The Dancing Lares and the Serpent in the Garden by Harriet I. Flower

Newfangled ones-including some individuals who were still alive and active-rose in popularity, then fell away. Foreign gods-Isis and Serapis from Egypt, Mithras from Persia-were not resisted but inspired innovative rituals and splendid new temples. Without a holy book to restrain it, Roman polytheism tended to promiscuous hospitality: a profusion of gods, goddesses, nymphs, divine heroes, and abstract virtues appeared and disappeared faith remained inventive, untroubled by questions of authenticity distinctions among deities, supernatural powers, personifications, and allegories were casual. She also looks at Compitalia, a popular midwinter neighborhood festival in honor of the lares, and describes how its politics played a key role in Romes increasing violence in the 60s and 50s BC, as well as in the efforts of Augustus to reach out to ordinary people living in the citys local neighborhoods.A reconsideration of seemingly humble gods that were central to the religious world of the Romans, this is also the first major account of the full range of lares worship in the homes, neighborhoods, and temples of ancient Rome.Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.Samuel Magal/Sites & Photos Ltd./Bridgeman ImagesĪ fresco showing lares, or local household gods, from a shrine in Pompeii, circa first century AD She examines the rituals honoring the lares, their cult sites, and their iconography, as well as the meaning of the snakes often depicted alongside lares in paintings of gardens. She makes the case that they are not spirits of the dead, as many have argued, but rather benevolent protectorsgods of place, especially the household and the neighborhood, and of travel. In this comprehensive and richly illustrated book, the first to focus on the lares, Harriet Flower offers a strikingly original account of these gods and a new way of understanding the lived experience of everyday Roman religion.Weaving together a wide range of evidence, Flower sets forth a new interpretation of the much-disputed nature of the lares.

These shrines were maintained primarily by ordinary Romans, and often by slaves and freedmen, for whom the lares cult provided a unique public leadership role.

Throughout the Roman world, neighborhood street corners, farm boundaries, and household hearths featured small shrines to the beloved lares, a pair of cheerful little dancing gods. The most pervasive gods in ancient Rome had no traditional mythology attached to them, nor was their worship organized by elites.

The Dancing Lares and the Serpent in the Garden by Harriet I. Flower