Depictions of the Roman god of war in early Gaul and Britain are multiform and complex because of two opposed but concurrent forces. First, the imperial-minded Romans applied interpretatio romana (see GAUL), which prompted them to ignore the native names of indigenous gods and simply denote them with Latin names. Secondly, the colonized natives followed what we now call interpretatio celtica, adapting the conqueror's deities to local religious needs, often adding a distinctive indigenous epithet. Thus the Mars of the early Celtic world appears far less bellicose than his Roman antecedent, even though Julius Caesar (1st cent. BC) describes Mars as a popular war-god in Gaul and Lucan's Pharsalia (1st cent. AD) equates the unmistakably warlike Teutates with Mars. Instead, abundant archaeological evidence implies the widespread worship of Mars in the Roman-occupied Celtic world. He became the primary healing god of Roman Britain, especially with the epithet Loucetius, Leucetius, Lucetius [Latin, light, bright], at the great healing temple of Aquae Sulis Minerva at Bath. Another epithet of the healing god Mars is Lenus, especially as found at Trier, Germany; but Lenus may have pre-dated Roman conquest, as dedications found in Britain speak of Lenus Mars. The animal most associated with Mars's iconography is the goose, which for the Celts evokes the protectiveness of an alert sentry as well as a certain measure of aggression.
Mars's worship sometimes appears to co-opt that of indigenous deities, so that his identity becomes mixed with that of presumably Celtic figures, whose names may appear independently or linked with his as an epithet. Such figures, widely known in the Celtic world, include: Belatucadros, Camulos, Cocidius, Condatis, Mullo, Nodons, Ocelus, Olloudius, Rudianus, Rudiobus, Segomo, Smertrius, Teutates, and Visucius. Additionally, Mars also bears other epithets that define the functions of his cult in specific locales, such as Albiorix, Caturix, Cicollius, Coriaticus, Nabelcus, Rigisamus, Rigonemetis, and Thincsus (this last of German origin).
Bibliography
- Émile Thevenot, Sur les traces des Mars celtiques (Bruges, 1955)
- Miranda J. Green, The Gods of the Celts (Gloucester, 1986), 110–17
- Jan de Vries, La Religion des Celtes (Paris, 1963), 63–9
- E. M. Wightman, Roman Trier and the Treveri (London, 1970), 208–17
- G. Barroul, “‘Mars Nabelcus et Mars Albiorix’”, Ogam, 15 (1963), 345–68
