worship of the household seems to have
originated, as has been suggested, in the sense of the sacredness of
certain objects closely bound up with the family life--the door, the
protection against the external world, by which the household went out
to work in the morning and returned at evening, the hearth, the giver
of warmth and nourishment, and the store-cupboard, where was preserved
the food for future use. At first, in all probability, the worship was
actually of the objects themselves, but by the time that Rome can be
said to have existed at all, 'animism' had undoubtedly transformed it
into a veneration of the indwelling spirits, Ianus, Vesta, and the
Penates.

Of the domestic worship of Ianus no information has come down to us,
but we may well suppose that as the defence of the door and its main
use lay with the men of the household, so they, under the control of
the _pater familias_, were responsible for the cult of its spirit.
Vesta was, of course, worshipped at the hearth by the women, who most
often used it in the preparation of the domestic meals. In the original
round hut, such as the primitive Roman dwelt in--witness the models
which he buried with his dead and which recent excavations in the Forum
have brought to light--the 'blazing hearth' (such seems to be the
meaning of Vesta) would be the most conspicuously sacred thing; it is
therefore not surprising to find that her simple cult was the most
persistent of all throughout the history of Rome, and did not vary from
its original notion. Even Ovid can tell the inquirer 'think not Vesta
to be ought else than living flame,' and again, 'Vesta and fire require
no effigy'--notions in which he has come curiously near to the
conceptions of the earliest religion. The Penates in the same way were
at first 'the spirits'--whoever they might be--who preserved and
increased the store in the cupboard. Then as the conception of
individual deities became clearer, they were identified with some one
or other of the gods of the country or the state, among whom the
individual householder would select those who should be the particular
Penates of his family: Ceres, Iuno, Iuppiter, Pales would be some of
those chosen in the earlier period. Nor are we to suppose that
selection was merely arbitrary: the tradition of family and clan, even
possibly of locality, would determine the choice, much as the
patron-saints of a church are now determined in a Roman Catholic
country.

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