![]() ![]() 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 protectors-gods of place, especially the household and the neighborhood, and of travel. Weaving together a wide range of evidence, Flower sets forth a new interpretation of the much-disputed nature of the lares. 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. ![]() 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. ![]()
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