396 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



spirits; but there is more in the subject of interest unexhausted, 

 particularly the connection between the house spirit and fire. 

 " In the " Avesta" (Spiegel's "Avesta," by Bleeck, vol. hi., p. 

 181), Asha-Vashista, the genius of fire, is designated as " the 

 house-companion of human beings." The Latin writers use 

 "hearth" and "lar" as synonymous. Virgil* uses the terms 

 " Lares " and " Penates "t indifferently, as the verse happens to 

 require, and habitually associates the house spirit with the fire 

 on the hearth, and the " canee penetralia Vestas." I 



" ' The true temples of the Etruscans,' it has been observed, 

 ' were the tombs ' (Taylor's " Etruscan Researches," p. 49) ; 

 practically, the real objects of their worship were the Lares, or 

 spirits of their ancestors. Each house had its lararium, where 

 the master of the household offered prayer and worship every 

 morning, and sacrifice occasionally. In the Theodosian code it 

 was provided that no one should any longer worship his lar with 

 fire (nullus Larem igne veneretur)."^ 



"Men worshipped the house spirit on the hearth at a time 

 when they perfectly understood that Dyaus meant ' the blue 

 sky,' and that Varuna, or Ouranos, was 'tbe arch of heaven.' 

 Centuries after the common apartment of the primitive house 

 had disappeared, and separate rooms were assigned in spacious 

 mansions for the purpose of domestic life, the old altar, the 

 symbol of the holy hearth, survived, as the houses of Pompeii 

 still show, undisturbed, in the atrium. All the changes of 

 thought and feeling which marked the rise of the empire were 

 impotent against the Lar. Horace, Ovid, Petronius, (See "La 

 Cite Antique," p. 24) free-thinkers in principle and sensualists 

 in practice, duly celebrated tbe worship of tbe b earth. "| 



Even when the ancestral spirits had been degraded into 

 mere domestic goblins and pixies, it was with the hearth they 

 had special connection. Speaking of the German House- Spirit, 

 the Kobold, Grimmli says: "We can often trace in them a 

 special relation to the hearth of tbe house, from beneath whicb 

 they often came forth, and where the door of their subterranean 

 dwelling seems to have been: they are peculiarly hearth-gods." 



From these examples, it will be clearly seen that if the 

 Aryans were not fire-worshippers, pure and simple, they paid 



* /Eneid, v., 743, and ix.. 259. 



| In lar, probably, the vowel sound a has been broadened from hi to 

 lar. If so, then compare Maori ra, Hawaiian In, Tongan laa, all meaning 

 '• l he Sun ;" also with penates, " the care-takers." (<//'. the Maori pena, " to 

 take care of," "to cherish.") 



J " The Aryan Household," W. E. Hearn, p. 51. 



§ "Helicons of the Ancient World,' (I. Rawlinson, p. 1!)4. 



|| Hearn, loe. cit., p. 56. 



■ "Deutsche Mythologie," vol. i., p. 468. 



