The Festival of Mamuraliais, (connected to Mamurius Veturius, the craftsman who made the ritual shields ( ancilia) that hung in the temple of Mars), is thought to have been a New Year festival, held on the Ides of March, when old men, dressed in animal skins, were beaten and driven from the city, a sort of find a scapegoat affair.
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Originally the Ides were determined by the full moon, using the lunar Roman calendar, the Ides of March would have been the first full moon of the New Year. 100BC – 44 BC Photo Hulton Archive, Getty Images
This Roman victory over ancient Greece, you could say, was a ‘double whammy’, not only did they gain power, they gained a culture, in fact, you could take this a step further, which I will, and say, ‘Roman culture was mostly copied from, or at least, influenced by the Greeks’. The ancient Greeks were defeated by the Romans in 146 BC, after the Battle of Corinth, and remained under Roman rule until 180 AD, an era described as the Pax Romana, peace between Roman Empire and Greece, and Greek colonies. Veni, vidi, vici – ‘I came I saw I conquered’, a Latin phrase attributed to Julius Caesar (who used the phrase in a letter to the Roman Senate around 47 BC about his quick victory in his short war against Pharnaces II of Pontus at the Battle of Zela).
As I tell you about the god Mars and the month of March, I will try to make sense for you, as I go along, of what was Greek, what was Roman, what was shared or borrowed, and what was pinched, when it comes to ancient Greek culture versus Roman culture, I’ll start you off with a brief account of how the ancient Greeks influenced Roman culture.
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