PENATI. – Di penates, the penates gods, a term in which P. functions adjectivally, literally means the gods “of the interior” (cf. penitus). Penus, in particular, meant in the Roman house the store of provisions and of the other necessities of life. The seat of the domestic cult of the P. is beside the hearth, which is defined as the altar of the P. Every meal is connected with a sacrifice to these gods. Their protective function with regard to the family recalls that of the Lares, from whom, however, they are clearly distinct, being devoid of any relationship with the telluric and human fertility of the household. Essentially, they represent the sacred character of the family’s very existence, even in its most elementary and everyday aspect.
The P. also appear, however, in public worship. According to mythological tradition, Aeneas is said to have brought his P. from destroyed Troy to Italy, depositing them at Lavinium. When his descendants moved from Lavinium to Alba, they are said to have taken them along, but the P., miraculously, returned to their former abode. From then on, the P. of the Latins are said to have remained at Lavinium. Each year, upon taking office, the supreme Roman magistrates went to Lavinium to offer a sacrifice to the P. The sanctuary of the P. in that city was inaccessible to the public: the ancient authors are unable to provide precise information about the secret objects kept in the temple and regarded as the P.
At Rome too the P. had a public cult: their temple stood on the Velia, and there they already appeared in an anthropomorphic form, represented as two armed youths resembling the Dioscuri. Uncertain accounts connect the P. with the temple of Vesta, which had its own penus, where secret objects were kept; but an actual cultic relationship between Vesta and the P. seems to have existed only from the Augustan period, when the gens Julia, considering itself descended from Aeneas, identified its own P. with those of the State and its own hearth with that of Vesta.