- The Dancing Lares and the Serpent in the Garden: Religion at the Roman Street Corner by Harriet Flower (2017; ISBN 978-0691175003) Entry-Level Religious – An important recent study in to the lares, the tutelary deities of households and neighbourhoods that form a distinctively Roman aspect of Roman religion. Flower focuses on the importance of their cult in daily life, and on the connections between ‘religious’ activity and other aspects of cultural, social, economic and political life. While the book’s scope runs throughout the Classical period, her most important case studies are concentrated in the Late Republic: Part III deals with the worship of the lares compitales on Delos from 120-90 BC and with the festival of the Compitalia, where the cult of the lares compitales became a flashpoint for violence and unrest in the 50s BC. An important book to evaluate what ‘religion’ means when discussing Ancient Rome.