacus.
Ceres
Ceres is the ancient Roman goddess of agriculture, grain, fertility, and maternal relationships. She presides over the technologies and rites of grain production, the protection and multiplication of plant and animal seed, and the social-ritual rules that sustain settled life; she was central to plebeian public cult and is listed among the Dii Consentes.
Cloacina
Cloacina is a minor Roman divinity associated with the Cloaca Maxima (and the original Velabrum/Spinon stream), worshipped at a small public sacellum in the Roman Forum. She is linked to purification by moving water, civic sanitation, and rites of reconciliation, and is sometimes syncretized with Venus under the epithet Venus Cloacina.
Dea Dia
Dea Dia is an ancient Roman agricultural goddess associated with fertility, growth, and daylight; her cult was maintained by the priestly college the Fratres Arvales, who performed a three-day festival in May in a sacred grove (lucus) and chanted the archaic Carmen Arvale to secure crop success. Her name is interpreted as 'Goddess of Daylight' or 'Bright Goddess' and she is sometimes identified with Ceres/Demeter.
Dispater (Dis Pater)
Dispater (classical Dis Pater) is a chthonic Roman deity originally associated with fertile soil and subterranean mineral wealth who in modern fantasy and gaming traditions is reinterpreted as Dispater, an arch‑devil and lord of the Iron City of Dis, a high‑ranking ruler within layered infernal cosmologies.
Community Record
- [1]Lar (plural Lares). Wikipedia, 'Lares Familiares' (accessed source excerpt provided)wiki