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Encyclopedia Britannica



LARES (older form Lases)

This article appears in Volume V16, Page 216 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: LAP-LEO
LARES (older form Lases) , Roman tutelary deities. The word is generally supposed to mean " lords," and identified with Etruscan larth, lar; but this is by no means certain. The attempt to harmonize the Stoic demonology with Roman religion led to the Lares being compared with the Greek " heroes " during the period of Greco-Roman culture, and the word is frequently translated paves. In the later period of the republic they are confounded with the
Penates
  (and other deities), though the distinction between them was probably more sharply marked in earlier times. They were originally gods of the cultivated fields, worshipped by each household where its allotment joined those of others (see below). The distinction between public and private Lares existed from early times. The latter were worshipped in the
house
  by the family alone, and the household
Lar (familiaris) was conceived of as the centre-point of the family and of the family cult. The word itself (in the singular) came to be used in the general sense of " home." It is certain that originally each household had only one Lar; the plural was at first only used to include other classes of Lares, and only gradually, after the time of Cicero, ousted the singular. The image of the Lar, made of wood, stone or metal, sometimes even of silver, stood in its
special
  shrine (lararium), which in early times was in the atrium, but was afterwards transferred to other parts of the
house
 , when the family hearth was removed from the atrium. In some of the Pompeian houses the lararium was represented by a niche only, containing the image,of the lar. It was usually a youthful figure, dressed in a short, high-girt tunic, holding in one hand a rhyton (drinking-horn), in the other a Patera (cup). Under the Empire we find usually two of these, one on each side of the central figure of the Genius of the head of the household, sometimes of Vesta the hearth-deity. The whole group was called indifferently Lares or
Penates
 . A prayer was said to the Lar every morning, and at each
meal
  offerings of food and drink were set before him; a portion of these was placed on the hearth and afterwards shaken into the fire.
Special
  sacrifices were offered on the kalends, nones, and ides of every month, and on the occasion of important family events. Such events were the birthday of the head of the household; the assumption of the toga virilis by a son; the festival of the Caristia in memory of deceased members of the household; recovery from illness; the entry of a young bride into the house for the first time; return home after a long absence. On these occasions the Lares were crowned with garlands, and offerings of cakes and honey, wine and incense, but especially swine, were laid before them. Their
worship
  persisted throughout the
pagan
  period, although its character changed considerably in later times. The emperor Alexander Severus had images of Abraham, Christ and Alexander the Great among his household Lares.
The public Lares belonged to the state religion. Amongst these must be included, at least after the time of
Augustus
 , the Lares compitales. Originally two.in number, mythologically the sons of Mercurius and
Lara
  (or Larunda), they were the presiding deities of the cross-roads (compita), where they had their special chapels. It has been maintained by some that they are the twin brothers so frequent in early religions, the Romulus and Remus of the Roman foundation legends. Their sphere of influence included not only the cross-roads, but the whole neighbouring district of the town and country in which they were situated. They had a special annual festival, called Compitalia, to which public games were added some time during the republican period. When the colleges of freedmen and slave*, who assisted the presidents of the festival, were abolished by Julius Caesar, it fell into disuse. Its importance was revived by
Augustus
 , who added to these Lares his own Genius, the religious personification of the empire.
The state itself had its own Lares, called praestites, the protecting patrons and guardians of the city. They had a temple and altar on the Via Sacra, near the Palatine, and were represented on coins as young men wearing the chlamys, carrying lances, seated, with a dog, the emblem of watchfulness, at their feet. Mention may also be made of the Lares grundules, whose
worship
  was connected with the white sow of Alba Longa and its thirty young (the epithet has been connected with grunnire, to grunt): the viales, who protected travellers; the hostilii, who kept off the enemies of the state; the permarini, connected with the sea, to whom L. Aemilius Regillus, after a naval victory over Antiochus (190 B.C.), vowed a temple in the Campus Martius, which was dedicated by M. Aemilius Lepidus the censor in 179.
The old view that the Lares were the deified ancestors of the family has been rejected lately by Wissowa, who holds that the Lar was originally the protecting spirit of a man's lot of arable land, with a shrine at the compitum, i.e. the spot where the path bounding his arable met that of another holding; and thence found his way into the house.
In addition to the manuals of Marquardt and Preller-Jordan, and Roscher's Lexikon der Mythologie, see A. de 1VIarchi, Il Culto privato di Roma antica (1896-1903), p. 28 foil.; G. Wissowa, Religion and Kultus der Romer (1902), p. 148 foll.; Archiv fur Religionswissenschaft (1904, p. 42 foil.) and W. Warde Fowler in the same periodical (1906, p. 529).
LA REVELLIERE-L$PEAUA, LOUIS MARIE DE (1753-1824), French politician, member of the Directory, the son of J. B. de la Revelliere, was born at Montaign (Vendee), on the 24th of August 1753. The name of Lepeaux he adopted from a small property belonging to his family, and he was known locally as M. de Lepeaux. He studied law at Angers and Paris, being called to ,the bar in 1795. A deputy to the states-general in 1789, he returned at the close of the session to Angers, where with his school-friends J. B. Leclerc and Urbain Rene Pilastre he sat on the council of Maine-et-Loire, and had to deal with the first Vendeen outbreaks. In 1792 he was returned by the department to the Convention, and on the 19th of November he proposed the famous decree by which France offered protection to foreign nations in their struggle for liberty. Although La Revelliere-Lepeaux voted for the death of Louis XVI., he was not in general agreement with the extremists. Proscribed with the Girondins in 1793 he was in hiding until the revolution of 9.10 Thermidor (27th and 28th of July 1794). After serving on the commission to prepare the initiation of the new constitution he became in July 1795 president of the Assembly, and shortly afterwards a member of the Committee of Public Safety. His name stood first on the
list
  of directors elected, and he became president of the Directory. Of his colleagues he was in alliance with Jean Francois Rewbell and to a less degree with Barras, but the greatest of his fellow-directors, Lazare Carnot, was the object of his undying hatred. His policy was marked by a bitter hostility to the Christian religion, which he proposed to supplant as a civilizing agent by theophilanthropy, a new religion invented by the English deist David Williams. The credit of the coup d'etat of 18 Fructidor (4th of September 1797), by which the allied directors made themselves supreme, La Revelliere arrogated to himself in his Memoires, which in this as in other matters must be read with caution. Compelled to resign by the revolution of 30 Prairial (18th of June 1799) he lived in retirement in the country, and even after his return to Paris ten years later took no part in public affairs.' He died on the 27th of March 1824.
The Memoires of La Revelliere-Lepeaux were edited by R. D. D'Angers (Paris, 3 vols., 1895). See also E. Charavay, La Revelliere-Lepeaux et ses memoires (1895) and A. Meynier, Un Representant de la bourgeoisie angevine (1905).


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