I have read the following in a learned cyclopedia of the people:
In ancient Roman religion, the Salii were the “leaping priests” of Mars supposed to have been introduced by King Numa Pompilius. They were twelve patrician youths, dressed as archaic warriors: an embroidered tunic, a breastplate, a short red cloak (paludamentum), a sword, and a spiked headdress called an apex. They were charged with the twelve bronze shields called ancilia, which like the Mycenaean shield resembled a figure eight. One of the shields was said to have fallen from heaven in the reign of King Numa, and eleven copies were made to protect the identity of the sacred shield, on the advice of the nymph Egeria, ‘consort’ of Numa, who prophesied that wherever that shield was preserved the people would be the dominant people of the earth.
In that spirit I shall praise Mars, protector of the precious Italian blood and soil!
You wish to know why we who were sprung from the earth of Italy call Mars our father — well, I shall do my best to explain. I know it’s difficult for you to understand, you who were born in such a decadent and rootless age, when no one knows where they came from, where they’re going or who they are …
… but once there was a time when a man would spend his whole life laboring in the fields or seeking pleasant diversions in the woods. Rare it was for any man to travel further than three villages’ distance, and when he returned he was treated as a wonder with strange new stories to tell. The stranger, the more attention he got.
How many generations back can you count?
Three? Maybe four. Do you even know where these people are buried or anything more about them than their names?
Now imagine that the land around you was thick with your dead — going all the way back to those who fled Troy and settled here with Aeneas, who brought with him only his household gods in a sack and his aged father clinging to his back. Since that time your people have tended the earth, honored the gods of field and hearth, and been buried under the sod when their time came. That sod, right there. Grown over a hundred generations of dead men.
And now come men with deadly tools to slaughter your brothers and rape your wives and drag your sons (the son you held in your hands, smiling proudly down at him knowing he would carry your family’s name into the future) they want to drag your son away in chains so that he can never again make offerings at the mouth of the river (the river by whose shores you got your first kiss) or visit his grandfather’s grave or taste the wine of your family’s vineyard which tastes like the wine of nowhere else.
What would you do to stop this from happening?
And if there was one who could help you,
what name would be more appropriate to give him than Father?
Through Mars we have power,
the power to defend what is ours,
to protect those we love,
to care for the land.
Mars is father of all
for only those he favors
keep their line intact.
Tagged: ares, italy, politics, rome
