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Rh who were contemporary with our Saviour or his Apostles, or lived near their time. Part i., in 2 vols. 8vo, appeared in 1727; the publication of part ii., in 12 vols. 8vo, began in 1733 and ended in 1755. In 1730 there was a second edition of part i., and the Additions and Alterations were also published separately. A Supplement, otherwise entitled A History of the Apostles and Evangelists, Writers of the New Testament, was added in 3 vols. (1756–1757), and reprinted in 1760. Other works by Lardner are A Large Collection of Ancient Jewish and Heathen Testimonies to the Truth of the Christian Revelation, with Notes and Observations (4 vols., 4to, 1764–1767); The History of the Heretics of the two first Centuries after Christ, published posthumously in 1780 and a considerable number of occasional sermons.

LAREDO, a city and the county-seat of Webb county, Texas, U.S.A., and a sub-port of entry, on the Rio Grande opposite Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and 150 m. S. of San Antonio. Pop. (1900) 13,429, of whom 6882 were foreign-born (mostly Mexicans) and 82 negroes; (1910 census) 14,855. It is served by the International & Great Northern, the National of Mexico, the Texas Mexican and the Rio Grande & Eagle Pass railways, and is connected by bridges with Nuevo Laredo. Among the principal buildings are the U.S. Government Building, the City Hall and the County Court House; and the city’s institutions include the Laredo Seminary (1882) for boys and girls, the Mercy Hospital, the National Railroad of Mexico Hospital and an Ursuline Convent. Loma Vista Park (65 acres) is a pleasure resort, and immediately W. of Laredo on the Rio Grande is Fort McIntosh (formerly Camp Crawford), a United States military post. Laredo is a jobbing centre for trade between the United States and Mexico, and is a sub-port of entry in the Corpus Christi Customs District. It is situated in a good farming and cattle-raising region, irrigated by water from the Rio Grande. The principal crop is Bermuda onions; in 1909 it was estimated that 1500 acres in the vicinity were devoted to this crop, the average yield per acre being about 20,000 ℔. There are coal mines about 25 m. above Laredo on the Rio Grande, and natural gas was discovered about 28 m. E. in 1908. The manufacture of bricks is an important industry. Laredo was named from the seaport in Spain, and was founded in 1767 as a Mexican town; it originally included what is now Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and was long the only Mexican town on the left bank of the river. It was captured in 1846 by a force of Texas Rangers, and in 1847 was occupied by U.S. troops under General Lamar. In 1852 it was chartered as a city of Texas.

LA RÉOLE, a town of south-western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Gironde, on the right bank of the Gironde, 38 m. S.E. of Bordeaux by rail. Pop. (1906) 3469. La Réole grew up round a monastery founded in the 7th or 8th century, which was reformed in the 11th century and took the name of Regula, whence that of the town. A church of the end of the 12th century and some of the buildings (18th century) are left. There is also a town hall of the 12th and 14th centuries. The town fortifications were dismantled by order of Richelieu, but remains dating from the 12th and 14th centuries are to be seen, as well as a ruined château built by Henry II. of England. La Réole has a sub-prefecture, a tribunal of first instance, a communal college and an agricultural school. The town is the centre of the district in which the well-known breed of Bazadais cattle is reared. It is an agricultural market and carries on trade in the wine of the region together with liqueur distillery and the manufacture of casks, rope, brooms, &c.

 LARES (older form Lases), Roman tutelary deities. The word is generally supposed to mean “lords,” and identified with Etruscan larth, lar; but this is by no means certain. The attempt to harmonize the Stoic demonology with Roman religion led to the Lares being compared with the Greek “heroes” during the period of Greco-Roman culture, and the word is frequently translated . In the later period of the republic they are confounded with the Penates (and other deities), though the distinction between them was probably more sharply marked in earlier times. They were originally gods of the cultivated fields, worshipped by each household where its allotment joined those of others (see below). The distinction between public and private Lares existed from early times. The latter were worshipped in the house by the family alone, and the household Lar (familiaris) was conceived of as the centre-point of the family and of the family cult. The word itself (in the singular) came to be used in the general sense of “home.” It is certain that originally each household had only one Lar; the plural was at first only used to include other classes of Lares, and only gradually, after the time of Cicero, ousted the singular. The image of the Lar, made of wood, stone or metal, sometimes even of silver, stood in its special shrine (lararium), which in early times was in the atrium, but was afterwards transferred to other parts of the house, when the family hearth was removed from the atrium. In some of the Pompeian houses the lararium was represented by a niche only, containing the image of the lar. It was usually a youthful figure, dressed in a short, high-girt tunic, holding in one hand a rhyton (drinking-horn), in the other a patera (cup). Under the Empire we find usually two of these, one on each side of the central figure of the Genius of the head of the household, sometimes of Vesta the hearth-deity. The whole group was called indifferently Lares or Penates. A prayer was said to the Lar every morning, and at each meal offerings of food and drink were set before him; a portion of these was placed on the hearth and afterwards shaken into the fire. Special sacrifices were offered on the kalends, nones, and ides of every month, and on the occasion of important family events. Such events were the birthday of the head of the household; the assumption of the toga virilis by a son; the festival of the Caristia in memory of deceased members of the household; recovery from illness; the entry of a young bride into the house for the first time; return home after a long absence. On these occasions the Lares were crowned with garlands, and offerings of cakes and honey, wine and incense, but especially swine, were laid before them. Their worship persisted throughout the pagan period, although its character changed considerably in later times. The emperor Alexander Severus had images of Abraham, Christ and Alexander the Great among his household Lares.

The public Lares belonged to the state religion. Amongst these must be included, at least after the time of Augustus, the Lares compitales. Originally two in number, mythologically the sons of Mercurius and Lara (or Larunda), they were the presiding deities of the cross-roads (compita), where they had their special chapels. It has been maintained by some that they are the twin brothers so frequent in early religions, the Romulus and Remus of the Roman foundation legends. Their sphere of influence included not only the cross-roads, but the whole neighbouring district of the town and country in which they were situated. They had a special annual festival, called Compitalia, to which public games were added some time during the republican period. When the colleges of freedmen and slaves, who assisted the presidents of the festival, were abolished by Julius Caesar, it fell into disuse. Its importance was revived by Augustus, who added to these Lares his own Genius, the religious personification of the empire.

The state itself had its own Lares, called praestites, the protecting patrons and guardians of the city. They had a temple and altar on the Via Sacra, near the Palatine, and were represented on coins as young men wearing the chlamys, carrying lances, seated, with a dog, the emblem of watchfulness, at their feet. Mention may also be made of the Lares grundules, whose worship was connected with the white sow of Alba Longa and its thirty young (the epithet has been connected with grunnire, to grunt): the viales, who protected travellers; the hostilii, who kept off the enemies of the state; the permarini, connected with the sea, to whom L. Aemilius Regillus, after a naval victory over Antiochus (190 ), vowed a temple in the Campus Martius, which was dedicated by M. Aemilius Lepidus the censor in 179.

The old view that the Lares were the deified ancestors of the family has been rejected lately by Wissowa, who holds that the Lar was originally the protecting spirit of a man’s lot of arable land, with a shrine at the compitum, i.e. the spot where the path bounding his arable met that of another holding; and thence found his way into the house. 