Gods, Goddesses, and Ancient Legends
Before a Roman general marched, he shook a set of sacred spears and ordered the war god to wake up. Mars wasn’t prayed to and forgotten — he was built into Rome’s calendar, its priesthoods, and the army’s sense of itself.
Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BCE. Octavian vowed to Mars that he would have vengeance. The temple he built twenty-seven years later was Rome’s most deliberate piece of political theology.
Rome had one god of war and dozens of names for him. Each name was a different situation, a different need, a different version of the same divine force.