41.

We can, if it is thought proper, speak briefly of the Lares also, whom the mass think to be the gods of streets and ways, because the Greeks name streets laurae. In different parts of his writings, Nigidius speaks of them now as the guardians of houses and dwellings; now as the Curetes, who are said to have once concealed, by the clashing of cymbals, ¹ the infantile cries of Jupiter; now the five Digiti Samothracii, who, the Greeks tell us, were named Idaei Dactyli. Varro, with like hesitation, says at one time that they are the Manes, ² and therefore the mother of the Lares was named Mania; at another time, again, he maintains that they are gods of the air, and are termed heroes; at another, following the opinion of the ancients, he says that the Lares are ghosts, as it were a kind of tutelary demon, spirits of dead ³ men.