Les cultes privés chez les Romains (iiie s. avant – iiie s. après J.-C.)

To talk about domestic cults seems more appropriate than to talk about private cults, since most of the non-public religious acts take place around the domestic hearth, under the pater familias’ direction. However, the term domestic cults is too restrictive in so far as the citizen can participate in non-public worship acts outside his home. Indeed, let us not forget that individuals were always inserted in a set of social relations. Therefore, private cults include domestic cults as well as association cults, neighborhood cults such as the Lares compitales cult transformed by Augustus in Lares Augusti as part of the “imperial cult”. Throughout our period, private cults do not seem to change : what essentially changes is the expansion of the family pantheon to new deities and the introduction of the “imperial cult” at the level of domus and compitum.