The Dancing Lares and the Serpent in the Garden: Religion at the Roman Street Corner

A richly detailed study of everyday religion in ancient RomeThe most pervasive gods in ancient Rome had no traditional mythology attached to them, nor was their worship organized by elites.Throughout the Roman world, neighborhood street corners, farm boundaries, and household hearths featured small shrines to the beloved lares, a pair of cheerful little dancing gods.These shrines were maintained primarily by ordinary Romans, and often by slaves and freedmen, for whom the lares cult provided a unique public leadership role.In this comprehensive and richly illustrated book, the first to focus on the lares, Harriet Flower offers a strikingly original account of these gods and a new way of understanding the lived experience of everyday Roman religion. Weaving together a wide range of evidence, Flower sets forth a new interpretation of the much-disputed nature of the lares.She makes the case that they are not spirits of the dead, as many have argued, but rather benevolent protectors-gods of