The Penates were the Roman gods of the penus, the household's inner store of food, wine and oil, kept as small images in a cupboard or niche near the hearth. Unlike many other Roman deities, the Penates had no single fixed identity or standard iconography beyond a general resemblance to the Lares, youthful armed or drinking figures; what mattered was their function, not a settled mythology.
Their most famous story ties them to Rome's own foundation. Vergil's Aeneid has Aeneas carry the Penates of Troy out of the burning city and across the Mediterranean to Italy, where their eventual settlement becomes the guarantee of Rome's future. Ancient sources located the public Penates of the Roman state first at Lavinium, the city Aeneas was said to have founded, and later on the Velia hill in Rome itself, tended as guardians of the continuity of the Roman people distinct from, but paired with, the state hearth of Vesta.
At the household level, the Penates traveled with the family rather than staying fixed to the house, carried along when a household moved and formally welcomed into the new home. They received a portion of every meal, and a household member returning from a journey owed them a greeting before anything else. Cicero treats care of the Penates as one mark of a properly maintained household, alongside the Lares and the ancestral dead, part of the ordinary religious discipline expected of any Roman family regardless of rank.