Design and Tradition / A short account of the principles and historic development of architecture and the applied arts

by Amor Fenn

Roman Lares

The Lares of the Romans were domestic or public, the domestic Lares were the souls of the virtuous ancestors exalted to the rank of protectors. They took the form of images like dogs set behind the Entrance, or in the Lararium or shrine.

There were also public Lares, whose province was the protection of streets and roads.

This belief in the dead as guardian spirits accounts for a form of sacrifice in which the victims were buried under foundations, a custom modified in later times to the sacrifice of animals. It survives at the present day in burying current coins at the ceremony of laying the foundation-stone in public buildings.