Editing Religion in ancient Rome (section)

=== Domestic and private cult ===
[[File:Vindobona Hoher Markt-142.JPG|thumb|Small bronze statues of gods for a ''lararium'' (1st to 3rd century AD, [[Vindobona]])]]

The ''mos maiorum'' established the dynastic authority and obligations of the citizen-''paterfamilias'' ("the father of the family" or the "owner of the family estate"). He had priestly duties to his ''[[lares]]'', domestic ''[[penates]]'', ancestral ''Genius'' and any other deities with whom he or his family held an interdependent relationship. His own dependents, who included his slaves and freedmen, owed cult to his ''[[Genius (mythology)|Genius]]''.<ref>Gradel, 36-8: the ''paterfamilias'' held – in theory at least, and through ancient right – powers of life and death over every member of his extended ''familia'', including children, slaves and freedmen. In practice, the extreme form of this right was seldom exercised, and was eventually limited by law.</ref><ref>See also Severy, 9-10 for interpretation of the social, economic and religious role of the ''paterfamilias'' within the immediate and extended family and the broader community.</ref>

''Genius'' was the essential spirit and generative power – depicted as a serpent or as a perennial youth, often winged – within an individual and their clan ([[gens]] (pl. ''gentes''). A ''paterfamilias'' could confer his name, a measure of his ''genius'' and a role in his household rites, obligations and honours upon those he fathered or adopted. His freed slaves owed him similar obligations.<ref>Beard et al.et al., vol 1, 67-8.</ref>

A ''pater familias'' was the senior priest of his household. He offered daily cult to his ''lares'' and ''penates'', and to his ''di parentes''/''divi parentes'' at his domestic shrines and in the fires of the household hearth.<ref>Brent, 62-3.</ref> His wife (''mater familias'') was responsible for the household's cult to Vesta. In rural estates, bailiffs seem to have been responsible for at least some of the household shrines (lararia) and their deities. Household cults had state counterparts. In Vergil's ''Aeneid'', Aeneas brought the Trojan cult of the ''[[lares]]'' and ''[[penates]]'' from Troy, along with the [[Palladium (mythology)|Palladium]] which was later installed in the temple of [[Vesta (mythology)|Vesta]].<ref>Beard et al., 1997, 2-3, citing Vergil, ''Aeneid'', 8,306-58.</ref>