{
  "id": "lares",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Lares",
  "summary": "Roman guardian spirits of the house, the crossroads and the city. Virgil keeps the Latin word when Hector's ghost hands Aeneas \"her Lares and her people\", and Livy's Albans leave \"their hearths and household gods\"; what the Lares were — ancestors, hearth-guardians, protectors of place — the primary texts here do not explain, so the definition is drawn from the encyclopaedic record.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "roman",
    "deities",
    "household-gods",
    "guardians",
    "penates"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "penates"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "vesta"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "terminus"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "aeneas"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "Who are the Lares in Roman religion?",
    "What is the difference between Lares and Penates?",
    "Where were the Lares kept?",
    "Does Virgil mention the Lares?",
    "Are the Lares ancestors?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "Hector's ghost entrusts Troy's guardians to Aeneas: \"Her Lares and her people to thy hands Troy here commends. Companions let them be of all thy fortunes\"; then \"from our holy hearth\" he brings \"the solemn fillet, the ancestral shrines, and Vesta's ever-bright, inviolate fire\" (Aen. 2.268) — Williams keeps the Latin name here.",
      "sources": [
        "virgil-aeneid"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.92
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "Livy's household gods are bound to the house: the Albans, ordered out of their city, \"left behind their hearths and household gods and the homes in which they had been born and brought up\" (Livy 1.29.4); Tarquin's wife urges him with \"Your father's household gods, your father's image, the royal palace\" (Livy 1.47.4). Roberts's \"household gods\" does not say whether Lares or Penates are meant.",
      "sources": [
        "livy-ab-urbe-condita-1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The Lares were guardian deities whose origin is uncertain — \"hero- ancestors, guardians of the hearth, fields, boundaries, or fruitfulness, or an amalgam of these\"; statues of the domestic Lares stood at the table during family meals.",
      "sources": [
        "wikipedia-lares"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "Beyond the house, roads, seaways, fields, neighbourhoods, the city and the army each had their Lar or Lares; the Lares of the neighbourhoods (vici) were housed in crossroad shrines, the Compitalia, and Roman writers \"sometimes identify or conflate them with ancestor-deities, domestic Penates, and the hearth\".",
      "sources": [
        "wikipedia-lares"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [
    "The epics carry the Lares by name once (Aen. 2.268); everywhere else the translators write \"household gods\", which covers Lares and Penates alike.",
    "Their nature — ancestors, hearth-spirits or place-guardians — is not settled by the ancient texts read here; the object records the uncertainty instead of resolving it.",
    "Derived object by design; a primary object would need Cicero, Plautus or Ovid's Fasti."
  ],
  "faqs": [
    {
      "q": "Does Virgil mention the Lares?",
      "claim": "c1"
    },
    {
      "q": "Are the Lares ancestors?",
      "claim": "c3"
    },
    {
      "q": "Where were the Lares kept?",
      "claim": "c4"
    },
    {
      "q": "What is the difference between Lares and Penates?",
      "claim": "c4"
    }
  ],
  "evidence_tier": "derived",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "theoretical",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "Points to the one line where the word Lares survives in the English Aeneid and shows that \"household gods\" elsewhere is a translator's blur, which is exactly what a comparative query needs to know.",
  "confidence": 0.86,
  "last_verified": "2026-09-03",
  "media": [],
  "x": {
    "myth": {
      "pantheon": "roman",
      "kind": "deity",
      "group": "other",
      "domains": [
        "the household",
        "the hearth",
        "crossroads",
        "boundaries of place"
      ],
      "symbols": [
        "paired dancing youths",
        "the lararium"
      ],
      "wikidata": "Q504377"
    }
  },
  "canonical_url": "https://mythosdata.dev/k/lares",
  "api_url": "https://mythosdata.dev/api/k/lares.json",
  "jsonld": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "Lares",
    "description": "Roman guardian spirits of the house, the crossroads and the city. Virgil keeps the Latin word when Hector's ghost hands Aeneas \"her Lares and her people\", and Livy's Albans leave \"their hearths and household gods\"; what the Lares were — ancestors, hearth-guardians, protectors of place — the primary texts here do not explain, so the definition is drawn from the encyclopaedic record.",
    "url": "https://mythosdata.dev/k/lares",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-09-03",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Virgil, Aeneid — tr. Theodore C. Williams (1910), Perseus TEI edition",
        "url": "https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-latinLit/blob/master/data/phi0690/phi003/phi0690.phi003.perseus-eng2.xml"
      },
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, Books 1–10 — tr. Rev. Canon Roberts (1912), Perseus TEI edition",
        "url": "https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-latinLit/blob/master/data/phi0914/phi001/phi0914.phi001.perseus-eng3.xml"
      },
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Wikipedia — Lares",
        "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lares"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Lares"
  }
}