PENATI. - From penates, the household gods, a term in which P. functions as an adjective, it means literally the gods "of the interior" (cf. penitus). Penus, in particular, meant in the Roman house the store of provisions and of the other elements of primary necessity of life. The seat of the domestic cult of the P. is at 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 which, however, they are clearly distinct, being as they are devoid of any relation to the telluric and human fecundity of the house. In substance they represent the sacral character of the very existence of the family, even in its most elementary and everyday aspect.
The P., however, also appear in public cult. According to mythological tradition, Aeneas would have brought his P. from destroyed Troy to Italy, depositing them at Lavinium. Moving from Lavinium to Alba, his descendants would have carried them along with them, but these, miraculously, would have returned to their former seat. From that time on, the P. of the Latins would have remained at Lavinium. The supreme Roman magistrates annually, upon entering office, went to Lavinium to present a sacrifice to the P. The sanctuary of the P. in that city was inaccessible to the public: the ancient authors are unable to give precise information about the secret objects kept in the temple and considered as the P.
At Rome too the P. had a public cult: their temple was located on the Velia, and in it they appeared by then under an anthropomorphic aspect, depicted as two armed youths, similar to the Dioscuri. Uncertain reports connect the P. with the temple of Vesta, which had its own penus in which secret objects were kept: but an actual cult relationship between Vesta and the P. seems to exist only from the Augustan age, in which 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.
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Angelo Brelich