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:''For other meanings, see Lares (disambiguation).'' Lares (; (ラテン語:Larēs), (:ˈɫa.reːs), archaic ''Lases'', singular ''Lar''), were guardian deities in ancient Roman religion. Their origin is uncertain; they may have been hero-ancestors, guardians of the hearth, fields, boundaries or fruitfulness, or an amalgam of these. Lares were believed to observe, protect and influence all that happened within the boundaries of their location or function. The statues of domestic Lares were placed at the table during family meals; their presence, cult and blessing seem to have been required at all important family events. Roman writers sometimes identify or conflate them with ancestor-deities, domestic Penates and the hearth. Because of these associations, Lares are sometimes categorised as household gods but some had much broader domains. Roadways, seaways, agriculture, livestock, towns, cities, the state and its military were all under the protection of their particular Lar or Lares. Those who protected local neighbourhoods (''vici'') were housed in the crossroad shrines (Compitales) which served as a focus for the religious, social and political life of their local, overwhelmingly plebeian communities. Their cult officials included freedmen and slaves, otherwise excluded by status or property qualification from most administrative and religious offices. Compared to Rome's major deities Lares had limited scope and potency but archaeological and literary evidence attests to their central role in Roman identity and religious life. By analogy, a homeward-bound Roman could be described as returning ''ad Larem'' (to the Lar). Despite official bans on non-Christian cults from the late 4th century AD onwards, unofficial cults to Lares persisted until at least the early 5th century AD. == Origins and development == Archaic Rome's Etruscan neighbours practiced domestic, ancestral or family cults very similar to those offered by later Romans to their Lares.〔Ryberg, pp. 10 - 13: a wall painting at the Tomb of the Leopards, at Etruscan Tarquinia, shows offerings are made to Lares-like figures, or di Manes (deified ancestors) in a procession preparatory to funeral games. A black-figured Etruscan vase, and Etruscan reliefs, show the forms of altar and iconography used in Roman Lares-cult, including the offer of a garland crown, sacrifice of a pig and the representation of serpents as a fructifying or generative force.〕 The word itself seems to derive from the Etruscan ''lar'', ''lars'', or ''larth'', meaning "lord".〔Lewis, Charlton & al. ''A Latin Dictionary, founded on Andrews's edition of Freund's Latin Dictionary, revised, enlarged, and in great part rewritten''. "(Lar )". Clarendon Press (Oxford), 1879.〕〔Keightley, Thomas. ''The Mythology of Ancient Greece and Italy'', p. (543 ). Whittaker & Co. (London), 1838.〕 Ancient Greek and Roman authors offer "heroes" and "daimones" as translations of "Lares"; the early Roman playwright Plautus (c. 254–184 BC) employs a ''Lar Familiaris'' as a guardian of treasure on behalf of a family, as a plot equivalent to the Greek playwright Menander's use of a ''heroon'' (as an ancestral hero-shrine).〔Hunter, 2008.〕 Weinstock proposes a more ancient equivalence of Lar and Greek ''hero'', based on his gloss of a 4th-century BC Latin dedication to the Roman ancestor-hero Aeneas as ''Lare'' (Lar).〔Weinstock, 114-118.〕 No physical Lar images survive from before the Late Republican era, but literary references〔Such as Plautus' singular Lar, above.〕 suggest that cult could be offered to a single Lar, and sometimes many more: in the case of the obscure Lares Grundules, perhaps thirty. By the early Imperial era, they had become paired divinities, probably through the influences of Greek religion – in particular, the heroic twin Dioscuri – and the iconography of Rome's semi-divine founder-twins, Romulus and Remus. They are represented as two small, youthful, lively male figures clad in short, rustic, girdled tunics – made of dogskin, according to Plutarch.〔Plutarch, ''Roman Questions'', 52: see Waites, 258 for analysis of chthonic connections between the Lares' dogskin tunic, Hecate and the Lares of the crossroads (Lares Compitalicii).〕 They take a dancer's attitude, tiptoed or lightly balanced on one leg. One arm raises a drinking horn (''rhyton'') aloft as if to offer a toast or libation; the other bears a shallow libation dish (''patera''). Compitalia shrines of the same period show Lares figures of the same type. Painted shrine-images of paired Lares show them in mirrored poses to the left and right of a central figure, understood to be an ancestral genius. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Lares」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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