How Mars Lost A Battle

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Title:     How Mars Lost A Battle
Author: Carolyn Sherwin Bailey [More Titles by Bailey]

Terminus was the god of boundaries, and a kind of picnic was being held in his honor one day in the long-ago myth time on the edge of a little Roman town.

No one had ever really seen Terminus but every farmer who owned a few acres of land, and the men who governed the cities were quite sure as to how he looked. It was likely that he wore such garb as did Pan, they had decided, and carried instruments for measuring similar to those that a surveyor uses to-day. His chariot was loaded with large stones and finely chiselled posts for marking the limits of a man's farm, or that of a town. There were no fences in those days, but the gods had appointed Terminus to protect land holders and to safeguard citizens by keeping all boundaries sacred from invasion by an enemy.

No wonder the Terminalia, as they called this holiday, was a joyous time. All through the neighboring vineyards and fields and on the edge of the village stones had been placed to mark the boundaries, and there were stone pillars, also, having carved heads to make them beautiful. Everyone who came to the picnic brought an offering for the god Terminus, a wreath of bright roses, a garland of green laurel, or a basket of grapes and pomegranates which they placed on one of these boundary stones or posts. The law of the gods that prevented invasion was the greatest blessing these people had, for it made them free to till the earth and build homes and keep their hearth fires burning.

Suddenly the merrymaking was interrupted. The children who had been gathering wild flowers ran, crying, to their fathers and mothers, for the sky was darkened in an instant as if a hurricane was approaching. The young men who had been playing games and the maidens who had been dancing huddled together in frightened groups, for they saw between rifts in the clouds the tracks of dark chariot wheels making their swift way down to earth from the sky. And the older folk, who knew the meaning of the rumblings and dull roar and occasional darts of fire that parted the clouds, shuddered.

"See who stands in our midst in his black cloak, scattering hoar frost that blights the fields and freezes us!" they exclaimed. "It is Dread, the courier of Mars, the god of war, who is approaching in his chariot."

There came dreadful sounds soon that almost drowned the voices of the people, the crashing of swords and shields, and the cries of women and little children as a chariot plunged through their midst, its wheels dripping with blood. It was driven by two other attendants of war, Alarm and Terror, the face of one as dark as a thunder cloud, and the other with a countenance as pale as death.

"What shall we do; we are unarmed and will perish?" one man cried. And another answered him.

"Look to yourself and your own safety. Why did you leave your sword at home, and what care is it of mine that you have no means of protecting yourself?"

Strange words for a noble people to speak to one another in a time of such need, were they not? But it was not the heart or the soul speech of these Romans. The two other attendants of war, Fear and Discord in tarnished armor, had appeared in their midst and had put these thoughts into the minds of the men.

"Mars comes!" they said then, and the air grew dense and suffocating with smoke, only pierced at intervals by fiery arrows. Thunderbolts forged by the black, one-eyed Cyclopes in their workshops under the volcanoes fell all about, tearing up the earth and bursting in thousands of burning pieces. Through this slaughter and carnage rode the mailed Mars, one of the gods of war.

His steeds were hot and bleeding, and his own eyes shone like fire in his dark, cruel face, for Mars had no pity and took pleasure in war for the sake of itself. It was never the purpose but always the battle that gave him pleasure. With his attendants he sat on a throne that was stained with blood, and the worship that delighted his ears like music was the crash of strife and the cries of those who were sorely wounded.

Mars' palace on Mount Olympus was a most terrible place. Fancy a grim old stronghold built for strength only, without a chink or a crack for letting in Apollo's cheerful sunlight, and never visited by the happy Muses or by Orpheus with his sweet toned lute, or by jolly old Momus, the god of laughter. The palace was guarded, night and day, by a huge hound and a vulture, both of them the constant visitants of battle fields. Mars sat on his throne, waited upon by a company of sad prisoners of war, and holding forever the insignia of his office, a spear and a flaming torch. Why had he left his abode and descended upon the peaceful merrymaking of the Terminalia?

Mars was a very ruthless kind of god. In fact he was so cruel and thoughtless that the family of the gods was rather sorry that Jupiter had appointed him to so important a position, and they decided at last to have two war-gods. But who the other one was and what happened when this second chariot of war crashed down through the clouds is another story that you shall hear presently. The reason for Mars riding out with those frightful friends of his, Dread, Alarm, Fear, and Discord, was that he had not the slightest respect for Terminus, the god of boundaries. He had decided to knock down his stones and shatter his pillars.

Everyone, from the days of the myths down to the present time, has believed in a fair fight. It is about the greatest adventure a man can have, that of using all his strength and giving up his life perhaps in a battle to right a wrong or protect a defenseless people. But fancy this old fight of Mars when he rode down in the chariot that the gods had given him upon a people who were without arms and with the purpose of violating their boundaries.

With a rumble like that of all the thunder storms in the world rolled into one and a crashing like the sound of a thousand spears, Mars touched the earth and rode across Terminus' carefully laid out boundary lines and destroyed them. The wheels of his chariot ground the stones Terminus had so honestly placed to powder, and the beautifully carved pillars were shattered, and the pieces buried in the dust. The shouts of Mars and his followers drowned all the peaceful melody of earth, the singing of birds, the laughter of the children, and the pleasant sounds of spinning and mowing and grinding.

It was indeed a most dreadful invasion and for a while it seemed as if it was going to end in nothing but destruction of the people and the industry on the earth which the gods loved and had helped. But in an instant something happened.

There was a roar as if wild beasts of the forests for miles around had been captured, and the earth trembled as it did when the giants were thrown out of the home of the gods, for Mars had fallen and was crying about it. He had thought himself invulnerable, but whether an arrow from some unseen hero had hit him or whether his steeds had stumbled over one of Terminus' boundary posts, the invincible Mars lay prostrate on the field he had himself invaded, and before he could pick himself up, something else happened.

It was really rather amusing, for Mars was not hurt. He was only taught a much needed lesson.

Just beyond the lines of Terminus which Mars had violated there lived two giant planters, Otus and Ephialtes, whose father had been a planter also and his father before him. They had been much too busy to attend the Terminalia picnic. In fact they almost never took a holiday, but toiled from sunrise to sunset on their farm which supplied the nearby market with fruits and bread stuffs. Otus and Ephialtes were very much surprised to hear the thundering crash that Mars made when he tumbled down; and they dropped their tools and ran to see what was the matter.

It is said that the fallen Mars covered seven acres of ground, but the two giants started at once picking him up and he began to shrink then like a rubber balloon when the air leaks out of it.

"What shall we do with this troublemaker?" Otus asked his brother.

"We must put him where he will not interfere with our work or the other work of the earth for a while at least," Ephialtes said as they tugged Mars, still roaring, home.

"That's a good idea," Otus agreed. "We will shut him up."

And so they crammed the troublesome Mars into a great bronze vase and took turns sitting on the cover so that he was not able, by any chance, to get out for thirteen months. That gave everyone an opportunity to plant and gather another harvest, and to place Terminus' boundary stones again.

These giant planters would have liked to keep this god of war bottled up in the vase for all the rest of time, but he was one of the family of the Olympians and so this was not possible. In time he was allowed to drive home and both the Greek and the Roman people tried to make the best of him, not as a protecting deity, but as the god of strength and brawn.

The Greeks named a hill for him near Athens, and here was held a court of justice for the right decision of cases involving life and death. That put Mars to work in a very different way. And the Romans gave him a great field for military manoeuvres and martial games. We would call it a training camp to-day. There, in Mars Field, chariot races were held twice a year and there were competitions in riding, in discus and spear throwing, and in shooting arrows at a mark. Once in five years the able-bodied young men of Rome came to Mars Field to enlist for the army, and no Roman general started out to war without first swinging a sacred shield and spear which hung there and saying,

"Watch over me, O Mars." For Mars could put muscle into a man's arm, and the heroes themselves were learning to choose the good fight.

[The end]
Carolyn Sherwin Bailey's short story: How Mars Lost A Battle

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