Mars- Roman GodDeity"God of War"

Romulus and Remus

The Vestal Virgin Rhea Silvia bore twin sons to Mars. Her uncle King Amulius ordered the infants drowned, but the servants set them adrift on the Tiber instead. The river carried them to the foot of the Palatine Hill. A she-wolf, Mars's sacred animal, found them and nursed them in a cave. The shepherd Faustulus raised them as his own.

When the brothers grew, they killed Amulius and restored their grandfather Numitor to his throne. They set out to found a city of their own. They quarreled over where to build it. Romulus killed Remus, drew the boundaries, and gave the city his name.

The Sacred Shields

Each March, twenty-four priests called the Salii danced through Rome's streets in archaic military dress: the striped trabea and the pointed apex. They carried twelve sacred shields called ancilia. One had fallen from heaven during the reign of King Numa. Numa ordered the smith Mamurius Veturius to forge eleven copies so that no thief could tell which was the original.

The Salii sang the Carmen Saliare as they processed, one of the oldest Latin hymns. By the late Republic, even the priests who sang it could no longer understand its words. At stations along the route they stopped to feast. The feasting was so lavish that "a Salian banquet" became a Roman expression for excess.

The March dances opened the military season. In October, the Salii danced again to close it and put the shields away.

The October Horse

On the Ides of October, after the last chariot race in the Campus Martius, the right-hand horse of the winning team was killed with a spear. Its tail was cut off and carried at speed to the Regia in the Forum, where the blood was dripped onto the sacred hearth. The horse's head was fought over by two neighborhoods, the Suburra and the Via Sacra, each trying to nail it to a wall in their district.

Festus preserved a description of the rite. No Roman of the late Republic could say for certain what it meant. They knew only that it was very old, and that it belonged to Mars.

Mars Ultor

On the eve of the Battle of Philippi in 42 BCE, Octavian vowed a temple to Mars the Avenger if the assassins of Julius Caesar fell. They fell.

The Temple of Mars Ultor rose in Augustus's new forum. Inside, he placed the legionary standards that the Parthians had captured from Crassus at Carrhae in 53 BCE. Generals departed for war from this temple. Young men coming of age received their first military gear at its doors. The Senate met here to vote on war and peace.

The Net

Mars loved Venus. Venus was married to Vulcan. The smith found out and forged an unbreakable net, fine as spider silk. He draped it over the bed and waited. When Mars and Venus lay together, the net snapped shut. Vulcan called the other gods to look. They laughed.

Venus was mother of Aeneas. Mars was father of Romulus. Between them they had made Rome.

Father Mars

Cato's De Agri Cultura prescribes the suovetaurilia for the annual purification of a farm: a pig, a sheep, and a bull led around the field's boundaries before sacrifice. The prayer addresses "Father Mars" and asks him to drive disease and ruin from the fields, to make the crops grow tall.