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You left your head out—I hope it clears
I was looking for something else on my computer and found a block of mythographical text I had obviously compiled for someone, I have no idea whom. Late October or early November 2011. I hope I actually sent it to them:
The problem with Mars is the same as with all the indigenous Roman gods: they were fused so early with the Olympians, it can be difficult to pick out what is underneath the interpretatio graeca. He is the god of war, yes; he can be identified in statues and murals from his helmet and spear, which is his emblem as Jupiter's is the thunderbolt, Neptune's the trident, Saturn's the sickle. He is also a god of agriculture: the Carmen Arvale, the archaic chant of the Fratres Arvales, the Brothers of the Field, calls upon him to keep off rust from the crops. He is also invoked as Mars Silvanus, Mars of the wildwood. (One of the essential qualities of Roman gods is their multiplicity: he is also Mars Gradivus, Mars whom the armies march by; Mars Quirinus, Mars of oaths and treaties; Mars Pater, divine father of the Romans and the name under which he is called to the battlefield self-sacrifice of the devotio; Mars Ultor, Mars the avenger; and any number of other cult titles I cannot list off the top of my head. There was a lot of syncretism in the provinces, especially among the Celts, about whose many-faced gods I know even less.) The wolf is one of his animals; so is the woodpecker. To him is sacrificed the October Horse: a chariot race is held on the Campus Martius on the Ides of October, the lead horse of the winning team is spear-killed by a priest of Mars and beheaded, then fought over by two teams of youths; its tail is cut off and brought to the Regia, which was once the palace of the kings of Rome. His other festival is in March, which Ovid in the Fasti claims was originally the first month of the Roman year. Together they bracket the spring-through-fall season of farming and campaigning. He is at rest in winter. The old form of his name is Mavors.
The problem with Mars is the same as with all the indigenous Roman gods: they were fused so early with the Olympians, it can be difficult to pick out what is underneath the interpretatio graeca. He is the god of war, yes; he can be identified in statues and murals from his helmet and spear, which is his emblem as Jupiter's is the thunderbolt, Neptune's the trident, Saturn's the sickle. He is also a god of agriculture: the Carmen Arvale, the archaic chant of the Fratres Arvales, the Brothers of the Field, calls upon him to keep off rust from the crops. He is also invoked as Mars Silvanus, Mars of the wildwood. (One of the essential qualities of Roman gods is their multiplicity: he is also Mars Gradivus, Mars whom the armies march by; Mars Quirinus, Mars of oaths and treaties; Mars Pater, divine father of the Romans and the name under which he is called to the battlefield self-sacrifice of the devotio; Mars Ultor, Mars the avenger; and any number of other cult titles I cannot list off the top of my head. There was a lot of syncretism in the provinces, especially among the Celts, about whose many-faced gods I know even less.) The wolf is one of his animals; so is the woodpecker. To him is sacrificed the October Horse: a chariot race is held on the Campus Martius on the Ides of October, the lead horse of the winning team is spear-killed by a priest of Mars and beheaded, then fought over by two teams of youths; its tail is cut off and brought to the Regia, which was once the palace of the kings of Rome. His other festival is in March, which Ovid in the Fasti claims was originally the first month of the Roman year. Together they bracket the spring-through-fall season of farming and campaigning. He is at rest in winter. The old form of his name is Mavors.
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I honestly haven't got much off the top of my head except Cato's De agri cultura, which means you may have to read Cato. It's probably something about the boundaries of the wild and the cultivated, not, like, guerrilla warfare in the forests.
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Huh. The protection of cattle makes sense to me; it's the function of the ritual recorded by Cato which is my first association with Mars Silvanus. (All of my classical materials are in boxes, so I was about to try to track it down on the wider internet, but it turns out to be translated on Wikipedia, which makes me feel stupid.) I wouldn't have assumed a connection to cattle raiding, though. It feels more in keeping with warding off corn rust from the crops—murrain from the cattle, etc.
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