Princeton (2017) h/b 394pp £37.95 (ISBN 97806911175003)
Most who enjoyed a classical education will remember the lares as the household gods of the Roman world, closely associated with the penates (ancestral gods) and the genius (the protective spirit of place or person). The lares may not have ranked high in the pantheon’s pecking order, but were regarded with affection and reverence, benign deities who, in return for a small shrine and regular little acts of devotion, would see you right, especially at the key stages in your life cycle.
This careful study by F., Professor of Classics at Princeton, does not challenge this basic understanding; indeed, she herself uses the words ‘affection and reverence’, backed up by reference to ‘numerous ancient authors’. She discusses the history, development and expression of the worship of the lares and especially its contribution to social cohesion as it spread out from individual households to the neighbourhood (vicus) being celebrated in the Compitalia (the festival at the compitum—the street corner of the subtitle), providing local community leaders with a sense of being valued, in spite of their often low social status. She notes that ‘by their very nature the lares were the easiest gods to share with a slave or a freedman’.
The book concludes with a lengthy discussion of the skill with which that consummate politician and propagandist, Augustus, adapted the cult of the lares in Rome, renaming them lares Augusti, providing funds for their shrines and encouraging the citizens to look on the city as one big happy family under this beneficent oversight.
This is a work of substantial scholarship. Evidence is carefully marshalled, warnings given against placing too much weight on ancient antiquarians’ misplaced literary erudition or on elite writers with little knowledge of practices lower down the social order. When literary sources are cited they are in the original Latin, followed by a translation. F. places much weight on inscriptions, surviving shrines and wall paintings. This leads to particular emphasis on the place of the lares in the Bay of Naples, especially as evidenced at Pompeii. In this area the lares are most frequently seen in the company of snakes. F. warns against being too ready to assume that the expression of devotion to the lares, although having many common features, was necessarily the same from community to community.
F. handles the evidence, whether from religious calendars, imagery on altars, architectural developments in the home etc. thoroughly and persuasively. If she challenges a body of scholarly opinion and interpretation (for example, the view that the lares were originally worshipped as the spirits of the dead), she does so firmly, but courteously and fairly.
With many illustrations (a number in colour), and extensive bibliography, a comprehensive list of references to lares by Roman authors and a full index, this is a well-produced and presented work, fairly described by the author as ‘drawing on many small case studies and individual pieces of evidence to offer a mosaic picture of life with lares’. It might well have been additionally subtitled, ‘All you ever wanted to know about the lares, but never expected to find in one book.’
Ray Morris