of
Cybele represents the walls of the city she protects Tutelary deities who guard and preserve a place or a person are fundamental to
ancient Roman religion. The tutelary deity of a man was his
Genius, that of a woman her
Juno. In the
Imperial era, the Genius of the
Emperor was a focus of
Imperial cult. An emperor might also adopt a major deity as his personal patron or tutelary, as
Augustus did
Apollo. Precedents for claiming the personal protection of a deity were established in the
Republican era, when for instance the
Roman dictator Sulla advertised the
goddess Victory as his tutelary by holding public games
(ludi) in her honor. Each town or city had one or more tutelary deities, whose protection was considered particularly vital in time of war and siege.
Rome itself was protected by a goddess whose name was to be kept ritually secret on pain of death (for a supposed case, see
Quintus Valerius Soranus). The
Capitoline Triad of
Juno,
Jupiter, and
Minerva were also tutelaries of Rome. The
Italic towns had their own tutelary deities. Juno often had this function, as at the
Latin town of
Lanuvium and the
Etruscan city of
Veii, and was often housed in an especially grand temple on the
arx (citadel) or other prominent or central location. The tutelary deity of
Praeneste was
Fortuna, whose oracle was renowned. The Roman ritual of
evocatio was premised on the belief that a town could be made vulnerable to military defeat if the power of its tutelary deity were diverted outside the city, perhaps by the offer of superior cult at Rome. The depiction of some goddesses such as the
Magna Mater (Great Mother, or
Cybele) as "
tower-crowned" represents their capacity to preserve the city. A town in the
provinces might adopt a deity from within the Roman religious sphere to serve as its guardian, or
syncretize its own tutelary with such; for instance, a community within the
civitas of the
Remi in
Gaul adopted Apollo as its tutelary, and at the capital of the Remi (present-day
Rheims), the tutelary was
Mars Camulus. Tutelary deities were also attached to sites of a much smaller scale, such as storerooms, crossroads, and granaries. Each Roman home had a set of protective deities: the
Lar or Lares of the household or
familia, whose shrine was a
lararium; the
Penates who guarded the storeroom
(penus) of the innermost part of the house;
Vesta, whose sacred site in each house was the hearth; and the Genius of the
paterfamilias, the head of household. The poet
Martial lists the tutelary deities who watch over various aspects of his farm. The
architecture of a granary
(horreum) featured
niches for images of the tutelary deities, who might include the
genius loci or guardian spirit of the site,
Hercules,
Silvanus, Fortuna Conservatrix ("Fortuna the Preserver") and in the Greek East
Aphrodite and
Agathe Tyche. The
Lares Compitales were the tutelary gods of a neighborhood
(vicus), each of which had a
compitum (shrine) devoted to these. Their
annual public festival was the
Compitalia. During the Republic, the cult of local or neighborhood tutelaries sometimes became rallying points for political and social unrest. == African ==