The Dancing Lares and the Serpent in the Garden

The 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 place, especially the household and the neighborhood, and of travel. She examines the rituals honoring the lares, their cult sites, and their iconography, as well as the meaning of the snakes often depicted alongside lares in paintings of gardens. She also looks at Compitalia, a popular midwinter neighborhood festival in honor of the lares, and describes how its politics played a key role in Rome’s increasing violence in the 60s and 50s BC, as well as in the efforts of Augustus to reach out to ordinary people living in the city’s local neighborhoods.

A reconsideration of seemingly humble gods that were central to the religious world of the Romans, this is also the first major account of the full range of lares worship in the homes, neighborhoods, and temples of ancient Rome.

Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.

"Not only will this be an indispensable starting point for anyone working on any topic connected with the lares, it also constitutes a valuable model for one highly effective way to study religion in a world without 'religion'.”"---James B. Rives, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

"In The Dancing Lares and the Serpent in the Garden: Religion at the Roman Street Corner, Harriet I. Flower displays a formidable grasp of historical detail and a taste for scholarly disputes. Her book is superbly produced and richly illustrated in color with maps and photographs."---Marina Warner, New York Review of Books

"Detailed, absorbing and beautifully illustrated . . . this is a book that demands, and deserves, serious engagement."---T. P. Wiseman, Times Literary Supplement

"Winner of a 2018 Charles Goodwin Award of Merit, Society for Classical Studies"

"Harriet Flower's book is important for understanding the history of ancient Roman religion and the late republic. Above all, it is original and convincing in stressing the ubiquitous and pervading character of the cult of the lares in Rome and a number of other places in the Roman world."—Jörg Rüpke, University of Erfurt, Germany

"This important book provides a comprehensive treatment of the lares, the ancient Roman household gods, in all the contexts in which they are well-documented, revealing them to be much more significant than conventionally understood. Harriet Flower has yet again identified a neglected aspect of Roman life and produced a definitive treatment that illuminates an extraordinary range of further areas."—Catherine Steel, University of Glasgow