magical powers;
but if so, the memory and importance of such disabilities was rapidly
forgotten in the City-state, and they were early allowed to fill civil
offices, a privilege which the Dialis did not attain till the second
century B.C.[267] Of the sacrificial duties of the Martialis we know
nothing for certain, and can get no help from him as to the ideas of the
early Romans about their great deity Mars.

Mars is in some ways the most interesting of all the Roman deities; but
except as the familiar war-god of Roman history he remains a somewhat
doubtful conception. Like Jupiter and Janus he has attained to a real
name; but of that name, which in various forms is still so often on our
lips, no convincing account has ever been given. Comparative mythology
used to be much occupied with him, and he has been compared with Indra,
Apollo, Odin, and others. But as M. Reinach said, it is time to attend
more closely to differences; and Mars seems to stand best by himself, as
a genuine Italian religious conception. His name is found all over
ancient Italy in various forms--Mavors, Mamers, Marmor, and as Cerfus
Martius at Iguvium. His wild and warlike character, his association with
the wolf and the spear, seem to suggest the struggle for existence that
must have gone on among the tribes that pushed down into a peninsula of
rugged mountain and dense forest, abounding with the wolves which are
not yet wholly extinct there. Whether or no his antecedents are to be
found in other lands, we shall not be far wrong in assuming that the
Roman Mars was the product of life and experience in Italy, and Italy
only.

There is an excellent general account of him in Roscher's article in
his _Lexicon_, which, like that on Janus, has the advantage of being the
result of a second elaborate study, free from the enticements of the
comparative method. What we know for certain about his cult at Rome in
early times can be very briefly stated. First, we have the striking fact
that he is conspicuous, together with the Lares, in the _carmen_ which
has come down to us as sung by the Arval Brethren in their lustration of
the cultivated land of the Roman city:[268] "Neve luerve Marmor sins
incurrere in pleores, satur fu fere Mars!" One is naturally inclined to
ask how this wild and warlike spirit can have anything to do with
cultivation and crops. But there is no mistake; the connection is
confirmed by the fact that he is also the chief object of invocatio