Deity · Roman · c. 500 BCE
Mars
Also called Mavors · also recorded as god Mars, Roman god Mars, Mars (mythology) (per Wikidata)
Father of Romulus and second only to Jupiter in the state cult — an agricultural god as much as a martial one, and not simply the Greek Ares renamed.
Deep source base
An institution before he is a figure, which is the difference between him and the Greek god he is equated with. The Aeneid uses his name for the fighting itself — the field of Mars, the fury of Mars — where a Greek poem would have Ares on stage as a character, and Rome gave him a month, a priesthood and the paternity of Romulus. He is also, in the older Italic material, concerned with fields and boundaries as much as with war. Ovid puts him in Vulcan's net with Venus for the gods to laugh at, which is the Greek scandal retold in Latin, and the gap between that and the state cult is the clearest illustration in this corpus that literary treatment and civic religion were not the same thing.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
Where it was actually worshipped
The Campus Martius, which is named for him; and the temple of Mars Ultor in Augustus' forum, where the senate met to declare war.
A figure with temples and a figure that only ever existed on a page are different kinds of thing, and the difference is easy to lose once both are entries in a list.
At a glance
Vitals
Vitals
Also known as
- First attested
- The Aeneid · c. 19 BCE
- Rank
- God of War and the Fields
- Pantheon
- Roman
- Order
- Roman pantheon
- Base of operations
- The Campus Martius, which is named for him; and the temple of Mars Ultor in Augustus' forum, where the senate met to declare war.
- Era
- c. 500 BCE
- Traditions
- Roman
Traits
- Domain
- War, agriculture, boundaries, the Roman people
- Traditional form
- An armed warrior; also a spear kept in the Regia
- Metal of its planet (Agrippa, 1533)
- Iron and red brass — “Amongst Metals, Iron, and red Brass; and all fiery, red, and sulphureous things.” (I.27)
- Month
- March, named for him
- Planet
- Mars
1 site
Where was it worshipped?
Attested cult sites, located against the Pleiades gazetteer of the ancient world where it reaches and against Wikidata everywhere else. An absence here is not evidence that no cult existed: a good number of figures never had one, and the entry above says so where that is the case.
In Augustus' forum, where the senate met to declare war.
41.894, 12.487 · Pleiades 823121346
3 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 3 offices attributed to Mars, grouped by kind. Segment width is the share of powers falling in each category.
A bar dominated by one colour means a specialist; an even spread means a figure the sources credit with almost anything.
- martial2
- material1
1 mark
Which marks is it attached to?
A mark a figure carries and a mark used against a figure are opposite claims, so each link says which it is.
3 texts
Which texts say so?
When these texts were written
Each dot is one of the 3 texts that names Mars, placed at that text's approximate date.
A wide spread means the figure was carried across many centuries and traditions; a tight cluster means a single period produced the whole record.
3 texts, all inside a single century
War itself as much as a person — the field of Mars, the fury of Mars — with the god invoked where the Greek poem would name Ares as a character. The grammatical difference is a religious one: Rome's war god is an institution before he is a figure, which is why he is the one Olympian the empire never made a joke of.
March is his month, and Ovid gives him the agricultural and boundary functions the Roman cult actually observed — none of which the Greek Ares carries.
Caught in Vulcan's net with Venus and exhibited to the laughing gods — the Greek scandal retold in Latin. Rome's state god of war being humiliated as a comic adulterer in a poem written under Augustus is the corpus's sharpest illustration that literary treatment and civic cult were not the same religion.
Connections
What is it connected to?
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention Mars?
Is Mars the same as Ares?
What rank is Mars?
How else is Mars spelled?
What is Mars said to do?
How old is Mars?
Nearest in the corpus
If Mars is what you came for, these are next
Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.
Jupiter
King of the Gods · Roman
Sky-father and state god of Rome, identified with Zeus by the *interpretatio romana* — the ancient world's official policy of treating foreign gods as one's own under different names.
Saturn
God of the Golden Age · Roman
Deposed father of Jupiter. His December festival inverted the social order for a week, and his planet later became the astrological signature of melancholy and malice.
Janus
God of Doorways · Roman
God of thresholds with no Greek equivalent — the doors of his temple stood open in war and shut in peace, and they were almost never shut.
Pluto
Lord of the Underworld · Roman
The Roman Hades, whose alternative name Orcus survives in 'ogre' — and whose realm supplied Christian writers much of their imagery for hell.
Artemis
Mistress of Animals · Greek
Huntress and protector of the young, whose Ephesian cult statue looks nothing like her and whose temple gave the ancient world one of its most durable protective formulas.
Hades
Lord of the Underworld · Greek
Ruler of the dead by lot rather than by punishment — a god of the underworld who is not evil, a distinction Christian cosmology cannot express.
The books behind Mars
Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. They are public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.
The Aeneid
Virgil; tr. John Dryden · c. 19 BCE · Latin
Read The Aeneid in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Federico Barocci · Wikimedia file page
Fasti
Ovid · c. 8 CE · Latin
Read Fasti in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Giovanni Battista Tiepolo · Wikimedia file page
Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.