The dancing lares and the serpent in the garden: religion at the Roman street corner

The most pervasive gods in ancient Rome had no traditional mythology attached to them, nor was their worship organized by elites. Throughout the Roman world featured small shrines to the beloved lares, a pair of cheerful little dancing gods. These shrines were maintained primarily by ordinary Romans, and often by slaves and freedmen, for whom the lares cult provided a unique public leadership role. This work offers an original account of these gods and a new way of understanding the lived experience of everyday Roman religion. Weaving together a wide range of evidence, the text sets forth a new interpretation of the much-disputed nature of the lares.