lemures

[Latin Lemurēs.]

lemurēs or larvae, in Roman religion, spirits of the dead, ghosts; dead members of the household were believed to haunt the house on 9, 11, and 13 May, the festival of the Lemuria, the most terrifying being those who had died young and were therefore thought to bear a grudge. Ovid gives an account of the ritual which every householder carried out privately at this time. To exorcize the ghosts he rose at midnight and walked barefoot through the house, spitting out (as he went) nine black beans for the ghosts to eat, in order to ransom the living members of the family whom otherwise the ghosts would carry off. (Beans were among the things that the flamen dialis might not touch.) After performing other rites he succeeded in driving the ghosts away (Ovid, Fasti 5. 419 ff.). Contrast the Parentalia, when the ghosts were of immediate relatives, and regarded as beneficent.