Prayer to the Penates

A young man in a comedy of Plautus is leaving home, and before he goes he commits his parents' property to the household gods.

The language is deliberately old. Meum parentum for meorum parentum, familiai for familiae — the archaic genitive in -ai, out of living speech long before Plautus. It survives in ritual texts, and Plautus exploits that: the moment his comic hero begins to pray, he switches automatically into the language of his great-grandfathers.

Vobis mando — I commit to you. The verb is not devotional but commercial: mandare means to place in custody, to entrust the conduct of a matter. The property is deposited with the gods on receipt, as one deposits it with an agent before a journey.

Two parties are named at once: the Penates, who govern the stores and the larder, and Lar pater, father Lar, master of the house as a place. Romans understood the distinction, though by Plautus' day they could no longer explain it properly.