And Venus loves the whisper

Of plighted youth and maid

In April's ivory moonlight,

Beneath the chestnut shade." 1

(10) The Penates, gods who were supposed to attend to the welfare and prosperity of the family. Their name is derived from Penus, the storehouse or inner chamber, which was sacred to them. Every master of a family was the priest to the Penates of his own house.

The Lares, or Lars, were also tutelary deities, but they differed from the Penates since they were regarded as the deified spirits of ancestors, who watched over and protected their descendants. The Lares were more particularly divinities presiding over the household or family; but there were also public Lares, or guardian spirits of the city, Lares of the precincts, Lares of the fields, Lares of the highways, and Lares of the sea. To the Penates, to the domestic Lares (whose images were preserved in a private shrine), and to the Manes (shades that hovered over the place of burial), the family prayers of the Romans were addressed. Other spirits, the Lemures and Larvæ, more nearly correspond to our ghosts.

The Romans believed that every man had his Genius, and every woman her Juno; that is, a spirit who had given them being, and was regarded as a protector through life. On birthdays men made offerings to their Genius, women to their Juno.

(11) Other Italian deities were the Camenæ, fountain-nymphs, goddesses of prophecy and healing, later identified with the Muses; Sol, the Sun; Luna, the Moon; Mater Matuta, the Dawn; Juventus, Youth; Fides, Honesty; Feronia, goddess of groves and freedmen; and a great number of personified abstractions of conduct and experience, such as Fortune and Health.

Many of these Latin divinities were derived from the earlier cult and ritual of the Etruscan inhabitants of Italy.

1 From Macaulay's Prophecy of Capys.