The Dancing Lares and the Serpent in the Garden by Harriet I. Flower

Pietas, being the sincere and due diligence in fulfilling the requirements of the partnership we have with the gods, and honoring all the obligations that we undertake in performance of our duties.

Religio, being the attitude that the gods are benevolent partners of mortals regarding the management of the world, and that the rituals and proscriptions of worship are practiced to to give honor for their help. Roman religion is founded on two primary tenets: Known variously as Roman Paganism, Religio Romana, and Cultus Deorum Romanorum, /r/RomanPaganism represents a diverse pre-Christian religion of a geopolitical force that helped to lay the foundation of much of the modern world. She also looks at Compitalia, a popular midwinter neighborhood festival in honor of the lares, and describes how its politics played a key role in Rome's increasing violence in the 60s and 50s BC, as well as in the efforts of Augustus to reach out to ordinary people living in the city's local neighborhoods.Ī reconsideration of seemingly humble gods that were central to the religious world of the Romans, this is also the first major account of the full range of lares worship in the homes, neighborhoods, and temples of ancient Rome./r/RomanPaganism is a subreddit dedicated to the creation of a public space for use in the discussion, experience, and creation of a community of understanding of the various forms of Roman reconstructionist, reconstructionist-derived, and non-reconstructionist religious expression. 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.

The Dancing Lares and the Serpent in the Garden by Harriet I. Flower