Maris (mythology)

For other uses, see Maris.
Etruscan cista depicting the immersion of Maris

Maris (or Mariś) was an Etruscan god often depicted as an infant or child and given many epithets, including Mariś Halna, Mariś Husrnana ("Maris the Child"), and Mariś Isminthians. He was the son of Hercle, the Etruscan equivalent of Heracles. On two bronze mirrors, Maris appears in scenes depicting an immersion rite presumably to ensure his immortality.[1] Massimo Pallottino noted that Maris might have been connected to stories about the centaur Mares, the legendary ancestor of the Ausones, who underwent a triple death and resurrection.[2]

Some scholars think he influenced Roman conceptions of the god Mars,[3] but this is not universally held; more likely he was the god of fertility and love, similar to the greek Eros.[4][5]

In the Lead Plaque of Magliano, he is called Maris Menita "Maris the Maker", the full dedicatory line translated:

For Maris Menita (="the Maker"), for the ancestors, also this previously mentioned annually appointed village-priest must make a dedication in the ciala, and in addition in the place of offering, and in the ichu house
  1. ^ L. Bouke van der Meer (1987). The bronze liver of Piacenza. Analysis of a polytheistic structure. Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben.
  2. ^ Aelian, Varia Historia 9.16; Massimo Pallottino, "Religion in Pre-Roman Italy," in Roman and European Mythologies (University of Chicago Press, 1992, from the French edition of 1981), p. 29.
  3. ^ Pallotino, pp. 29, 30; Hendrik Wagenvoort, "The Origin of the Ludi Saeculares," in Studies in Roman Literature, Culture and Religion (Brill, 1956), p. 219 et passim; John F. Hall III, "The Saeculum Novum of Augustus and its Etruscan Antecedents," Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.16.3 (1986), p. 2574.
  4. ^ Larissa Bonfante, Etruscan Life and Afterlife: A Handbook of Etruscan Studies (Wayne State University Press, 1986), p. 226.
  5. ^ N.T. DE GRUMMOND, "Maris´, the Etruscan Genius," in Across Frontiers. Studies in Honour of D. Ridgway and F.R. Serra Ridgway, London 2006, pp. 413–426