From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 544
Date: 1999-12-11
----- Original Message -----From: Mark OdegardSent: Saturday, December 11, 1999 9:25 PMSubject: [cybalist] Mars and Sabine Nerio.My source here is the article 'Mars', in the old New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology dating from 1959.The Roman Mars is not the Greek Ares. Mars was at first a rustic god, an agricultural deity, the god of spring. He was married to the vestal, Rhea Silvana. As Silvanus, he was a cattle god. Only later did he become the god of war, when Silvanus was promoted to independent status, with other agricultural functions being assigned Ceres and and Liber.
Mars was venerated in Etruria, in Umbria, among the Sabines who associated him with the goddess Nerio.Nerio, in my earlier post on the earth-goddess, is identified as the Germanic Nerthus and Roman Nerion. As I stated, Edgar Polome is said to have connected this root to what shows up in Greek as nerteros, 'lower, belonging to the lower world'.There is not much more I'm competent to say here. But it's interesting that we can think of agricultural Mars as being married to earth goddess Rhea or Nerio. The Larousse suggests Mars was once a solar deity, from mar, 'to shine'. Juno bore him by union with a 'fabulous flower', without Jupiter's help.
My own name, Mark, is Roman Mars. I'm tempted to seek the ultimate root in PIE *markos, 'horse', domesticated horse Equus caballus; 'wild horse', 'tarpan' E. przewalski or E. gmelini. I'm quite sure this is wrong, but it's nice think of Mars as a horse god.
This is apparently unrelated to the other mark, from the AHD *merg, which means measure, boundary, but all in all, makes for a fine name for an agricultural god (god of the margin, the mark, the field-boundary).
Mark.
Salve, Marce,
Mars is a contracted form of earlier (but well attested) Mavors (= Ma:wort-s), Mavortis, a.k.a. Oscan Mamers. It's etymology is obscure (I'll think about it yet) but at any rate can't have anything to do with PIE [?] *markos. The praenomen Marcus may represent old *Ma:wort-iko-s, but it's also possible that it was a nasty nickname meaning 'feeble' (cf. marceo 'to wither, droop', marcor 'decay' etc.).
The horse word you mention gives Old English mearh and modern mare. Gamkrelidze & Ivanov claim Altaic connections for it. Be that as it may, within IE it's found only in Celtic and Germanic.
Piotr