God of war and guardian of Rome. More prominent in Roman religion than his Greek counterpart Ares, Mars was also a god of agriculture and fertility. Father of Romulus and Remus, legendary founders of Rome.
Mars is a war god, and he is also something Ares almost never is: an ancestor. With the Vestal Rhea Silvia he fathered Romulus and Remus, which makes him divine grandfather of the Roman people. The Campus Martius, the army's field, carried his name. So did the month of March, when campaigning weather returned and the Salii danced with the sacred shields.
Agriculture and arms
Before he is only a soldier, Mars is a god of the land's edge: fields that must be defended, spring that must be opened. Cato's farmer prayed to him to keep disease, disaster, and barrenness off the property. The October Horse, sacrificed after the year's last races, belongs to this older Mars as much as to the legionary one.
Not a lesser Ares
Greek Ares is chaotic and often disliked. Roman Mars is honorable, ancestral, and politically useful. Augustus's Temple of Mars Ultor in the Forum Augustum made him the avenger of Caesar and the sponsor of recovered standards, a civic weapon rather than a personification of bloodlust.
Origin Story
Mars was the son of Jupiter and Juno. He fathered Romulus and Remus with the Vestal Virgin Rhea Silvia, making him the divine ancestor of the Roman people.
Primary Sources
Historical texts and references
“Inferior ministers, for Mars, repair his broken axletrees and blunted war, and send him forth again with furbish'd arms, to wake the lazy war with trumpets' loud alarms.”
Worship & Cult
How Mars was venerated in ancient times
Sacred Temples
•Temple of Mars Ultor in the Forum of Augustus
•Altar and later temple in the Campus Martius
•Outside the pomerium in early Rome, where an army god belonged
The Salii danced with the ancilia in March and October. The flamen Martialis kept his cult. The October Horse was a chariot race whose right-hand horse was killed and its head fought over by neighborhoods. Mars is agriculture's guard as much as the legion's.
