PENATES. In the Latin world di penates (always in the plural) were spirits protecting a house or a city. The etymological connection with penus in the sense of "storing-place of the household" raises problems. The cult of the penates was associated with that of Vesta; both were linked to the hearth. During family meals offers of food were made to them and burned on the fireplace. Plautus speaks in Mercator (1.834) of the penates as "gods of the parents" (di penates meum parentum) and distinguishes them from the lar (singular) of the household (familia).

The penates were originally aniconic. In the late republican period images of them were put on the table. By a further development the notion of penates came to include all the gods worshiped in the household, beginning with Vesta and the lar familiaris (later also lares in general). In the first century CE Pompeii and...