Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/45

CHAP. III. religion of both. Hearth-fire demons, heroes, Lares, all M'ere confounded. 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. In Servius we read, " By hearth the ancients understood the Lares;" and Virgil has written, indifferenlly, hearth for Penates and Penates for hearth. 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.

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