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Ares

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This article refers to the Greek god. For other uses, see Ares (disambiguation).

In Greek mythology, Ares ("battle strife"; in Greek, Άρης)[1] is the Olympian god of war and son of Zeus (king of the gods) and Hera. The Romans identified Mars, the god of war (whom they had inherited from the Etruscans) with Hellenic Ares, but among them, Mars stood in much higher esteem. Among the Hellenes, Ares was always mistrusted: his birthplace and true home was placed far off, among the barbarous and warlike Thracians (Iliad 13.301; Ovid); to Thrace he withdrew after he was discovered on a couch with Aphrodite.(Odyssey 8.361). Though Ares' half-sister Athena was also considered to be a war deity, Athena's stance was that of strategic warfare while Ares' tended to be that of war for the sake of war.


Ares in cult

Although important in poetry, Ares was only rarely the recipient of cult worship in ancient Greece, save at Sparta, where he was propitiated before battle, and in the founding myth of Thebes, and he appeared in few myths (Burkert 1985, p.169). At Sparta there was a statue of the god in chains, to show that the spirit of war and victory was never to leave the city. At Sparta young dogs and even humans were sacrificed to him. The temple to Ares in the agora of Athens that Pausanias saw in the 2nd century AD had only been moved and rededicated there during the time of Augustus; in essence it was a Roman temple to Mars. The Areopagus, the "hill of Ares" where Paul preached, is sited at some distance from the Acropolis; from archaic times it was a site of trials. Its connection with Ares, perhaps based on a false etymology, may be purely etiological.

Ares' symbols

Ares had a quadriga drawn by four gold-bridled (Iliad v.352) fire-breathing immortal stallions that were the offspring of Apollos/Helios' horses that drew the sun across the sky. Ares brandished a spear in battle. His special birds were the barn owls, woodpeckers, and especially the vulture. According to Argonautica (ii.382ff and 1031ff; Hyginus, Fabulae 30) the birds of Ares (Ornithes Areioi) were a flock of feather-dart-dropping birds that guarded the Amazons' marble shrine of Ares on an island off the lonely shore of the Black Sea. His favourite animals were dogs. He was known by his brazen armor.

Attendants

Deimos and Phobos were his children by Aphrodite and were the spirit of fear and terror. "The sister and companion of murderous Ares" was Eris, goddess of strife (Iliad, iv). The presence of Ares was accompanied by Kydoimos, the very spirit (daemon) of the din of battle.

The founding of Thebes

One of the many roles of Ares that was sited in mainland Greece itself was in the founding myth of Thebes: Ares was the progenitor of the water-dragon slain by Cadmus. From the dragon's teeth sown as if a crop arose a race of fighting men, the descendents of Ares. To propitiate Ares, Cadmus took as a bride Harmonia, daughter of Ares' union with Aphrodite, thus harmonizing all strife and founding the city of Thebes.

Statue of Ares, villa Hadriana

Hymns to Ares

Among the so-called "Homeric Hymns", a "Hymn to Ares" has been transmitted in the manuscripts, although scholars have argued that it was written in Late Antiquity [2]. Even so, apart from sacrifices to him made by commanders of armies in the field, Ares was venerated most often in conjunction with other gods; for example, he shared a temple with Aphrodite at Thebes. Besides Aphrodite, the adjective areios, areia is applied to other gods in their warlike aspect. In the Iliad "Ares" is as often embodied in a battle formula connoting rough strife as he is personified as a bronze-armoured god: he is repeatedly contrasted with Athena, to his disadvantage. To Athena is reserved the one glorious aspect of war, Nike, "victory". [3]. At Athens, the Areopagus, a hill near the Acropolis, is equally the "Hill of Ares" and simply the "Battle Hill".


Consorts and Children

There are accounts of a son of Ares, Cycnus (Kýknos) of Macedonia, who was so murderous that he attempted to build a temple with the skulls and the bones of travellers. Heracles slaughtered this abominable monstrosity, engendering the wrath of Ares, whom the hero wounded (Apollodorus 2.114).

Other consorts and children of Ares include:

  1. Aglaulus
    1. Alcippe
  2. Aphrodite
    1. Deimos (Dread)
    2. Eros (in some sources)
    3. Harmonia
    4. Phobos (Fright)
  3. Cyrene
    1. Diomedes
  4. Harpina (or Sterope, according to some accounts)
    1. Oenomaus
  5. Otrera
    1. Penthesilea
  6. Pyrene
    1. Cycnus
  7. Rhea Silvia
    1. Remus
    2. Romulus
  8. Unknown mothers
    1. Antiope
    2. Biston
    3. Enyo
    4. Eurytion
    5. Hippolyte
    6. Melanippe
    7. Tereus

Ares in the myths

Ares and Aphrodite

Ares and Aphrodite were dallying together when their interlude was interrupted. The god of the Sun, Helios, spied the pair in enjoying each other one day. Helios promptly reported the incident to Hephaistos, who was filled with rage. Hephaistos contrived to catch the couple "in the act", and so he fashioned a net to snare the illicit lovers. At the appropriate time, this net was sprung, and trapped Ares and Aphrodite locked in very private embrace. But Hephaistos was not yet satisfied with his revenge - he invited the Olympian gods and goddesses to view the unfortunate pair. For the sake of modesty, the goddesses demurred, but the male gods went and witnessed the sight. Some commented on the beauty of Aphrodite, others remarked that they would eagerly trade places with Ares, and they all laughed. Well, except for Ares, who was out of sorts, and Aphrodite, who, if goddesses can blush like maidens, surely did so. Once the couple were loosed, Ares sped away to his homeland, Thrace. (In a much later interpolated detail, Ares put a youth Alectryon by his door to guard them, but Alectryon fell asleep. Ares turned Alectryon into a rooster, which never forgets to announce the arrival of the sun in the morning.)

Murder Trial

By Ares, Aglaulus gave birth to Alcippe. When Alcippe was grown, Hallihourthus, son of Poseidon the earth shaker, tried to rape her. Ares loved his daughter and to protect her, he killed Hallihourthus. Poseidon loved his son, too, so he went to Zeus and demanded that Ares be punished. The other Olympians voted that Ares be acquitted.

Ares and the giants

In one archaic myth, related in the Iliad by the goddess Dione to her daughter Aphrodite, two chthonic giants, the Aloadae, Otus and Ephialtes, threw Ares into chains and put him in a bronze urn, where he remained for thirteen months, a lunar year. "And that would have been the end of Ares and his appetite for war, if the beautiful Eriboea, the young giants' stepmother, had not told Hermes what they had done," she related (Iliad 5.385–391). "In this one suspects a festival of licence which is unleashed in the thirteenth month," Burkert observes (p 169). Ares remained screaming and howling in the urn until Hermes rescued him and Artemis tricked the Aloadae into slaying each other.

The Iliad

In The Iliad, Homer represented Ares as having no fixed allegiances nor respect for Themis, the right ordering of things: he promised Athena and Hera that he would fight on the side of the Achaeans, but Aphrodite was able to persuade Ares to side with the Trojans. During the war, Diomedes fought with Hector and saw Ares fighting on the Trojans' side. Diomedes called for his soldiers to fall back slowly. Hera, Ares's mother, saw his interference and asked Zeus, his father, for permission to drive Ares away from the battlefield. Hera encouraged Diomedes to attack Ares, so he threw a spear at Ares. Athena then drove the spear into Ares's body, who bellowed in pain and fled to Mt. Olympus, forcing the Trojans to fall back

Ares in the Renaissance

In Renaissance and Neoclassical works of art, Ares' symbols are a spear and helmet, his animal is the dog, and his bird is the vulture. In literary works of these eras, Ares appears as cruel, aggressive, and blood-thirsty, reviled by both gods and humans, much as he was in the ancient Greek myths.

  • In DC Comics, Ares is a prominent antagonist of Wonder Woman.
  • In the PlayStation 2 video game God of War, Ares is the main antagonist, attempts to destroy Athens and is partially responsible for development of the in-game character of Kratos, the protagonist.
  • In Marvel Comics, Ares is a Greek God who features in his own 2006 miniseries. He was one of Marvel's biggest villains and an accomplice to Hades himself, but in this series, he is depicted in a (somewhat more) sympathetic light, and Joe Quesada has confirmed he will soon be joining a hero team.
  • In Disney's Hercules, he seems to be a good god in the movie but the series presents him as an evil god.
  • Ares is referenced in a song by the French neoclassical band Elend called Ares In Their Eyes.
  • In the TCG Hecatomb, a darker aspect of Ares is portrayed as a god in the set Last Hallow's Eve, and is given the title of The Devastator.

Notes

  1. ^ The reading often remains ambiguous, as in a late sixth-century funerary inscription from Attica: "Stay and mourn at the tomb of dead Kroisos/ Whom raging Ares destroyed one day, fighting in the foremost ranks" (Athens, NM 3851) quoted in Andrew Stewart, One Hundred Greek Sculptors: Their Careers and Extant Works, Introduction: I. The Sources"
  2. ^ Burkert, 415n15
  3. ^ Burkert, 169
  • Burkert, Walter, 1985. Greek Religion (Cambridge: Harvard University Press)
  • Kerenyi, Carl, 1951. Gods of the Greeks (London:Thames & Hudson)

See also

Template:Greek myth (Olympian)2

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