From Mars to Lusus Troiae - The initiation rites of Roman warriors
Mars is the ancient Italic god, represented - as told by Virgil - in the Archaic period with a headdress consisting of a helmet adorned by two pens; its sacred animals are the woodpecker and wolf, whose human aspect is represented by Picus, king of the Aborigines founder of Alba and son of Mars, and Faunus, son of Picus and therefore grandson of Mars.
Mars is the lord of the "out", is his responsibility to to maintain order even with the use of arms, is his responsibility to to protect the outside of the city, fields, removing all that is evil, then not only the enemies but also the dark and negative forces.
When they feared disaster or needed to face a great danger, the ancient Italic peoples promised sacrifices to the gods, and first of all in Mars; the population carried out the ver sacrum (sacred spring) or the vote to immolate to God all the animals and the young people who were born in the following spring; upon arrival of spring were sacrificed animals while the children were grown up to the age when young people were sent to live in other cities or to build a new city (as also occurred in the Sunni culture). It was a truly painful sacrifice for the city that is so deprived of his sons and threatened to harm his ability to survive.
Mars was the god who had to protect these young people who were taken away; the archaic ritual of the ver sacrum has many close links to the legend of Romulus and Remus, who as fate would were removed from the native Albalonga because their fate would only be made with the foundation of a new city that would dominate the world. If Mars was the father of the twins, and somehow advocate of their destiny, it was inevitable that it was the God to protect the youth of the new city where they are to overcome the difficulties of a new beginning.
As in the sacred tradition all young people, even if in different ways, had in Mars the divinity that followed them in passage rites, and in fact the life of the young Romans began with participation in the Saliares confraternity.
The Salii were the priests whom the king Numa Pompilius had entrusted the shield of Mars and was originally a confraternity attended by Iuvenes to be educated to understand the military and religious values.
They were accepted into the confraternity only young people who had both parents, the entrance was at a very young age typically after switching from puer in iuvenis, the rite was done usually around sixteen years old.
The confraternity was preparing young people for participation in the rites performed when the shields were brought in procession; it was mainly a jumping dance (hence their name saliares) also called pyrrhichios that it was the celebration of the "pedagogy of war" in which young people were initiated.
The pyrrhic dance was a war dance, of uncertain origin attributed to Spartan or Cretan and carried into the Italic peoples from the first peoples arrived at the Bronze Age; the dancers, accompanied by singing and flute, rhythmically repeated gestures of attack and defense, imitating the movements of a battle ...
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by M.L. ©ALL RIGHTS RESERVED (Ed 1.0 - 27/07/2016)