Roman Civilization

CMS 206 /History 206

• The Lares (guardian spirits) were celebrated on the Kalends of May (F). The Lares guarded one's domus (household), crossroads and as the Lares Praestites, the State. The Lares of the crossroads were feted at the Ludi Compitales (C), a feria conceptiva in early January. A compitum the point where two roads or paths or tracks or city streets (vici) met. In the country, farmers would build a sacella (a simply shrine). At the compita, farmers would hang broken ploughs. On the night before the Ludi Compitales, folks would hang wooden dolls (one for each freeborn member of the domus) and wooden balls (one for each slave). Some Romans believed that these wooden symbols were substitutes for earlier days when the rite involved human sacrifice. By the time the kings were expelled, however, heads of garlic were substituted for human beings. If the origins of the ritual were in human sacrifice, then the Lares may have been ghosts of the dead, as much as guardian spirits of the farm. Other scholars believe that the ritual was purgative, and that the wooden symbols served as lightening rods that would capture the numen of the Lares and keep them around the farm for the coming year. In the city, the sacella were erected where residential streets crossed and served as the center of cult of the vicus (neighborhood).
• Neighbors contributed honey cakes and sacrificed a fattened pig at the ceremonies for the Ludi Compitales. Slaves were allowed a full share in the festivities and it was generally a very good time with street parties and dancing in the cities(comparable to New Year's Eve). The feast was simultaneously one of the familia and of the neighborhood. In Rome, collegia compitalicia formed to organize the celebebration and during the civil wars, elite Romans feared that these collegia could become a site of political activity. The collegia compitalicia were banned and reinstated, outlawed (with the Ludi) by Caesar, and finally restored by Augustus.
• The celebration of the Lares of the Crossroads clearly originated in the early, agricultural days of Rome. The celebration of the Lares Praestites in the city dates to the Etruscan kings. A sacellum Larum existed on the Palatine in Tacitus' day and a temple in their honor was located on the Via Sacra. Ovid and Plutarch associate dogs with the Lares Praestites. According to Plutarch, the Lares wore dogskins and according to Ovid, statues of dogs were found on their altars. Apparently the popularity of the festival declined after Augustus restored the Ludi Compitales.