Who talked about Mars before Jesus?

Night after night, for hundreds of years, trained scribes looked at the sky and wrote on clay tablets. They recorded when Mars first appeared in the morning or evening, when it stopped, when it moved backward (what we now call retrograde motion), and when it looked brighter or dimmer.

They linked the red planet to Nergal, a fierce god of war, plague, and the underworld. If Mars looked strange — too bright, moving the wrong way, or standing near certain stars — the scribes wrote omens. An omen is a rule like: “If Mars does X, then the king may face war,” or “If Mars does Y, disease may come.”

Their great omen series is called Enūma Anu Enlil (“When the gods Anu and Enlil…”). It has dozens of tablets and thousands of sky omens. The last group of tablets is about stars and planets, including Mars. Another work, MUL.APIN, is like a sky handbook: which stars and planets rise when, and what that means for the calendar.

Later Babylonian astronomers went further. They used numbers and tables to predict where Mars would be, without needing a telescope or a picture of space. They cared about timing and patterns more than about a geometric model of the solar system.

So what they “said” about Mars was practical and serious: Mars is a dangerous red star that walks an odd path; its path can be measured; and its oddities warn the state about war and misfortune. That is why Babylon wins for volume of talk about the planet before Jesus.

Greeks already knew Mars was a “wandering star” (planetēs). Unlike fixed stars, it drifts through the zodiac. Sometimes it even seems to reverse direction. That reverse loop is hard to explain if everything simply circles Earth at one steady speed.

Eudoxus of Cnidus (4th century BCE) built one of the first Greek geometric models. He imagined nested spheres turning around Earth. For Mars, extra spheres could create a figure-eight path on the sky (the hippopede), which helped imitate retrograde motion. His book On Speeds is lost, but later writers describe the system.

Aristotle used and expanded that sphere picture. He also reported a key observation: Mars once disappeared behind the Moon (an occultation). That told him Mars is farther away than the Moon. Simple idea, huge step: planets sit at different distances.

Callippus improved the sphere counts. Critics still noticed a problem Mars made obvious: the planet gets much brighter and dimmer. Pure same-distance spheres struggle with that. So later Greeks tried other geometry.

Apollonius developed tools like epicycles (small circles riding on big circles) and eccentric circles (a circle whose center is slightly off Earth). These ideas later became standard for explaining Mars’s loops.

Hipparchus (2nd century BCE), often called the greatest observer of Greek antiquity, pushed hard for numbers that match the sky. He used Babylonian-style data and showed that many popular planetary theories still failed the details — Mars included. He did not leave a finished Mars theory the way Ptolemy later would, but he set the rule: a true model must predict carefully, not only look elegant.

In plain terms, Greek science before Jesus said: Mars is a real body in a layered cosmos; its backward loops are mathematical problems; and good astronomy must fit observations, not only philosophy.

In the Iliad, Ares joins the Trojan War as a god who loves fighting. Homer paints him as fierce but not always wise. Other gods argue with him. Athena often outthinks him. Zeus sometimes scolds him. So Greek culture already had a complicated feeling about pure war energy: powerful, needed, but also dangerous and a bit despised.

One famous scene: the hero Diomedes, helped by Athena, wounds Ares. The god of war screams and flees to Olympus. That is a huge statement in a warrior poem. Even Ares can be hurt and humiliated. War is not always glorious; it can be chaotic and shameful.

Homer’s Ares is surrounded by panic and terror (personified forces). When Ares is on the field, the poem sounds like clashing metal and screaming. That emotional portrait stuck for centuries. Later Greek writers kept using Ares as a symbol of violent conflict.

Important: Homer is talking about the god, not writing astronomy. Still, the red planet was later named for this same war power (Greek Pyroeis / star of Ares; Roman Mars). So the “voice” that shaped how Western people feel about the name Mars is partly Homer’s battlefield poetry.

Compared with Roman Mars (next section), Homeric Ares is less of a noble father-protector and more of a wild force. That difference matters when you read ancient art and myths.

Romans said Mars was the father of the twins Romulus and Remus. That makes Mars the divine ancestor of Rome itself. When Romans marched to war, they were fighting under their father’s star and name.

The month of March (Martius) was named for him. In early Roman timekeeping, March opened the year. It was planting time and the start of military campaigning. October closed the campaign season with horse races and the purifying of weapons.

The Campus Martius (“Field of Mars”) was a real floodplain of the Tiber used for army training, assemblies, and rites. Mars’s name sat on the map of the city.

Roman Mars was often more dignified than Greek Ares. Greeks could mock Ares; Romans needed Mars as protector and ancestor. Under Augustus (just before and around the birth of Jesus), Mars Ultor (“Mars the Avenger”) became a state symbol of restored order after civil war — but even earlier, Mars was central.

Writers and poets of the late Republic (for example Virgil, who died in 19 BCE) wove Mars into Rome’s destiny stories. The message is political as well as religious: Rome’s power is rooted in a sacred war-guardian.

So early Roman speech about Mars says: this god is our father, our month, our field, our army’s guardian, and the face of legitimate force for the city.

Egypt: Egyptian sky-watchers knew Mars early. By the mid-second millennium BCE they were familiar with its retrograde path. Names like Har Decher (“the Red One”) or phrases about “the one who travels backward” show they noticed color and the odd reverse motion. Egyptian astronomy mixed practical timekeeping (for seasons and Nile life) with rich religious sky pictures — star ceilings, sky goddess Nut, and decans (star groups used as night clocks). Mars was one of the moving lights in that sacred machine.

China: Classical Chinese texts call Mars Yinghuo — roughly “glimmering fire” or “flickering confusion.” Because Mars’s path looks irregular, it was read as a sign of disorder. Historians such as Sima Qian (1st century BCE) preserve rules of thumb: when Yinghuo behaves in certain ways, expect rebellion, war, disease, or a failing state. Mars could also be called a “punishment star.” Chinese astronomy was tightly tied to the emperor’s mandate: strange planets meant the court should correct itself and prepare the army.

India: In Indian tradition the planet is linked to Mangala (also Angaraka), a fierce figure associated with war, energy, and the color red. Early roots sit in older sky lore; fuller classical astrology develops over time, but the Mars–war–red connection is already ancient in spirit. Mars becomes one of the nine grahas (planetary powers) that shape fate and character in later systems.

Together these cultures prove a simple human pattern: people everywhere saw a red wanderer, named it after danger or fire or war, and used its motion to talk about order and chaos on Earth.