She then travelled outside Rome with the imperial legions and her temples have been recorded in France, Germany, Britain, and North Africa. In the military cult of Bellona, she was associated with Virtus, the personification of valour. They would offer up human sacrifices and drink blood from the skulls of their victims. They were brutal and they worshipped both Mars and Bellona with savagery. According to Ammianus Marcellinus, the Scordici people believed in the violent worship of Bellona. The belief in her bloodlust and madness in battle is widely accepted and is one of the more prevalent beliefs.
It was believed that when she went to war, Discordia, Strife, and the Furies would accompany her and terrify her enemies. The worship of Bellona and beliefs about her were often gory or frightening. Bellona had a temple as far north as York, England, where the church of St. The worship of her was not limited to Rome, however. Five of the inscriptions are found around the Aedem Bellonae (a shrine of Bellona's) and the other two inscriptions are damaged. An early inscription in the Forum of Augustus harkens back to the time of the war with Pyrrhus. At least seven inscriptions that are affiliated with the worship of Bellona have been found. Despite their subtlety, evidence of her worship can be found throughout Rome. Because she was widely believed to be a volatile goddess, she was rarely worshipped openly and most of her worshippers preferred to quietly assuage her.
In addition, they were also willing to incur the cost upon themselves. There were many people willing to assist in the upkeep and improvement of her temples and shrines. The first enemy declared in this fashion was Pyrrhus in 280 BC. To declare war on a distant state, a javelin was thrown over the column by one of the priests concerned with diplomacy ( fetiales) in a modification of the archaic practice, from Roman territory toward the direction of the enemy land and this symbolical attack was considered the opening of war. Beside the temple was the war column ( columna bellica), which represented non-Roman territory. Since the area of the temple was outside the pomerium, the Senate met there with ambassadors and received victorious generals prior to their triumphs. Ambassadors from foreign states, who were not allowed to enter the city proper, stayed in this complex. The Roman Campus Martius area, in which Bellona’s temple was situated, had extraterritorial status.
In consequence of this practice, which approximated to the rites dedicated to Cybele in Asia Minor, both Enyo and Bellona became identified with her Cappadocian aspect, Ma. These rites took place on 24 March, called the day of blood ( dies sanguinis), after the ceremony. Her festival was celebrated on 3 June, and her priests were known as Bellonarii and used to wound their own arms or legs as a blood sacrifice to her. Appius Claudius hung the shields and dedicated them to his family. This temple was the first location to have decorative shields dedicated to mortals hung in a holy place. Her temple in Rome was dedicated in 296 BCE near the Circus Flaminius by Appius Claudius Caecus, during the war with the Etruscans and Samnites. Īccording to linguist Michiel de Vaan, the use of *duenelo- "in the context of war ( bella acta, bella gesta) could be understood as a euphemism, ultimately yielding a meaning 'action of valour, war' for the noun bellum." Cult, beliefs, and temples īellona was originally an ancient Sabine goddess of war identified with Nerio, the consort of the war god Mars, and later with the Greek war goddess Enyo. Linguist, Georges-Jean Pinault, has proposed a derivation from *duenelo- ('quite good, quite brave'), a reconstructed diminutive of the word duenos ('good'), attested on an eponymous inscription as an early Old Latin antecedent of the word bonus. The etymology of duellum itself remains obscure. The name of the goddess of war Bellōna stems from an earlier Duellona, itself a derivative of Old Latin duellum ('war, warfare'), which likewise turned into bellum in Classical Latin.
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