LĂQUĔAR. [[Domus], [p. 144], b.]
LĂQŬEĀTŌRES. [[Gladiatores].]
LĂQUĔUS, a rope, was used to signify the punishment of death by strangling. This mode of execution was never performed in public, but only in prison and generally in the Tullianum. Hence we find the words carcer and laqueus frequently joined together. Persons convicted of treason were most frequently put to death by strangling, as for instance the Catilinarian conspirators (laqueo gulam fregere).
LĂRĀRĬUM, a place in the inner part of a Roman house, which was dedicated to the Lares, and in which their images were kept and worshipped. It seems to have been customary for religious Romans in the morning, immediately after they rose, to perform their prayers in the lararium.
LĀRENTĀLĬA, sometimes written LĀRENTINĀLIA and LAURENTĀLIA, a Roman festival in honour of Acca Larentia, the wife of Faustulus and the nurse of Romulus and Remus. It was celebrated in December, on the 10th before the calends of January.
LARGĪTĬO. [[Ambitus].]
LĂTER πλίνθος, a brick. The Romans distinguished between those bricks which were merely dried by the sun and air (lateres crudi), and those which were burnt in the kiln (cocti or coctiles). They preferred for brick making clay which was either whitish or decidedly red. Pliny calls the brickfield lateraria, and to make bricks lateres ducere, corresponding to the Greek πλίνθους ἕλκειν or ἔρυειν.
LĀTĬCLĀVĬI. [[Clavus].]
LĂTĪNAE FĔRĬAE. [[Feriae].]
LĂTĪNĬTAS, LĂTĬUM, JUS LĂTĬI. All these expressions are used to signify a certain status intermediate between that of cives and peregrini. Before the passing of the Lex Julia de Civitate (B.C. 90) the above expressions denoted a certain nationality, and as part of it a certain legal status with reference to Rome; but after the passing of that lex, these expressions denoted only a certain status, and had no reference to any national distinction. About the year B.C. 89, a Lex Pompeia gave the jus Latii to all the Transpadani, and consequently the privilege of obtaining the Roman civitas by having filled a magistratus in their own cities. To denote the status of these Transpadani, the word Latinitas was used, which since the passing of the Lex Julia had lost its proper signification; and this was the origin of that Latinitas which thenceforth existed to the time of Justinian. This new Latinitas or jus Latii was given to whole towns and countries; as, for instance, by Vespasian to the whole of Spain. It is not certain wherein this new Latinitas differed from that Latinitas which was the characteristic of the Latini before the passing of the Lex Julia. It is, however, clear that all the old Latini had not the same right with respect to Rome; and that they could acquire the civitas on easier terms than those by which the new Latinitas was acquired.