LAR[IBUS]. (VEN.) L——. (ESQ.)
This was the day on which, according to Ovid[[371]], an altar and ‘parva signa’ had been erected to the Lares praestites. They were originally of great antiquity, but had fallen into decay in Ovid’s time:
Bina gemellorum quaerebam signa deorum,
Viribus annosae facta caduca morae[[372]].
Ovid himself had apparently not seen the signa, though he looked for them; and no doubt he took from Varro the description he gives. They had the figure of a dog at their feet[[373]], and, according to Plutarch, were clothed in dogs’ skins. Both Ovid and Plutarch explained the dog as symbolizing their watch over the city; though Plutarch, following, as he says, certain Romans, preferred to think of them rather as evil demons searching out and punishing guilt like dogs. The mention of the skins is very curious, and we can hardly separate it from the numerous other instances in which the images of deities are known to have been clothed in the skins of victims sacrificed to them[[374]]. We may indeed fairly conclude that the Lares were chthonic deities, and as such were originally appeased, like Hekate in Greece[[375]], by the sacrifice of dogs. We have already had one example of the dog used as a victim[[376]]. Two others are mentioned by Plutarch[[377]]; in one case the deity was the obscure Genita Mana, and in the other the unknown god of the Lupercalia, both of which belong in all probability to the same stratum of Italian religious antiquity as the Lares. Whether we should go further, and infer from the use of the skins that the Lares were originally worshipped in the form of dogs[[378]], is a question I must leave undecided; the evidence is very scanty. There is no trace of any connexion with the dog in the cult of the Lares domestici[[379]], or Compitales.
This is also the traditional day of the dedication of a temple to the Bona Dea, on the slopes of the Aventine, under a big sacred rock. It is thus described by Ovid[[380]]:
Est moles nativa loco. Res nomina fecit:
Appellant Saxum. Pars bona montis ea est.
Huic Remus institerat frustra, quo tempore fratri
Prima Palatinae signa dedistis aves.