religion of both. Hearth-fire demons, heroes, Lares, all M'ere confounded.[1] We see, from two passages of Plautus and Columella, that, in the common lansuasre, they said, indifferently, hearth or domestic Lares; and we know that, in Cicero's time, they did not distinguish the hearth-fire from the Penates, nor the Penates from the Lares.[2] In Servius we read, " By hearth the ancients understood the Lares;" and Virgil has written, indifferenlly, hearth for Penates and Penates for hearth.[3] In a famous passage of the Æneid. Hector tells -^neas that he is going to intrust to him the Trojan Penates, and it is the hearth-fire that he commits to his care. In another passage Æneas, invoking these same gods, calls them at the same time Penates, Lares, and Vesta.[4]
We have already seen that those whom the ancients called Lares, or heroes, were no other than the souls of the dead, to which men attributed a superhuman and divine power. The recollection of one of these sacred dead was always attached to the hearth-fire. In adoring one, the worshipper could not forget the other. They were associated in the respect of men, and in their prayers. The descendants, when they spoke of the hearth-fire, recalled the name of the ancestor: "Leave this place," says Orestes to his sister, "and advance towards the ancient hearth of Pelops, to hear my
- ↑ Tibullus, II. 2. Horace, Odes, IV. 11. Ovid., Trist., III. 13 ; V. 5. The Greeks gave to their domestic gods or heroes the epithet of ἑφίστιοι or ἑστιοῦχοι.
- ↑ Plaut., Aulul., II. 7, 16 — In foco nostra Lari. Columella, XI. 1, 19 — Larem focumque familiarem.
- ↑ Cicero, Pro Domo, 41 ; Pro Quintio, 27, 28.
- ↑ Virgil, IX. 259; V. 744.
