The Quirinalia is a holiday devoted to Mars, in the form known as Quirinus. This was not the warlike Mars, but an alter-ego embodied in the more father-like ancestral figure of Romulus. The celebration of the Quirinalia was a special devotion of the people who lived on one of seven hills of Rome still called by the same name today, the Quirinal.
     Quirinus is also identified closely with Lupercus (via Romulus). Juno, the female dual equivalent of Jupiter, is also closely connected with Mars through cult and myth, and this day is thereby sacred to them both.
     Juno, also called Saturnia and known as Hera by the Greeks, was the daughter of Cronus (Saturn) and regarded as a paragon of motherly virtues. She was the divinity of sacred marriage and childbirth, and was prone to violent wrath at every violation of her marriage bed with Zeus.
     This day was also called the Fornicalia, or the Festival of Fornax, the god of ovens (fornicator).