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.
Venus was married to Vulcan. Her affair with Mars was the most famous in mythology — and to Rome, the most meaningful. Love and war were not opposites. They were the two forces that made civilization possible.
The myth of Romulus and Remus is more than Rome’s origin story. It is a theological statement about why Rome existed at all — and why the Romans believed the gods had willed it into being from the start.
She had two completely different cults that eventually merged into one goddess. The original Roman Bellona was austere and institutional. The imported one demanded blood.
Romulus killed his brother to found Rome, abducted the Sabine women to populate it, ruled for thirty-seven years, and then vanished in a storm. The Romans deified him. They also suspected the senators had torn him apart.
March is named for him. So is the planet. He was the father of Romulus, the divine patron of Roman armies, and — before any of that — a god of farming.