MARS (MANORS, MARMAR, MARSPITER or MASPITER), after Jupiter the most important deity of the Roman state, and never so much affected by foreign influences as to lose his essentially Roman and Italian character. Traces of his worship are found in all parts of central and southern Italy, and in several corn munities, as we learn from Ovid (Fasti, 3. 93 .seq.), he gave his name to a month, as at Rome to the first month of the old Roman year. We know little of the character of his cult except at Rome, and even at Rome it has been variously interpreted. In historical times his chief function at Rome was to protect the state in war; it is as a god of war that he is known to all readers of Roman liter ature,' and Wissowa holds this to have been his original and only function.
Until the time of Augustus Mars had but two temples at Rome. One of these was originally only an altar ; it was in the Campus Martius, the exercising ground of the army. The other was outside the Porta Capena : here each year the Equites met in order to start in procession through the city (Dion. Hal. 6. 13). Each of these sites was outside the pomerium, and this has been explained to mean that the war-god "must be kept at a distance" (Carter, Religion of Numa, p. i9). But in the heart of the city there was a sacrarium of Mars in the regia, originally the king's house, in which the sacred spears of Mars were kept, or rather, Mars in spear form (Mars Hasta) ; for on the outbreak of war the consul had to shake these spears, saying as he did it, Mars vigila ("Mars, wake up!"). If the spears moved of themselves, the omen was bad and called for expiation. The ancilia, or sacred shields, also formed part of this symbolic armoury of the Roman state: they were carried in procession by the Salii (q.v.), or danc ing warrior-priests of Mars on several occasions during the month of March up to the 23rd (tubilustrium), when the military trumpets (tubae) were lustrated; and again in October to the 19th (armilustrium), when both the ancilia and the arms of the exercitus were purified and put away for the winter. During the four months of the Italian winter the worship of Mars seems at a standstill; his activity is all in the warm season, i.e., in the season of warfare. It is only at the end of February that we find indications of the coming Mars-cult; Quirinalia, Feb. 17 (Quiri nus closely resembled Mars) ; first Equirria, Feb. 27. This, like the second t quirria (Mar. 14) was no doubt a rite intended to benefit the war-horses accompanied with sacrifice to Mars, pre paratory to the opening of the season of arms.
There is thus abundant evidence that Mars was always a deity especially connected with warfare; and it is hardly necessary to add proof of a less convincing kind, e.g., that Nerio, his feminine cult-partner, seems to be etymologically "the strong one," or that he is in legend the father of Romulus, the warlike king and founder of the Roman army. In founding his famous temple of Mars
Ultor (the avenger of Caesar) in the Forum Augusti, Augustus gave a new turn to this worship, and for a time it seems to have been a rival of that of the Capitoline Jupiter (see Carter, Religion of Numa, p. 174 seq.), and by about A.D. 250 Mars became the most prominent of the di militares worshipped by the Roman Legions.
There are, however, certain features in the Mars cult which 'Mars-bellum by metonymy ; but this could be explained as a Hellenism.
make it probable that this god was in early times, at least, also associated with agriculture; and this is in harmony with the facts: (I) that the season of arms is also the season of the growth, ripen ing and harvesting of the crops; (2) that the early Roman com munity was an agricultural as well as a military one, as is indi cated in its religious calendar (Fowler, Roman Festivals, p. 334). Thus Mars was invoked in the ancient hymn of the Arval Broth ers, whose religious duties had as their object to keep off enemies of all kinds from crops and herds (Henzen, Acta Fratr. Arv. p. 26), and his association here with the Lares (q.v.) proves that he is not regarded as a war-god who could avert the raid of an enemy. Still more striking is the invocation of Mars (with the cult-title Silvanus) in the yearly lustration of his land by the Roman farm er (Cato, De agric. 141), where Mars's help is besought against disease and famine, not war. Three times the procession went round the land, reciting prayers and driving the victims to be sacrificed, viz., pig, sheep and ox (suovetaurilia), representing the farmer's most valuable stock. We can hardly doubt that in the state ceremony of the Ambarvalia, i.e., the lustratio of the ager Romanus in its earliest form, the same god was invoked and the same ritual used (Fowler, op. cit. p. 124 seq.). Again in the curious ritual of the sacrifice to Mars of the October horse (Oct. 15 : Fowler op. cit. 241), though the animal was undoubtedly a war-horse, the head was cut off and decked with cakes, as we are told (Paul. Diac. 220) ob frugum eventum. Quirinus also is not without an association with agricultural perils, for it was his flamen who sacrificed the victims at the Robigalia on April 25, when the spirit of the mildew (Robigus) was invoked to spare the corn (Ovid, Fasti, 4. 901 seq.).' The most reasonable conclusion seems to be that Mars, what ever his ultimate origin, became early a "high god" of the Italic peoples, and hence reflects their activities (I) in clearing forests (Mars Silvanus; cp. the fact that wolves and woodpeckers are sacred to him), (2) in agriculture, (3) in war.
See Roscher in Myth. Lex. s.v., (bibl.) ; W. Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals (1908) and Religious Experience (19ii) ; Wissowa, Religion and Kultus der Romer (1912). (W. W. F.)