Third and fourth in the order of invocation came Mars and Quirinus, and the same order held good for their flamines. These two priests may have been subject to some of the taboos which restricted the Flamen Dialis;[266] they too, that is, may have been to some extent precious, and have been endowed in a lost period of history with magical powers; but if so, the memory and importance of such disabilities was rapidly forgotten in the City-state, and they were early allowed to fill civil offices, a privilege which the Dialis did not attain till the second century B.C.[267] Of the sacrificial duties of the Martialis we know nothing for certain, and can get no help from him as to the ideas of the early Romans about their great deity Mars.
Mars is in some ways the most interesting of all the Roman deities; but except as the familiar war-god of Roman history he remains a somewhat doubtful conception. Like Jupiter and Janus he has attained to a real name; but of that name, which in various forms is still so often on our lips, no convincing account has ever been given. Comparative mythology used to be much occupied with him, and he has been compared with Indra, Apollo, Odin, and others. But as M. Reinach said, it is time to attend more closely to differences; and Mars seems to stand best by himself, as a genuine Italian religious conception. His name is found all over ancient Italy in various forms--Mavors, Mamers, Marmor, and as Cerfus Martius at Iguvium. His wild and warlike character, his association with the wolf and the spear, seem to suggest the struggle for existence that must have gone on among the tribes that pushed down into a peninsula of rugged mountain and dense forest, abounding with the wolves which are not yet wholly extinct there. Whether or no his antecedents are to be found in other lands, we shall not be far wrong in assuming that the Roman Mars was the product of life and experience in Italy, and Italy only.
There is an excellent general account of him in Roscher's article in his _Lexicon_, which, like that on Janus, has the advantage of being the result of a second elaborate study, free from the enticements of the comparative method. What we know for certain about his cult at Rome in early times can be very briefly stated. First, we have the striking fact that he is conspicuous, together with the Lares, in the _carmen_ which has come down to us as sung by the Arval Brethren in their lustration of the cultivated land of the Roman city:[268] "Neve luerve Marmor sins incurrere in pleores, satur fu fere Mars!" One is naturally inclined to ask how this wild and warlike spirit can have anything to do with cultivation and crops. But there is no mistake; the connection is confirmed by the fact that he is also the chief object of invocation in the private _lustratio_ of the farm, which Cato has preserved for us.[269] In each case the victims are the same, the _suovetaurilia_ of ox, sheep, and pig, the farmer's most valuable property. Again, let us remember that the month which bears his name is that not only of the opening of the war season, but of the springing up of vegetation, and that the dances and singing of the Salii at this time may probably have been meant, like similar performances of savage peoples,[270] to frighten away evil demons from the precious cultivated land and its growing produce, and to call on the Power to wake to new life. The clue to the mystery is perhaps to be found in the cult-title Silvanus which we find in the prayer set down by Cato as proper for the protection of the cattle when they are on their summer pasture (_in silva_): "Marti Silvano in silva interdius in capita singula boum facito."[271] We know that wealth in early Italy consisted chiefly of sheep and cattle; we know that these were taken in the warm months, as they still are, into the forest (_saltus_) to feed;[272] and from this passage of Cato we know that Mars was there. It is only going one step farther if we conjecture that Mars, like Silvanus, who may have been an offshoot of his own being, was for the early settler never a peaceful inhabitant of the farm or the dwelling, but a spirit of the woodland of great importance for the cattle-owner, and of great importance, too, in all circumambulation of the boundaries which divided the woodland from the cultivated land.[273]