* Caius and Lucius seem unaffected by Julia’s exile.
* She probably hadn’t had much to do with their upbringing for quite a while.
* She was too busy having drunken orgies.
* Both of them were adults and were assuming more of a public role.
* They presided over the the games for the inauguration of the Temple of Mars Ultor, which was the centerpiece of the new Forum of Augustus, which lay at right angles to the Forum of Julius Caesar which Augustus had largely built.
* Augustus created the cult of “Mars the Avenger” to mark two occasions: his defeat of the assassins of Caesar at Philippi in 42 BC, and the negotiated return of the Roman battle standards that had been lost to the Parthians at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC.
* Some rituals previously conducted within the cult of Capitoline Jupiter were transferred to the new temple.
* It became the point of departure for magistrates as they left for military campaigns abroad.
* Augustus required the Senate to meet at the temple when deliberating questions of war and peace.
* The temple also became the site at which sacrifice was made to conclude the rite of passage of young men assuming the toga virilis (“man’s toga”) around age 14.
* On various Imperial holidays, Mars Ultor was the first god to receive a sacrifice, followed by the Genius of the emperor.
* An inscription from the 2nd century records a vow to offer Mars Ultor a bull with gilded horns.
* BTW, In the Roman religion, the genius is the individual instance of a general divine nature that is present in every individual person, place, or thing.
* Kind of like the Christian idea of a soul.
* But more like a guardian angel, the genius would follow each man from the hour of his birth until the day he died.
* From the same root as geneology and genitals, gens-, meaning to give birth.
* It wasn’t until the 17th century that the word developed into meaning someone with a talent as we use it today.
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