HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Mother of the
Lares Lares ( , ; archaic , singular ''Lar'') were guardian deities in ancient Roman religion. Their origin is uncertain; they may have been hero-ancestors, guardians of the hearth, fields, boundaries, or fruitfulness, or an amalgam of these. Lare ...
(Latin ''Mater Larum'') has been identified with any of several minor
Roman deities The Roman deities most widely known today are those the Romans identified with Greek counterparts (see ''interpretatio graeca''), integrating Greek myths, iconography, and sometimes religious practices into Roman culture, including Latin literat ...
. She appears twice in the records of the
Arval Brethren In ancient Roman religion, the Arval Brethren ( la, Fratres Arvales, "Brothers of the Fields") or Arval Brothers were a body of priests who offered annual sacrifices to the Lares and gods to guarantee good harvests. Inscriptions provide evi ...
as ''Mater Larum'', elsewhere as
Mania Mania, also known as manic syndrome, is a mental and behavioral disorder defined as a state of abnormally elevated arousal, affect, and energy level, or "a state of heightened overall activation with enhanced affective expression together wi ...
and
Larunda Larunda (also Larunde, Laranda, Lara) was a naiad nymph, daughter of the river Almo in Ovid's ''Fasti''.Ovid, '' Fasti 2''V. 599 Mythology The only known mythography attached to Lara is little, late and poetic, coming to us from Ovid's ''Fast ...
.
Ovid Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the t ...
calls her Lara, Muta (the speechless one) and Tacita (the silent one).


Arval rite

Cult to ''Matres Larum'' is known through the fragmentary Arval rites to
Dea Dia Dea Dia (Latin: "Goddess of Daylight", or "Bright Goddess") was a goddess of fertility and growth in ancient Roman religion. She was sometimes identified with Ceres, and sometimes with her Greek equivalent Demeter. She was worshiped during Am ...
, a goddess of fruitfulness. The Arvals address Dia herself as ''Juno Dea Dia'', which identifies her with the supreme female principle. The mother of the Lares is addressed only as ''Matres Larum''; she is given a sacrificial meal (''cena matri Larum'') of ''puls'' (porridge) contained in a sacred, sun-dried earthenware pot ''(olla)''. Prayers are recited over the pot, which is then thrown from the temple doorway, down the slope on which the temple stands; thus, remarks
Lily Ross Taylor Lily Ross Taylor (born August 12, 1886, in Auburn, Alabama - died November 18, 1969, in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania) was an American academic and author, who in 1917 became the first female Fellow of the American Academy in Rome. Biography Born in ...
, towards the earth as a typically
chthonic The word chthonic (), or chthonian, is derived from the Ancient Greek word ''χθών, "khthon"'', meaning earth or soil. It translates more directly from χθόνιος or "in, under, or beneath the earth" which can be differentiated from Γῆ ...
offering. On another occasion, the Arvals offer sacrificial recompense to various deities for a necessary pollution of Dia's sacred grove; the Mater Larum is given two sheep. The Arvals also invoke her children, in the opening lines of the Arval Hymn to Dia, which begins ''enos Lases iuvate'' ("Help us, Lares").


Festivals

The Mater Larum may have been offered cult with her Lares during the festival of
Larentalia The Roman festival of Larentalia was held on 23 December but was ordered to be observed twice a year by Augustus; by some supposed to be in honour of the Lares, a kind of domestic ''genii'', or divinities, worshipped in houses, and esteemed the gua ...
as she was, according to
Macrobius Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, usually referred to as Macrobius (fl. AD 400), was a Roman provincial who lived during the early fifth century, during late antiquity, the period of time corresponding to the Later Roman Empire, and when Latin was ...
(''
floruit ''Floruit'' (; abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for "they flourished") denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indicatin ...
'' 395 - 423 AD), during
Compitalia In ancient Roman religion, the Compitalia ( la, Ludi Compitalicii; ) was an annual festival in honor of the Lares Compitales, household deities of the crossroads, to whom sacrifices were offered at the places where two or more ways met. Th ...
. Ovid, in his ''
Fasti In ancient Rome, the ''fasti'' ( Latin plural) were chronological or calendar-based lists, or other diachronic records or plans of official and religiously sanctioned events. After Rome's decline, the word ''fasti'' continued to be used for si ...
'' II, 571 ff poetically interprets what may be a variant of her rites at the fringes of the
Feralia Ferālia was an ancient Roman public festival Dumézil, Georges. ''Archaic Roman Religion''. pg 366. celebrating the Manes (Roman spirits of the dead, particularly the souls of deceased individuals) which fell on 21 February as recorded by Ov ...
: an old woman squats among a circle of younger women and sews up a fish-head. She smears this with pitch then pierces and roasts it; this, she says, binds hostile tongues to silence. She thus invokes ''Tacita'' (silence). If, as Macrobius proposes, the
Lemures The lemures were shades or spirits of the restless or malignant dead in Roman religion, and are probably cognate with an extended sense of larvae (from Latin ''larva'', "mask") as disturbing or frightening. ''Lemures'' is the more common liter ...
are unsatiated and malevolent forms of Lares, then they and their mother also find their way into Lemuralia, when the vagrant and malicious Lemures and (perhaps) Larvae must be placated by midnight libations of spring-water and offerings of black beans, spat from the mouth of the ''paterfamilias'' to the floor of the domus. Again, Taylor notes the chthonic character of offerings made to fall – or deliberately expelled – towards the earth.
Varro Marcus Terentius Varro (; 116–27 BC) was a Roman polymath and a prolific author. He is regarded as ancient Rome's greatest scholar, and was described by Petrarch as "the third great light of Rome" (after Vergil and Cicero). He is sometimes ...
(116 BC – 27 BC) believes that she and her children were originally
Sabine The Sabines (; lat, Sabini; it, Sabini, all exonyms) were an Italic people who lived in the central Apennine Mountains of the ancient Italian Peninsula, also inhabiting Latium north of the Anio before the founding of Rome. The Sabines divi ...
and names her as Mania; the name is used by later Roman authors with the general sense of an "evil spirit". In the late 2nd century AD, according to Festus, nursemaids use the name of ''Mania'' to terrify children.
Macrobius Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, usually referred to as Macrobius (fl. AD 400), was a Roman provincial who lived during the early fifth century, during late antiquity, the period of time corresponding to the Later Roman Empire, and when Latin was ...
applies it to the woolen figurines (''maniae'') hung at crossroad shrines during
Compitalia In ancient Roman religion, the Compitalia ( la, Ludi Compitalicii; ) was an annual festival in honor of the Lares Compitales, household deities of the crossroads, to whom sacrifices were offered at the places where two or more ways met. Th ...
, thought to be substitutions for ancient
human sacrifice Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more humans as part of a ritual, which is usually intended to please or appease gods, a human ruler, an authoritative/priestly figure or spirits of dead ancestors or as a retainer sacrifice, wherein ...
once held at the same festival and suppressed by Rome's first consul, L. Junius Brutus.


Myth

The only known mythography attached to Mater Larum is little, late and poetic: again, the source is Ovid, who identifies her as a once-loquacious nymph, Lara, her tongue cut out for betrayal of Jupiter's secret amours. Lara thus becomes Muta (speechless) and is exiled from the daylight world to the underworld abode of the dead (''ad Manes''); a place of silence (Tacita). She is led there by Mercury and impregnated by him en route. Her offspring are as silent or speechless as she.


Nature

If their mother's nature connects the Lares to the earth they are, according to Taylor, spirits of the departed and their mother a dark or terrible aspect of Tellus (Terra Mater). The Lares and the Mater Larum have been suggested as ancient Etruscan divinities; the title or forename Lars, used by Rome's Etruscan kings has been interpreted as "king", "overlord" or "leader". Greek authors offered "
hero A hero (feminine: heroine) is a real person or a main fictional character who, in the face of danger, combats adversity through feats of ingenuity, courage, or strength. Like other formerly gender-specific terms (like ''actor''), ''her ...
es" and " daimones" as translations for Lares and
Plautus Titus Maccius Plautus (; c. 254 – 184 BC), commonly known as Plautus, was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest Latin literary works to have survived in their entirety. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the ...
employs a ''Lar Familiaris'' where Menander's Greek original has a heroon (hero-shrine).Weinstock, 114-18, proposes the equivalence of "lar" and Greek ''hero'', based on his gloss of a 4th century BC inscription from Latium as a dedication to the Roman ancestor-hero Aeneas as ''Lare'' (Lar).


Notes


References and further reading

* Beard, M., North, J., Price, S., ''Religions of Rome, vol.'' 1, illustrated, reprint, Cambridge University Press, 1998. *Beard, M., North, J., Price, S., ''Religions of Rome, vol. 2'', illustrated, reprint, Cambridge University Press, 1998. *Taylor, Lilly Ross
The Mother of the Lares
''American Journal of Archaeology,'' Vol. 29, 3, (July - Sept. 1925), 299 - 313
Archived
17 April 2022 at the
Wayback Machine The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, California. Created in 1996 and launched to the public in 2001, it allows the user to go "back in time" and se ...
. * Wiseman, T. P., ''Remus: a Roman myth'', Cambridge University Press, 1995. {{DEFAULTSORT:The Mother Of The Lares Roman goddesses Underworld goddesses