Mamers, the war god
Mamers is the war god of the Oscan-speaking Samnites, Campanians and their kin, the Sabellic counterpart of the Roman Mars. His name survives most famously in that of the Mamertini, the 'sons of Mamers', a band of Campanian mercenaries whose seizure of Messana around 289 BCE later helped precipitate the First Punic War. Mamers was the chief recipient of the ver sacrum, the foundational Italic rite in which a people vowed the human and animal offspring of one spring to the god; when grown, the consecrated youths were sent out to found new settlements, led by a totemic animal. The Samnites traced their arrival in the southern Apennines to a bull sent by Mamers, while the Hirpini took their name from his wolf, making the god the patron of Sabellic migration and colonisation as well as of war.
Domains
- war
- migration and colonisation
Powers
- to lead the consecrated youth to new lands by a sacred animal
Relations
- consort of: Mefitis, goddess of sulphurous vapoursA dedication at the sanctuary of Rossano di Vaglio joins Mamers to Mefitis, the goddess who dominates that Lucanian cult.Michel Lejeune, Méfitis d'après les dédicaces lucaniennes de Rossano di Vaglio (Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters, 1990). (secondary)
Sources
- Mamers is the Oscan-Sabellic war god equivalent to Mars, eponym of the Mamertini and the deity of the ver sacrum whose totemic bull was held to have led the Samnites to their homeland.: 'Mamers', Encyclopaedia Britannica (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc.). (secondary); Edward Togo Salmon, Samnium and the Samnites (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967). (secondary)