Pavor- Roman GodDeity
Domains
Description
When the Alban forces deserted mid-battle and the Roman line began to crack, King Tullus Hostilius vowed a temple to Pavor, the spirit of terror, and to his brother Pallor, the spirit of pale dread. He won the battle. He built both shrines.
Mythology & Lore
The Battle Against Veii
Pavor was terror on the battlefield: the moment when discipline broke and an army became a stampeding mob. He was Mars's son, and he rode ahead of his father's chariot with his brother Pallor, who was fear made visible in blanched faces and shaking hands.
Livy records the battle where Pavor received his cult. Rome was fighting the combined forces of Veii and Fidenae when the Alban contingent under Mettius Fufetius deserted to the enemy. The Roman line wavered. Tullus Hostilius, seeing his army on the edge of panic, vowed temples to both Pavor and Pallor if they would turn that same terror against his enemies instead. The Romans held. They won. Hostilius built the shrines and assigned them their own Salii priests, the Pavorii and the Pallorii.
In the Poets
Statius placed Pavor in Mars's retinue in the Thebaid: a figure sent ahead of the war god to break armies before the fighting started. Augustine noted that Romans worshipped Pavor not out of devotion but to keep him away, the way you might pay a god you feared rather than loved.
Relationships
- Family
- Equivalent to