who were contemporary with our Saviour or his Apostles, or lived near their time. Part i., in 2 vols. 8vo, appeared in 1727; the publication of part ii., in 12 vols. 8vo, began in 1733 and ended in 1755. In 1730 there was a second edition of part i., and the Additions and Alterations were also published separately. A Supplement, otherwise entitled A History of the Apostles and Evangelists, Writers of the New Testament, was added in 3 vols. (1756–1757), and reprinted in 1760. Other works by Lardner are A Large Collection of Ancient Jewish and Heathen Testimonies to the Truth of the Christian Revelation, with Notes and Observations (4 vols., 4to, 1764–1767); The History of the Heretics of the two first Centuries after Christ, published posthumously
in 1780 and a considerable number of occasional sermons.
LAREDO, a city and the county-seat of Webb county, Texas, U.S.A., and a sub-port of entry, on the Rio Grande opposite Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and 150 m. S. of San Antonio. Pop. (1900) 13,429, of whom 6882 were foreign-born (mostly Mexicans) and 82 negroes; (1910 census) 14,855. It is served by the International & Great Northern, the National of Mexico, the Texas Mexican and the Rio Grande & Eagle Pass railways, and is connected by bridges with Nuevo Laredo. Among the principal buildings are the U.S. Government Building, the City Hall and the County Court House; and the city’s institutions
include the Laredo Seminary (1882) for boys and girls, the
Mercy Hospital, the National Railroad of Mexico Hospital and
an Ursuline Convent. Loma Vista Park (65 acres) is a pleasure
resort, and immediately W. of Laredo on the Rio Grande
is Fort McIntosh (formerly Camp Crawford), a United States
military post. Laredo is a jobbing centre for trade between
the United States and Mexico, and is a sub-port of entry in the
Corpus Christi Customs District. It is situated in a good farming
and cattle-raising region, irrigated by water from the Rio Grande.
The principal crop is Bermuda onions; in 1909 it was estimated
that 1500 acres in the vicinity were devoted to this crop, the
average yield per acre being about 20,000 ℔. There are coal
mines about 25 m. above Laredo on the Rio Grande, and natural
gas was discovered about 28 m. E. in 1908. The manufacture
of bricks is an important industry. Laredo was named from
the seaport in Spain, and was founded in 1767 as a Mexican town;
it originally included what is now Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and
was long the only Mexican town on the left bank of the river.
It was captured in 1846 by a force of Texas Rangers, and in
1847 was occupied by U.S. troops under General Lamar. In
1852 it was chartered as a city of Texas.
LA RÉOLE, a town of south-western France, capital of an
arrondissement in the department of Gironde, on the right bank
of the Gironde, 38 m. S.E. of Bordeaux by rail. Pop. (1906)
3469. La Réole grew up round a monastery founded in the
7th or 8th century, which was reformed in the 11th century and
took the name of Regula, whence that of the town. A church
of the end of the 12th century and some of the buildings (18th
century) are left. There is also a town hall of the 12th and
14th centuries. The town fortifications were dismantled by
order of Richelieu, but remains dating from the 12th and 14th
centuries are to be seen, as well as a ruined château built by
Henry II. of England. La Réole has a sub-prefecture, a tribunal
of first instance, a communal college and an agricultural school.
The town is the centre of the district in which the well-known
breed of Bazadais cattle is reared. It is an agricultural market
and carries on trade in the wine of the region together with
liqueur distillery and the manufacture of casks, rope, brooms, &c.
LARES (older form Lases), Roman tutelary deities. The
word is generally supposed to mean “lords,” and identified
with Etruscan larth, lar; but this is by no means certain. The
attempt to harmonize the Stoic demonology with Roman
religion led to the Lares being compared with the Greek “heroes”
during the period of Greco-Roman culture, and the word is
frequently translated ἥρωες. 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 earlier times. They were originally gods of the cultivated
fields, worshipped by each household where its allotment joined
those of others (see below). The distinction between public
and private Lares existed from early times. The latter were
worshipped in the house by the family alone, and the household
Lar (familiaris) was conceived of as the centre-point of the
family and of the family cult. The word itself (in the singular)
came to be used in the general sense of “home.” It is certain
that originally each household had only one Lar; the plural
was at first only used to include other classes of Lares, and only
gradually, after the time of Cicero, ousted the singular. The
image of the Lar, made of wood, stone or metal, sometimes
even of silver, stood in its special shrine (lararium), which in
early times was in the atrium, but was afterwards transferred
to other parts of the house, when the family hearth was removed
from the atrium. In some of the Pompeian houses the lararium
was represented by a niche only, containing the image of the lar.
It was usually a youthful figure, dressed in a short, high-girt
tunic, holding in one hand a rhyton (drinking-horn), in the other
a patera (cup). Under the Empire we find usually two of these,
one on each side of the central figure of the Genius of the head
of the household, sometimes of Vesta the hearth-deity. The
whole group was called indifferently Lares or Penates. A prayer
was said to the Lar every morning, and at each meal offerings
of food and drink were set before him; a portion of these was
placed on the hearth and afterwards shaken into the fire. Special
sacrifices were offered on the kalends, nones, and ides of every
month, and on the occasion of important family events. Such
events were the birthday of the head of the household; the
assumption of the toga virilis by a son; the festival of the
Caristia in memory of deceased members of the household;
recovery from illness; the entry of a young bride into the house
for the first time; return home after a long absence. On these
occasions the Lares were crowned with garlands, and offerings of
cakes and honey, wine and incense, but especially swine, were
laid before them. Their worship persisted throughout the
pagan period, although its character changed considerably in
later times. The emperor Alexander Severus had images of
Abraham, Christ and Alexander the Great among his household
Lares.
The public Lares belonged to the state religion. Amongst these must be included, at least after the time of Augustus, the Lares compitales. Originally two in number, mythologically the sons of Mercurius and Lara (or Larunda), they were the presiding deities of the cross-roads (compita), where they had their special chapels. It has been maintained by some that they are the twin brothers so frequent in early religions, the Romulus and Remus of the Roman foundation legends. Their sphere of influence included not only the cross-roads, but the whole neighbouring district of the town and country in which they were situated. They had a special annual festival, called Compitalia, to which public games were added some time during the republican period. When the colleges of freedmen and slaves, who assisted the presidents of the festival, were abolished by Julius Caesar, it fell into disuse. Its importance was revived by Augustus, who added to these Lares his own Genius, the religious personification of the empire.
The state itself had its own Lares, called praestites, the protecting patrons and guardians of the city. They had a temple and altar on the Via Sacra, near the Palatine, and were represented on coins as young men wearing the chlamys, carrying lances, seated, with a dog, the emblem of watchfulness, at their feet. Mention may also be made of the Lares grundules, whose worship was connected with the white sow of Alba Longa and its thirty young (the epithet has been connected with grunnire, to grunt): the viales, who protected travellers; the hostilii, who kept off the enemies of the state; the permarini, connected with the sea, to whom L. Aemilius Regillus, after a naval victory over Antiochus (190 B.C.), vowed a temple in the Campus Martius, which was dedicated by M. Aemilius Lepidus the censor in 179.
The old view that the Lares were the deified ancestors of the family has been rejected lately by Wissowa, who holds that the Lar was originally the protecting spirit of a man’s lot of arable land, with a shrine at the compitum, i.e. the spot where the path bounding his arable met that of another holding; and thence found his way into the house.
