Hail Mars!
Hail to the closing interregnum!
May we celebrate your equestrian vehicle,
And may we celebrate the lustral protection you continue to grant in times of transition!
May your alter ego take with him the pollutions and hindrances we no longer need!
May we bring now this changeover time to a ritual close!
May we proceed henceforth in strength and under divine protection!
Salve Marte!
Salve Mars-Mars!
Salve Marmurie Veturie!
Salve Marte!

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These Equirria or horse races in honour of Mars conclude the new year celebrations that have proceeded them. These are the only feriae to occur invariably on an even numbered day. They, along with the Equirria of February, embrace and ritually border the New Year’s day and birth of the year with the Kalends. The unique placing of the March Equirria on the day immediately before another feriae, here, the Ides, is a calendrical mimicking or duplication of the normal Terminalia-Regifugium sequence. There are no other similar pairings of festivals.

Legend associates Mamurius as the smith who fashioned the eleven duplicate ancile – the talismanic shields connoting the protection of Rome by the gods. His name, however, may derive from a reduplication of Mars, the protecting/agricultural deity: Mars-Mars, hence, Mamurius. In the sacrum Mamurio of this day, a person impersonating Mamurius Veturius and wearing animal skins was driven out of the community. In other words, the ‘Old Mars’, the duplicate Mars, the carnival king, representing the old year, the old vegetation and death and disease, is expunged from the city so that the new year and new vegetation can thrive.

 And once again, the circular path of the race track mimetically duplicates the lustration circuit with which Mars is associated.