In the primitive hut, the model of which has come down to us in so many
little burial urns of early time (for example those that have recently
been dug up in the wonderful cemetery under the Roman Forum), with its
one door and no window, there were several elements which needed
propitiation; the door itself as the keeper away of evil, the hearth,
and the niche for the storage of food. The door-god was the god-door
Janus, the _ianua_ itself; the hearth was in the care of the womenfolk,
the wife and daughters, so it was a goddess, Vesta, whom they served;
and the storage-niche, the _penus_, was in the keeping of the
"store-closet gods" (_Di Penates_). The state itself was modelled after
the house. It had its Janus, its sacred door, down in the Forum, and the
king himself, the father of the state, was his special priest; it had
its hearth, where the sacred fire burned, and its own Vesta, tended by
the vestal virgins, the daughters of the state; and it had its
store-niche with its Penates. At a later date but still very early there
was added to the household worship the idea of the general protector of
the house, the Lar, which gave rise to the familiar expression "Lares
and Penates." The origin of this _Lar Familiaris_, as he is called, is
interesting, because it shows the intimate connection between the
farming life of the community and its religion. The Lares were
originally the group of gods who looked after the various farms; they
were in the plural because they were worshipped where the boundary lines
of several farms met, but though several of them were worshipped
together, each farm had its one individual Lar. But the care of the farm
included also the protection of the house on the farm, so that the Lar
of the farm became also the Lar of the house, first of course of houses
on farms, and then of every house everywhere even when no farm was
connected with it.