Ares: Greek God of War

Ares is the Greek god of war, the embodiment of raw, violent combat, bloodlust, and the brutal chaos of the battlefield. Unlike Athena, who represented the strategic and disciplined side of warfare, Ares personified war in its most savage, unrestrained form: the screaming charge, the clash of bronze, and the rivers of blood that followed.

One of the twelve Olympian gods and a son of Zeus and Hera, Ares was both feared and reviled by his fellow deities. He was a paradoxical figure, essential to the Greeks' understanding of war and martial courage, yet widely regarded with ambivalence. Even Zeus, his own father, openly declared Ares the most hateful of all the gods. And yet the same culture that distrusted him built temples in his honor, called upon him before battle, and venerated him as the divine force behind every soldier's courage.

Ares was born to Zeus and Hera, the king and queen of the Olympian gods, making him one of the few major Olympians with two fully divine, Olympian parents. Most accounts portray his birth as entirely conventional, a natural son of the divine couple, though one alternative tradition preserved by the mythographer Ovid claims that Hera conceived Ares alone, without Zeus, after the goddess Flora showed her a magical flower. In this telling, Hera was inspired by the independent birth of Athena from Zeus's head and sought to produce a child entirely on her own terms.

Ares grew up on Mount Olympus but was deeply associated with Thrace, the wild, mountainous region to the north of Greece that the Greeks considered the archetypal land of warriors, barbarians, and untamed ferocity. This association reinforced Ares's character as a god who stood slightly outside the civilized order of Olympus, more at home on blood-soaked battlefields than in the council halls of the gods.

Ares presided over the physical act of war: combat, slaughter, and the primal instinct to fight and kill. He was the divine patron of soldiers and warriors, invoked for the courage and ferocity needed to face an enemy. His domain was not tactics or strategy, those belonged to Athena, but the irresistible, terrifying momentum of battle itself.

He was accompanied into battle by a fearsome retinue. His sons Phobos (Fear) and Deimos (Terror) rode beside him, spreading panic among enemy ranks. The war goddess Enyo, sometimes described as his sister, sometimes as a companion, joined him in the fray, as did Eris (Strife) and the relentless Kydoimos (Din of Battle). Together they formed a terrifying procession that announced the arrival of violent conflict.

Beyond pure warfare, Ares also held a connection to civil order and the protection of cities. Several cities, particularly Sparta, venerated him as a guardian deity. His worship in Sparta was especially fervent, the Spartans chained a statue of Ares to prevent him from ever leaving their city, ensuring his martial power remained bound to them.

Ancient Greek sources consistently portray Ares as impulsive, aggressive, and volatile, a god who acted on instinct rather than reason. Where Athena calculated, Ares charged. He was passionate and fierce, prone to blinding rage, and utterly devoid of the cool strategic intelligence that the Greeks admired most in warfare. In the Iliad, Homer depicts Ares as unstable and almost brutish, a figure whom the other gods regard with a mixture of fear and contempt.

Yet Ares was not merely a mindless destroyer. He possessed a fierce, primal courage that even his enemies respected. He was also capable of deep feeling, his famous love affair with Aphrodite reveals a tender, passionate side wholly at odds with his battlefield persona. He grieved deeply when his sons were threatened and responded with terrible fury when his children were harmed, as shown by the murder of Halirrhothius, which led to the first mythological murder trial on the Areopagus hill in Athens.

The Greeks' complicated relationship with Ares reflected their complicated relationship with war itself. They understood it as both necessary and horrifying, glorious and barbaric, and Ares embodied that contradiction perfectly.

Ares and Aphrodite: The most famous myth involving Ares is his love affair with Aphrodite, the goddess of love and the wife of Hephaestus. The sun god Helios observed the pair and reported it to Hephaestus, who forged an invisible bronze net and secretly draped it over their bed. When Ares and Aphrodite lay together, the net sprang shut, trapping them naked and exposed. Hephaestus summoned the gods to witness their humiliation, though most of the male gods reportedly laughed and admitted they would gladly trade places with Ares. The pair were eventually freed by Poseidon's intervention.

Ares in the Trojan War: During the Trojan War, Ares sided with the Trojans, largely at the urging of Aphrodite and his war-companion Enyo. His involvement drew the wrath of Athena, who opposed him fiercely. In one pivotal episode, Athena guided the spear of the Greek hero Diomedes, allowing him to wound Ares, a mortal injuring an Olympian god. Ares fled to Olympus, screaming in pain, only to be berated by Zeus for his cowardice.

The Imprisonment by the Aloadae: The twin giants Otus and Ephialtes, known as the Aloadae, once captured Ares and imprisoned him in a bronze jar for thirteen months. He was slowly wasting away when Hermes learned of his captivity and freed him. This myth illustrated Ares's vulnerability despite his martial power, he could be overpowered by forces greater than himself.

The Trial on the Areopagus: When Halirrhothius, son of Poseidon, attempted to assault Ares's daughter Alcippe, Ares killed him in her defense. Poseidon demanded justice, and the gods convened on a hill in Athens to judge Ares. He was ultimately acquitted, and the hill was thereafter named the Areopagus, the Hill of Ares, which became Athens's most important court of law.

Ares and the Gigantes: During the Gigantomachy, the war between the Olympian gods and the Giants, Ares fought alongside the other gods to defeat the Gigantes who threatened to overthrow Olympus. Despite his usual portrayal as disruptive and undisciplined, in this existential conflict he fought in defense of divine order.

Ares's most celebrated relationship was his passionate, long-running affair with Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty. Though Aphrodite was married to Hephaestus, her true devotion, at least in many mythological traditions, lay with Ares. Their union produced several significant children, including Harmonia (goddess of harmony), Phobos (Fear), Deimos (Terror), Anteros (god of requited love), and, in some accounts, Eros himself (god of love).

With the queen of the Amazons, Otrera, Ares fathered several warrior daughters who became legendary figures in their own right: Hippolyta, whose magical girdle Heracles was sent to retrieve, and Penthesilea, the Amazon queen who fought heroically at Troy before being slain by Achilles.

His relationship with the other Olympians was largely fraught. His father Zeus barely concealed his contempt, and his sister Athena was his perpetual rival and adversary. His relationship with his mother Hera was warmer, she was more forgiving of his nature, and he occasionally received her support in his conflicts with other gods.

His sons Phobos and Deimos served as his constant companions in battle, driving his war chariot and preceding him onto the field to scatter enemy forces with supernatural terror.

Ares was worshipped across the Greek world, though his cult never reached the scale of gods like Zeus, Athena, or Apollo. The Greeks' deep ambivalence toward the destructive aspects of war meant that Ares received reverence more out of necessity and fear than true devotion.

His most fervent worshippers were the Spartans, whose militaristic society made Ares a natural patron deity. The Spartans maintained a famous statue of Ares in chains, symbolizing that the spirit of war would never abandon their city. Before battle, Spartan soldiers sacrificed to Ares and invoked his power.

In Athens, the Areopagus, the Hill of Ares, served as both a physical monument to the god and the seat of the city's most important homicide court, linking Ares to questions of justice, vengeance, and lawful violence. The Athenians also maintained a temple to Ares in the Agora, built during the Augustan period, which honored him as a civic deity alongside Athena.

Animal sacrifices to Ares typically featured dogs, an unusual choice that reflected his association with raw, primal aggression, as well as bulls and boars. The Spartans also reportedly sacrificed roosters, associating the combative bird with Ares's fighting spirit.

In Thrace and the broader Aegean world, Ares was sometimes identified with local war gods and honored with weapons, armor, and blood offerings. Roman soldiers, who equated Ares with their own god Mars, brought his worship across the empire, where Mars became one of the most important Roman state deities and the divine father of Romulus, founder of Rome.

The spear is Ares's most iconic weapon and symbol, representing his role as the god of combat. In ancient art he is almost always depicted carrying a spear, often alongside a round shield, and wearing a full bronze panoply, helmet, breastplate, and greaves, ready for battle. The helmet, particularly the crested Corinthian style, appears so frequently in his iconography that it became nearly synonymous with the god himself.

The vulture was his sacred bird, drawn to the carrion left by battle, a grim but fitting companion for the god of war's aftermath. The dog was also associated with him, reflecting both loyalty and ferocious aggression. In some traditions, the serpent appeared in his cult, particularly in Theban mythology where Ares was said to have fathered a great serpent that guarded the spring of Ares at Thebes.

The torch and burning city were used in art to evoke his destructive power, while the flaming sword symbolized the all-consuming fire of war. His chariot was said to be drawn by four immortal fire-breathing horses, Aithon (Blaze), Phlogios (Flame), Konabos (Tumult), and Phobos (Fear), whose names encapsulate the terror of ancient warfare.