{"id":69622,"date":"2023-01-11T01:00:15","date_gmt":"2023-01-11T06:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=69622"},"modified":"2025-08-19T19:16:49","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T23:16:49","slug":"qotd-little-gods-in-the-ancient-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2023\/01\/11\/qotd-little-gods-in-the-ancient-world\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: “Little” gods in the ancient world"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>When we teach ancient religion in school \u2013 be it high school or college \u2013 we are typically focused on the big<\/strong> gods: the sort of gods who show up in high literature, who create the world, guide heroes, mint kings. These are the sorts of gods \u2013 Jupiter, Apollo, Anu, Ishtar \u2013 that receive state cult<\/strong>, which is to say that there are rituals to these gods which are funded by the state, performed by magistrates or kings or high priests (or other Very Important People); the common folk are, at best, spectators to the rituals performed on their behalf by their social superiors.<\/p>\n

That is not to say that these gods did not receive cult from the common folk. If you are a regular sailor on a merchant ship, some private devotion to Poseidon is in order; if you are a husband wishing for more children, some observance of Ishtar may help; if you are a farmer praying for rain, Jupiter may be your guy. But these are big gods<\/strong>, whose vast powers are unlimited in geographic scope and their right observance is, at least in part, a job for important people who act on behalf of the entire community. Such gods are necessarily somewhat distant and unapproachable; it may be difficult to get their attention for your particular issue.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the world is full up of smaller and more personal gods<\/strong>. The most pervasive of these are household gods \u2013 god associated with either the physical home, or the hearth (the fireplace), or the household\/family as a social unit. The Romans had several of these, chiefly the Lares<\/em> and Penates<\/em>, two sets of gods who presided over the home. The Lares<\/em> seem to have originally been hearth guardians associated with the family, while the Penates<\/em> may have begun as the guardians of the house’s storeroom \u2013 an important place in an agricultural society! Such figures are common in other polytheisms too \u2013 the fantasy tropes of brownies, hobs, kobolds and the like began as similar household spirits, propitiated by the family for the services they provide.<\/p>\n

(As an aside, the Lares<\/em> and Penates<\/em> provide an excellent example on how practice was valued more than belief<\/em> or orthodoxy<\/em> in ancient religion: when I say that they “seem” or “may have originally been”, that is because it was not entirely clear to the Romans<\/em>, exactly what the distinction between the Lares<\/em> and Penates<\/em> were; ancient authors try to reconstruct exactly what the Penates<\/em> are about from etymologies (e.g. Cic. De Natura Deorum<\/em> 2.68) and don’t always agree! But of course, the exact origins of the Lares<\/em> or the Penates<\/em> didn’t matter so much as the power they held, how they ought to be appeased, and what they might do to you!)<\/p>\n

Household gods also illuminate the distinctly communal nature of even smaller religious observances. The rituals in a Roman household for the Lares<\/em> and Penates<\/em> were carried out by the heads of the household (mostly the paterfamilias<\/em> although the matron of the household had a significant role \u2013 at some point, we can talk about the hierarchy of Roman households, but now I just want to note that these two positions in the Roman family are not<\/em> co-equal) on behalf of the entire family unit<\/em>, which we should remember might well be multi-generational, including adult children with their own children<\/em> \u2013 in just the same way that important magistrates (or in monarchies, the king or his delegates) might carry out rituals on behalf of the community as a whole.<\/p>\n

There were other forms of little gods \u2013 gods of places, for instance. The distinction between a place and the god of that same place is often not strong \u2013 when Achilles enrages the god of the river Scamander (Iliad<\/em> 20), the river itself rises up against him; both the river and the god share a name. The Romans cover many small gods under the idea of the genius<\/em> (pronounced gen-e-us, with the “g” hard like the g in gadget); a genius<\/em> might protect an individual or family […] or even a place (called a genius locus<\/em>). Water spirits, governing bodies of water great and humble, are particularly common \u2013 the fifty Nereids<\/em> of Greek practice, or the Germanic Nixe<\/em> or Neck<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Other gods might not be particular to a place, but to a very specific activity, or even moment. Thus (these are all Roman examples) Arculus, the god of strongboxes, or Vagitanus who gives the newborn its first cry or Forculus, god of doors (distinct from Janus and Limentinus who oversaw thresholds and Cardea, who oversaw hinges). All of these are what I tend to call small gods: gods with small powers over small domains, because \u2013 just as there are hierarchies of humans, there are hierarchies of gods.<\/p>\n

Fortunately for the practitioner, bargaining for the aid of these smaller gods was often quite a lot cheaper than the big ones. A Jupiter or Neptune might demand sacrifices in things like bulls or the dedication of grand temples \u2013 prohibitively expensive animals for any common Roman or Greek \u2013 but the Lares<\/em> and Penates<\/em> might be befriended with only a regular gift of grain or a libation of wine. A small treat, like a bowl of milk, is enough to propitiate a brownie. Many rituals to gods of small places amount to little more than acknowledging them and their authority, and paying the proper respect.<\/p>\n

Bret Devereaux, “Collections: Practical Polytheism, Part IV: Little Gods and Big People”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry<\/em><\/a>, 2019-11-15.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When we teach ancient religion in school \u2013 be it high school or college \u2013 we are typically focused on the big gods: the sort of gods who show up in high literature, who create the world, guide heroes, mint kings. These are the sorts of gods \u2013 Jupiter, Apollo, Anu, Ishtar \u2013 that receive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,1526,7,41,11],"tags":[1527,1457,968,855,1601,561],"class_list":["post-69622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-greece","category-history","category-quotations","category-religion","tag-ancientgreece","tag-bretdevereaux","tag-family","tag-polytheism","tag-romanhellenism","tag-rome"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-i6W","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69622"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79198,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69622\/revisions\/79198"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}