Flower reverses these priorities, and while giving due coverage to longstanding controversies she is much more interested in the cult’s functioning in day-to-day life. Yet it also reflects the conviction of earlier scholars that the origins of a cult tell us more about its essential nature than its actual functioning in the historical periods to which we have access. This debate results in part from the fact that they received little sustained discussion in the ancient sources, at least those that are extant, presumably because they were such a commonplace and humble part of everyday life. It is clear that they were tutelary deities of the household and the neighborhood, but beyond that there has been much scholarly disagreement about their nature. The lares (singular lar) were distinctively Roman deities whose presence is pervasive in Latin literary texts, who are frequently invoked in inscriptions, and whose small shrines are abundantly preserved at sites such as Pompeii and Delos. But first, an overview of the book’s subject and contents is in order. More helpful in that regard is the subtitle, which, however, raises some interesting issues to which I will return below. 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.The fanciful title, although eye-catching and not inapposite, hardly does justice to the import of this impressive book. 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, to 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.
Summary: 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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