| Topics in Roman mythology | |
|---|---|
| Important Gods: | |
| Jupiter | Minerva |
| Mars | Mercury |
| Quirinus | Vulcan |
| Vesta | Ceres |
| Juno | Venus |
| Fortuna | Lares |
| Topics | |
| Roman Kingdom | |
| Religion in ancient Rome | |
| Flamens | |
| Roman, Greek, and Etruscan mythologies compared | |
| Other minor Roman deities: | |
| Penates | Lemures |
| Genius | Manes |
| Terminus | |
In Roman mythology, lemures (singular lemur) were shades or spirits of the restless or malignant dead, and are probably cognate with an extended sense of larvae (sing. larva = mask) as disturbing or frightening. Lemures is the more common literary term but even this is rare: it is used by Horace, and by Ovid.[1]. Lemures may represent the wandering and vengeful spirits of those not afforded proper burial, funeral rites or affectionate cult by the living: they are not attested by tomb or votive inscriptions. Ovid interprets them as vagrant, unsatiated and potentially vengeful di manes or di parentes (ancestral gods of the underworld). To him, the rites of their cult suggest an incomprehensibly archaic, quasi-magical and probably very ancient rural tradition. Much later, St. Augustine describes both the lemures and the larvae as evil and restless manes that torment and terrify the living: lares, on the other hand, are good manes.[2]
Lemures were formless and liminal, associated with darkness and its dread. In Republican and Imperial Rome, May 9, 11, and 13 were dedicated to their placation in the household practices of Lemuralia or Lemuria. The household paterfamilias would rise at midnight and cast black beans behind him with averted gaze; the Lemures were presumed to feast on them.[3] The lemures themselves were both fearsome and fearful: any malevolent shades dissatisfied with the offering of the paterfamilias could be startled into flight by the loud banging of bronze pots.[4][5][6]
The Lemures inspired Linnaeus's Modern Latin backformation Lemur[2] to characterise the "ghostly stare", nocturnal habits and unearthly calls of the infraorder. He also applied an established late medieval use of 'larva' (as mask) to the caterpillar stage in the life cycle of insects. [3]
Notes and references
- ^ Horace, Epistles 2.2.209.
- ^ St. Augustine, The City of God, 11.
- ^ Black was the appropriate colour for chthonic offerings. Warde Fowler interprets the gift of beans as an offer of life and points out that they were a ritual pollution for priests of Jupiter.
- ^ Thaniel, G., Lemures and Larvae, The American Journal of Philology, 94.2, (1973) 182–187.
- ^ Beard, M., North, J., Price, S., Religions of Rome, Vol 1, Cambridge, (1998), 31, 50.
- ^ See also W. Warde Fowler, The Roman Festivals of the period of the Republic, MacMillan (New York, 1899) – available at Questia: see Mensis Maius, 106–10: [1]
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