Epilogue
The characteristic ubiquity of lares in the Roman home, town, and countryside is matched by the impressive survival of their cults throughout antiquity. Most of the previous discussion has investigated lares in republican and early imperial times, but they survived well into the world of late antiquity, despite increasingly heated competition from an army of new and exotic gods, some of whom made elaborate promises of personal salvation and a future life of bliss. This epilogue draws upon a section of the Theodosian Code (published on February 15 AD 438) to provide a fitting way to conclude this study, which considered many small case studies and individual pieces of evidence to offer a mosaic picture of life with lares. The Theodosian Code here quotes a law promulgated on November 8 AD 392 at Constantinople that bans traditional Roman practices.