In attendance on Mars we find Metus and Pallor, who answer to the Greek deities already mentioned; and also his sister Bellona, corresponding to the Enyo, who was worshipped in Pontus and Cappadocia, though not in Greece proper. Bellona had a temple in the Campus Martius.
Fig. 15—Mars Ludovisi.
The Campus Martius (Field of Mars), the celebrated place of exercise of the Roman youth, stretched from the Quirinal westwards to the Tiber, and was dedicated to the god of war. Augustus, after the overthrow of the murderers of Cæsar, his adoptive father, erected a temple to Mars, which was built in Greek style, and far surpassed in grandeur and splendour all the other temples of the god. Three columns of it are still standing, mute witnesses of vanished splendour. A large number of religious festivities were celebrated in the month of March in honour of Mars. The procession of the Salii formed the chief feature of the festival; but there were also races and games. On the Ides of October also a chariot race took place in honour of Mars, at which the singular custom prevailed of offering the near horse of the victorious team to the god. The inhabitants of the two oldest quarters of the city contended for the head of the slaughtered animal, and whoever got it was supposed to reap great blessings from its possession.
Ancient artists represented Mars as a tall and powerful young man, whose activity, however, is as apparent as his strength. His characteristic features are short curly hair, small eyes, and broad nostrils, significant of the violence and passionateness of his nature. The most celebrated of existing statues is the Mars Ludovisi of the Villa Ludovisi, at Rome. It has often been conjectured that this is an imitation of the renowned work of Scopas. The deity is depicted as resting after battle; and, in spite of the usual turbulence of his disposition, he here appears to have surrendered himself to a more gentle frame of mind. The little god of love crouching at his feet gazes into his face with a roguish, triumphant smile, as though rejoiced to see that even the wildest and most untameable must submit to his sway, and thus shows us what has called forth this gentle mood. (Fig. 15.) The Mars Ludovisi is an original work, Greek in its origin, though belonging to a somewhat late period. The Borghese Mars of the Louvre, on the other hand, is undoubtedly of Roman origin. It is supposed to represent Ares bound by the craft of Hephæstus.
Fig. 16.—Bust of Ares. Sculpture Gallery at Munich.
Besides these two principal statues, the bust of Mars of the Munich collection deserves mention. It is distinguished by a peculiarly expressive head, of which we give an engraving (Fig. 16).
The attributes of Mars are the helmet (decorated with the figures of wolf-hounds and griffins), shield, and spear. The animals sacred to him were the wolf, the horse, and the woodpecker.
7. Aphrodite (Venus).—In the Iliad, Aphrodite is represented as the daughter of Zeus and Dione, the goddess of moisture, who, as the wife of the god of heaven, was held in high esteem among the old Pelasgians. The same notion of the goddess being produced from moisture is seen in the legend, which relates that Aphrodite was born of the foam of the sea, and first touched land on the island of Cyprus, which was henceforth held sacred to her. She was probably a personification of the creative and generative forces of nature, and figured among the Greeks as goddess of beauty and sexual love. We must not forget that this conception does not cover the whole character of the goddess. She not only appears as Aphrodite Pandemus (the earthly Aphrodite), a goddess of the spring, by whose wondrous power all germs in the natural and vegetable world are quickened, but we also hear of Aphrodite Urania, a celestial deity, who was venerated as the dispenser of prosperity and fertility; and also an Aphrodite Pontia (of the sea), the tutelary deity of ships and mariners, who controlled the winds and the waves, and granted to ships a fair and prosperous passage. As the worship of Aphrodite was extremely popular among the numerous islands and ports of the Grecian seas, we can well imagine that it was in this latter character that she received her greatest share of honour.