LARVE (Larvae). - Among the Romans, they were the souls of those who had died in guilt and who, in their unceasing wandering, exercised a malevolent action in the world of the living, where they persecuted and terrified men, almost taking possession of them (Larvati, cf. Plautus, Aul., 10, 4, 15; Paolo Festo, 106); there were in fact lustrations to free individuals from the obsession of the l. (cf. Servius, ad Aen., VI, 229). Moreover, they performed a similar function of torment in the realm of the shades (Pliny, Praef., 31, and Seneca, Apocol., 9).
The Larvae, sometimes confused with the Lares (Varro, in Arnobius, III, 41), with the Manes (cf. Festus, 114), but above all with the Lemures (Augustine, De civitate Dei, IX, 11), were generally represented as skeletons or spectres with faces distorted into horrible grimaces and, according to Festus (loc. cit.), «nurses frighten children with them».