noun
definition
The household deities thought to watch over the houses and storerooms of ancient Rome.
Examples of penates in a Sentence
The identification of the three Capitoline deities with the Penates, and of these with the Cabeiri, tended to increase this feeling.
By common consent he was deified and all those who could afford the cost obtained his statue or bust; for a long time his statues held a place among the penates of the Romans.
The whole group was called indifferently Lares or Penates.
Roman antiquarians identified the Cabeiri with the three Capitoline deities or with the Penates.
Other places where the legends about fairies were passed down included Roman mythology with the modern-day "angels," or lares, genii and penates.
At the same time the new acquaintance with Greek art introduces the making of cult statues, in which the identified Greek type is usually adopted without change, with such curious results as the representation of the Penates under the form of the Dioscuri.
In the later period of the republic they are confounded with the Penates (and other deities), though the distinction between them was probably more sharply marked in earkor times.
The custom by which the consuls and praetors or dictators sacrificed on the Alban Mount and at Lavinium to the Penates and to Vesta, before they entered upon office or departed for their province, seems to have been one of great antiquity.