Part 2: The Roman Republic
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Juno was a Moon-Goddess, and because the moon was thought to control the sexual lives of women (recent research has confirmed this connection), was worshipped on the Kalends, or nights of the full moon. Though the precise rites are no longer remembered, it is possible that they survived into the Christian era, and the practitioners thereof wrongly accused of witchcraft by the fanatically ignorant inquisition (Grimal 178). Juno's sacred month was June, when she was honored as the patroness of marriage and family (Walker 484). The first of March, the "Matronalia", was celebrated by the matrons of Rome, who made special offerings to Juno in a sacred grove on the Esquiline. "At this time the sacred fire in the Temple of Vesta was rekindled by the Vestal Virgins by rubbing two sticks together in the ancient manner..." a practice which can be traced as far back as the ancient Celts in 900bce, who extinguished and relit the sacred hearth fires once each year (Lyttleton and Foreman 44). 

The third member of the Etruscan trinity was the Goddess Minerva, originally Menarva or Menura, the Crone aspect of the Triple Goddess (Walker 658). Her ancient duty was to preside over guilds of craftsmen, later expanded to include poets and actors. During the Republican period, She adopted the characteristics of the Greek Pallas Athene, Goddess of wisdom and war. "Her cult spread at the expense of that of...Mars. The quinquatrus became much more Her festival than His..." (Griman 180). Her sacred bird, the owl, was shared by Lilith and the Welsh Goddess of wisdom, Blodeuwedd.

Mars, whose origins were as ancient as those of Juno, was the revered father of Romulus (the mythical founder of Rome) and Remus, and was the second most popular God of Rome, next to Jupiter. He had his beginnings as the Etruscan fertility-savior God Maris, who had a shrine called Matiene in the Apennines (Hays 182). He was Matiane, "Mother Ana", to those of northwestern Iran. The Medes, and later the Persians called Him "...Martiya, a holy martyr also called Immanuel or Imanisi. The inscription of Darius at Behistun says the God was incarnate in a sacred king slain by His people..."(Assyrian and Babylonian Literature 178). Mars appears in the Phrygian myths as the satyr Marsyas, who was nailed to a pine tree by order of the heavenly father to atone for sins (Walker 597). Mars had as His Indo-European prototype the Vedic God Rudra, flayed father of Maruts, or sacrificial victims. Rudra was the son of a Three-Faced Virgin Mother-Marici (birth-dawn-new year). "This same Goddess was called Marica by the Latins...(who) gave birth to Latinus, ancestor of all the Latin tribes. Her consort was the flayed God Fanus, another incarnation of Mars..."(598). Thus Mars fits the pattern of the Green God, born of the Mother Goddess (Earth), who grows to be her lover and is then sacrificed, as the harvest, to save the people from starvation. These gods, in an age when winter meant death if the harvest failed, were literally the salvation of their people.

Mars gave His name to the first month of the Roman year, incidentally the first month of the campaign season, for the Greek Ares and the Roman Mars were closely identified as Gods of war. In the event of a war, one of the duties of a consul was to retrieve the sacred spears and shields from the central temple of Mars and "...shake (them)...while crying 'Mars vigila' [Mars! Wake-up!]. If the spears moved by themselves, this was a bad omen..."(Grimal 179). There were processions and dances led by priests carrying the sacred spears and shields at the beginning and ending of each campaign season, in March and October. The most important, and probably the oldest of these processional ceremonies, was the Dance of the Salii, the Priests of Mars, held on March first and other days later in the month.

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