The Dancing Lares and the Serpent in the Garden

Religion at the Roman Street Corner

Harriet I. Flower (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

440 Seiten

2017
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-0-691-17500-3 (ISBN)

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The most pervasive gods in ancient Rome had no traditional mythology attached to them, nor was their worship organized by elites. 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. 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. 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. Weaving together a wide range of evidence, Flower sets forth a new interpretation of the much-disputed nature of the lares. 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. 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 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. A 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.

Harriet I. Flower is professor of classics at Princeton University. She is the author of Roman Republics (Princeton), The Art of Forgetting: Disgrace and Oblivion in Roman Political Culture, and Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture. She is also the editor of The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic.

Preface ix

I Lar(es) / Genius and Juno / Snake(s) 1

i Varro Hesitates . . . 6

ii Origins and Early Evidence 18

iii A Lar Introduces Himself 31

iv Single Lar, Twin Lares 36

v Monthly Rituals at the Hearth 40

vi Kitchen Gods 46

vii A Genius Pours a Libation 53

viii Serpent(s) in a Garden 63

ix A Painted Landscape of Local Gods 71

II Shrines for Lares in Rome 76

x The Three Asses of the Bride 78

xi Temple: Aedes 86

xii Sanctuary: Ara / Fanum / Sacellum / Pomerium 104

xiii Crossroads Shrine: Compitum 116

xiv Lots of Small Shrines: Compita and Sacella 137

xv Pompeii: A Case Study 145

xvi Sacred Spaces and Lares Who Live in Them 157

III Celebrating Lares 160

xvii Compitalia: Who Is My Neighbor? 162

xviii Delos: A Case Study 175

xix Local Networks: Vicatim 192

xx Officers and Associations: (Vico)magistri, Ministri, Collegia 206

xxi Magistri and Ministri in Italy 226

xxii Politics at Compitalia 234

xxiii Religion and Politics at the Crossroads 250

IV Augustus and Lares Augusti 255

xxiv Augustus and Rome before 7 BC 258

xxv The Reform of 7 BC 271

xxvi Lares Augusti 284

xxvii Genius Augusti? 299

xxviii Who Gets the Bull? 311

xxix Ara Pacis Augustae: Who Gets the Pig? 320

xxx August Gods in the Vici 329

xxxi The "New Age" of Augustus: Time and History 336

xxxii Augustus and Lares Augusti 346

Epilogue 348

Appendix 1 References to Lares by Roman Authors: A List 353

Appendix 2 Lares in the Calendar at Rome 357

Appendix 3 Augustan Time Patterns 359

Bibliography 361

Index 387

Image Credits 391

Erscheinungsdatum	13.10.2017
Zusatzinfo	24 color + 72 b/w illus.
Verlagsort	New Jersey
Sprache	englisch
Maße	178 x 254 mm
Gewicht	964 g
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Kunstgeschichte / Kunststile
	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Vor- und Frühgeschichte
	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Altertum / Antike
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Weitere Religionen
ISBN-10	0-691-17500-4 / 0691175004
ISBN-13	978-0-691-17500-3 / 9780691175003
Zustand	Neuware