Immagini di Auguste nei luoghi di culto domestici. Note per una ricerca

In recent years, studies dedicated to domestic religion in the Roman world have proposed new approaches and methods for interpreting several indicators related to private cults. In fact, it is clearly necessary to consider not only the paintings or the statuettes of the deities of the most famous families, the Lares, already well known and studied, but also all other ritual tools, cult indicators and divine images attested in the different parts of the home. This study aims at presenting some data from the results of research performed in Roman houses in central Roman Italy and other sites of the Roman empire, and it will focus on a class of materials found in some surveyed houses that appear particularly interesting from an interpretative point of view: these are statues and portraits of Augustae found in specific sacred places, which could be tangible proof of forms of imperial cult carried out “privately”, attested also by some literary sources discussed in this study.