Mater Larum
The Mater Larum ( Latin for "mother of the lares ") is a deity of Roman mythology .
Their nature and the form of their cult is quite unclear. All that is known is that the Arval Brothers sacrificed two sheep on the feast of Dea Dia of the Mater Larum. In addition, two ollae , traditional vessels made of dried clay, filled with pulse , the Roman cereal porridge , were pushed down the hill of the temple. This, however, puts it in relation to the oldest strata of Roman religion , since the Arval Brothers are linked in mythology with the founding of Rome and Pulse and Olla are downright symbols of early Roman authenticity.
Based on the form of the sacrifice (namely that it was to a certain extent thrown onto the earth), it has been assumed that the Mater Larum is an underground, a chthonic deity.
She has been associated with a number of other Roman deities for a variety of reasons, including:
- Acca Larentia : As the wife of Faustulus , according to legend, she was the mother of the twelve original Arval brothers, who then also included their adoptive son Romulus . Because of the connection between the Arval brothers and the state cult of the Laren, the “mother of the Arval brothers” was assumed to be the “mother of the Laren”.
- Tacita ( "the Silent"), also Dea Muta ( "silent goddess") include: a likely ancient Italic or Roman god of the underworld, according to Plutarch , a Naiad from among the CAMENEN unrelated to the underworld or the Lares, according to Ovid, however, a Naiad of the Tiber area (daughter of Almo ) with the name Lara or originally Lala (from Greek λάλα "the talkative, talkative"), punished by Jupiter for her indiscretion with the loss of tongue and language and banished to the swamps of the underworld by raped her companion Mercurius on the way there and through this rape became the mother of the Laren.
- Mania : According to Georg Wissowa, it is actually constructed into a custom among the Compitalia of hanging up small dolls called maniae. Since the Compitalien are a festival of the Lars, the Mania also became a possible Laren mother.
- Larunda : Finally, Larunda, after Varro a Sabine deity, who consecrated an altar to Titus Tatius in Rome. She was probably only identified as another Laren mother because of the similarity of name with the nymph Lara.
literature
- Francesca Prescendi: Larunda, Mater Larum. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 6, Metzler, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-476-01476-2 , Sp. 1156.
- Oskar Raith: Larunda mater larum? In: Philologus , Vol. 150 (2006), pp. 358-359.
- Ernst Tabeling: Mater Larum: on the essence of the larn religion. Klostermann, Frankfurt a. M. 1932.
- Lily Ross Taylor: The Mother of the Lares. In: American Journal of Archeology , Vol. 29, No. 3, (1925), pp. 299-313.
Individual evidence
- ^ Wilhelm Henzen: Acta Fratrum Arvalium quae supersunt . Reimer, Berlin 1874. Reprinted by de Gruyter, Berlin 1967, p. 26f. ( Digitized version ).