Larvae

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The larvae (so-called larva , but mostly used in the plural) or lemures (so-called lemur , but mostly used in the plural) were the spirits of the deceased in the Roman religion .

The distinction between lemures and larvae is unclear, the former may be older, but gradually faded into the background in favor of the latter. The definition of lemures as newly separated souls, of larvae as evil per se or due to neglect of the cult, and of lares as good spirits of the dead (while manes were not defined) is an afterthought and not, as documented from the 2nd century AD Valid over the entire period of Roman antiquity, the evaluations change from author to author. But seem both larvae and lemures to be mostly, and also originally been threatening ghosts: the dedicated to them hard lemuria pointed apotropaic on trains, linguistically is lemures with a lamia -called vampire of popular belief and the Greek word λαμυρός lamyrós ( "greedy", "greedy “) And larva (probably related to lar and lares ) appeared as a swear word in the sense of“ grimace ”.

In Goethe's Faust. In the second part of the tragedy , act 5, the spirits of the dead are called by Mephistopheles to the burial of Faust:

Come here! Come in, come in! Ye
shivering lemurs, half-natures mended
from ligaments, tendons and bones
.

As lemurs called wet-nosed monkeys (formerly prosimians ) received her from the lemures derived names Lemuriformes because of their often nocturnal activity and their thanks to the wide-eyed striking face.