Daily Deity #132 Penates

So, with Thanksgiving tomorrow I figured that today I should do something relating to family and food and such other things that surround the holiday. Then I saw the name Penates come up and I had flashbacks to translating the Aeneid.

The Penates are pretty much the culmination of all the values that this holiday holds. They are the literal protectors of food stores in one's house. For a modern comparison, think about worshiping the gods that protect your refrigerator... that actually sounds pretty good, doesn't it?

Well, the food guarding part of these gods kind of comes under specific circumstances. The main criteria is that you actually have a place to call home, because then these guys can settle down and worry about just concerning themselves with your crackers.

If you don't have a home, or are more specifically between homes, then the Penates have a different responsibility. In this case, the Penates are protectors of the family.These gods had a rather nice relationship to Hestia (or Vesta, the Roman version of her name.) Hestia was the goddess of the hearth, but also the goddess of the home. The Penates and Hestia worked together in order to protect someone's house.

Now I mentioned Aeneas before, so let me get to him. Aeneas is the guy (well, demigod) who leads the surviving Trojans after the Fall of Troy to Italy. These guys were prophesied to be the ancestors of the people who would eventually found Rome. If you follow the lineage after Aeneas down until Romulus and Remus, then the prophecy comes true. Just with some human collateral damage along the way, but hey, it created one of the most powerful empires ever so everything's cool.

Look, I'm not hating on Aeneas... that much. Okay, so he broke the heart of Dido, the epically awesome Queen of Carthage, and got her killed, but that's beside the point. It was Fate, I nor anyone else, can technically blame Aeneas, it was meant to happen. (I refuse to accept that excuse for people like Theseus or Jason, but that's beside the point.)

Sorry, side rant.

Anyways, Aeneas took the Penates with him from his house, when Troy was burning to the ground, all the way to Italy. Eventually, these Penates became the public protectors of the state from Rome and the Roman Empire. Honestly, Aeneas went through hell (well, actually the Underworld, and the parts he visited weren't too far off from Hell) to get these household gods to Italy. And this should be respected, because these gods helped to ensure the protection and stability of the future empire.

The Penates were pretty important gods, and it's kind of interesting because they were both important on a large and small scale. One part is small scale because there were Penates for each individual family. The large scale aspect is that everyone had these gods, and worshiped them, so it wasn't actually an individual thing.

So, if you are sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, or if you're just having dinner any day of the year, no matter where you are in the world, you might just want to throw a little thanks out to these guys.

They are protecting your snacks after all.