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# The Lar, Roman household deity, and a statuette in the Weissenburg Roman Museum
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/lar-ochen-staroe-i-interesnoe-domashnee-bozhestvo/
- Published: 2019-03-15T08:31:15.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T19:00:07.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Faith, Museums, Ethnography

The Lar is a very old and most interesting household deity. The Romans held that he watched over the hearth, the house, the family, the clan and the community. The lares were applied to for help in every conceivable matter: from childbirth to the growth of one's income, from health to the harvest, from death to peace in the home. In time the cult of the lares took shape as one especially characteristic of slaves, who sincerely believed that the lares shielded them from the caprice of their masters, and who guarded their domestic shrines. But one way or another, this domestic spirit was extraordinarily popular among all strata of Roman society, and whole festivals were even dedicated to him. On this highly characteristic statuette of the 2nd-3rd centuries AD from the Weißenburg Roman Museum, the Lar holds a cornucopia and a patera, a flat ritual vessel used for religious libations and the offering of sacrifice. It is curious that the original meaning of the lares was closely bound up with sacrifice, and human sacrifice at that, which in time was replaced by offerings of dolls and woollen trinkets on the altar of this ancient and exacting god.