Why leave anything to chance? Fortune is fickle.
In modern times, if we don’t want to risk running afoul (financially speaking) of fortune, we buy insurance; this commercial sense of insurance gained currency only in the 1650s.
In ancient Rome, they didn’t waste time comparing the offers of different insurance companies; they dealt directly with the appropriate spirits or deities, who were known as tutelary deities.
The Latin tutela signifies protection, guard, charge; tutor derives from tutela.
These tutelary deities, then, function as guardians; their purpose is to offer safety, like a guardian is supposed to.
In Latin, a guardian was called a custos, the root of our word custodian, another person who ensures the safety of something or someone.
The words guard, guardian come from the Old English weardian, a Germanic term meaning to watch, protect (it’s also the source of the Italian guardare, to look, watch, or, as one dictionary expresses it, “to observe with the eyes”).
The concept of protecting (as in weardian) is the essence of the word wardrobe.
Nowadays wardrobe is considered synonymous with closet, somewhere to hang our clothes.
Five centuries ago, the wardrobe was a place (room or piece of furniture) where valuables – jewels, paintings, money – were stored for safekeeping.
In Italian, it’s called the guardaroba, and the person looking after it was also called guardaroba. In English, he was the keeper of the wardrobe, and in a noble household, he was one of the highest-ranking servants.
Let’s return to ancient Rome. To ensure the welfare of their home and household, the ancient Romans turned to domestic deities such as the Lares and Penates, who dwelled in a shrine (the lararium) in the home.
The Lares looked after the master and his immediate family while the Penates extended their protection to the entire household.
The principal deity of the home was, of course, the goddess Vesta, who was present not as an image in human form but as the fire burning on the hearth (the Temple of Vesta, instead of a statue of the goddess, had a hearth in which the sacred fire burned continuously).
People themselves needed protection as well. They wore amulets or other charms, often made of coral, to ensure their safety. The custom was well established in ancient Rome. It probably had been around already for millennia by that time.
Children, especially girls, wore necklaces of coral to ward off the evil eye, illness and curses.
Later, when Christians adopted the coral as a symbol, it was associated with the blood of Christ.
In Renaissance art, the Christ Child is sometimes depicted wearing a coral necklace (see, for example, Piero della Francesca’s Senigallia Madonna in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
The tradition of wearing coral as a talisman persists to this day, especially in Italy.
Tutelary deities kept watch not only over the home, household and people, but also everything that lay outside – the roads, fields and forests.
Rustic deities such as Silvanus and Faunus looked after fields and forests. The safety of roads was entrusted to herms.
If an ancient Roman were heading down a road and came to a crossroad he’d see a herm, a stone or marble marker in the shape of a male torso atop a pillar.
It’s been argued that herms are named after the god Hermes who protected travelers.
Herms were found at other locations too, such as doorways or gates.
There’s another kind of guardian spirit that the ancients believed in.
It’s called a genius loci, Latin for spirit of the place. One of these genii locorum has found its way to my place. Here’s how it happened.
A few years ago, my handyman-carpenter, David, brought me driftwood logs that had an unusual shape – they were all curved.
We placed them top to stem, encircling my tree. They created a kind of sacred space where a variety of plants sprang up, plants that I never brought there, plants that had arrived on their own, carried by wind and animals.
Keeping an eye on this space is another piece of driftwood found by David – it’s become the genius loci of the sacred circle.
Hopefully, its guardianship will extend to the whole neighbourhood. It’s an insurance that costs nothing – just imagination and goodwill.
Sabine Eiche is a local writer and art historian with a PhD from Princeton University. Her passions are writing for children and protecting nature. Her columns deal with a broad range of topics and often include etymology in order to shed extra light on the subject.
📣 Got an opinion on this story or any others in Richmond? Send us a letter or email your thoughts or story tips to [email protected].
📲 To stay updated on Richmond news, sign up for our daily headline newsletter.
💬 Words missing in article? Your adblocker might be preventing hyperlinked text from appearing.
