The Dancing Lares and the Serpent in the Garden

The most pervasive gods in ancient Rome had no traditional mythology attached to them, nor was their worship organised by elites. Throughout the Roman world, neighbourhood 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 neighbourhood, and of travel.

She examines the rituals honouring 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 neighbourhood festival in honour 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 neighbourhoods.

A reconsideration of seemingly humble gods that were central to the religious world of the Romans, The Dancing Lares and the Serpent in the Garden is also the first major account of the full range of lares worship in the homes, neighbourhoods, and temples of ancient Rome.