gh the
introduction of cults from neighbouring Italian towns.

=Mars.=--We have seen reason to believe that in the earlier stages of
Roman religion Mars was a _numen_ of vegetation, but though the
Ambarvalia was duly taken over into the state-cult and attained a very
high degree of importance, yet there can be no doubt that in the
state-religion Mars was pre-eminently associated with war. Iuppiter
might help at need in averting defeat and awarding victory, but it was
with Mars that the general conduct of war rested. His sacred animal is
the warlike wolf, his symbols the spears and the sacred shields
(_ancilia_), which during his own month (_Martius_)--the 1st of which
is his special festival--his priests (_Salii_) wearing the full
war-dress (_trabea_ and _tunica picta_) carry with sacred dance and
song round the city. His altar is in the Campus Martius, outside the
city-walls and therefore within the sphere of the _imperium militiae_,
and the other festivals associated with him are of a warlike character:
the races of the war-horse (Equirria) on March 14 and February 27, and
the great race on the Ides of October, when the winner was solemnly
slain: the lustration of the arms at the Quinquatrus on March 19 and
the Armilustrium of October 19--at the beginning and end of the
campaigning season: and the lustration of the war-trumpets on the 23rd
of March and the 23rd of May. But above all in honour of Mars is held
the great quinquennial _lustrum_ associated with the census, when the
people are drawn up in military array around his altar in the Campus
Martius and the solemn offering of the _suovetaurilia_ (is this a faint
relic of his agricultural character?) after being carried three times
round the gathered host, is offered on his altar in prayer for the
military future of the state. Hardly any god in the state-cult has his
character so clearly marked, and we may regard Mars as a deity who,
taking on new functions to suit the needs of the times, almost entirely
lost the traces of his original nature.

=Quirinus.=--Iuppiter and Mars then became the great state-deities of
the developed community and to them is added, as the contribution of
the Colline settlement, their own particular deity, Quirinus. He, like
them, has his own _flamen_; like Mars he has his _Salii_, and his
festival finds its place in the Calendars on February the 17th. But of
his ritual and character we know practically nothing: the ritual was
obscured be