The History of Rome

Domestic and family life in general were represented by the festival of the goddess of the house and of the spirits of the storechamber, Vesta and the Penates (Vestalia, June 9); the festival of the goddess of birth[2] (Matralia, June 11); the festival of the blessing of children, dedicated to Liber and Libera (Liberalia, March 17), the festival of departed spirits (Feralia, February 21), and the three days' ghost-celebration (Lemuria May 9, 11, 13); while those having reference to civil relations were the two - otherwise to us somewhat obscure - festivals of the king's flight (Regifugium, February 24) and of the people's flight (Poplifugia, July 5), of which at least the last day was devoted to Jupiter, and the festival of the Seven Mounts (Agonia or Septimontium, December 11). A special day (agonia, January 9) was also consecrated to Janus, the god of beginning. The real nature of some other days - that of Furrina (July 25), and that of the Larentalia devoted to Jupiter and Acca Larentia, perhaps a feast of the Lares (December 23) - is no longer known. This table is  complete  for the immoveable  public festivals; and - although by the side of these standing festal days there certainly occurred from the earliest times changeable and occasional festivals - this document, in what it says as well as in what it omits, opens up to us an insight into a primitive age otherwise almost wholly lost to us. The union of the Old Roman community and the Hill-Romans had indeed already taken place when this table of festivals was formed, for we find in it Quirinus alongside of Mars; but, when this festival-list was drawn up, the Capitoline temple was not yet in existence, for Juno and Minerva are absent; nor was the temple of Diana erected on the Aventine; nor was any notion of worship borrowed from the Greeks.

Mars and Jupiter

The central object not only of Roman but of Italian worship generally in that epoch when the Italian stock still dwelt by itself in the peninsula was, according to all indications, the god Maurs or Mars, the killing god[3], preeminently regarded as the divine champion of the burgesses, hurling the spear, protecting the flock, and overthrowing the foe. Each community of course possessed its own Mars, and deemed him to be the strongest and holiest of all; and accordingly every "ver sacrum" setting out to found a new community marched under the protection of its own Mars. To Mars was dedicated the first month not only in the Roman calendar of the months, which in no other instance takes notice of the gods, but also probably in all the other Latin and Sabellian calendars: among the Roman proper names, which in like manner contain no allusion to any gods, Marcus, Mamercus, and Mamurius appear in prevailing use from very early times; with Mars and his sacred woodpecker was connected the oldest Italian prophecy; the wolf, the animal sacred to Mars, was the badge of the Roman burgesses, and such sacred national legends as the Roman imagination was able to produce referred exclusively to the god Mars and to his duplicate Quirinus. In the list of festivals certainly Father Diovis - a purer and more civil than military reflection of the character of the Roman community - occupies a larger space than Mars, just as the priest of Jupiter has precedence over the two priests of the god of war; but the latter still plays a very prominent part in the list, and it is even quite likely that, when this arrangement of festivals was established, Jovis stood by the side of Mars like Ahuramazda by the side of Mithra, and that the worship of the warlike Roman community still really centred at this time in the martial god of death and his March festival, while it was not the "care-destroyer" afterwards introduced by the Greeks, but Father Jovis himself, who was regarded as the god of the heart-gladdening wine.

Nature of the Roman Gods