Larvae (Roman religion)

The lemures /ˈlɛmjəriːz/ were shades or spirits of the restless or malignant dead in Roman mythology, and are probably cognate with an extended sense of larvae /ˈlɑːrviː/ (from Latin larva, "mask") as disturbing or frightening.Lemures is the more common literary term but even this is rare: it is used by the Augustan poets Horace and Ovid, the latter in his Fasti, the six-book calendar poem on Roman holidays and religious customs.

The word lemures can be traced to the PIE stem *lem-, which also appears in the name of the Greek monster Lamia.

Lemures may represent the wandering and vengeful spirits of those not afforded proper burial, funeral rites or affectionate cult by the living: they are not attested by tomb or votive inscriptions. Ovid interprets them as vagrant, unsatiated and potentially vengeful di manes or di parentes, ancestral gods or spirits of the underworld. To him, the rites of their cult suggest an incomprehensibly archaic, quasi-magical and probably very ancient rural tradition.

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