Quarrelsome and violent, Ares embodies the wildest side of warthe one who enjoys killing. He was therefore a god who He enjoyed little esteem among the Greeksas demonstrated by the myths in which it stars.

Who is the god Ares?

Ares was the Greek god of waran activity to which the ancient Greeks applied themselves with valiant enthusiasm since the time of the Trojan War, back in the 12th century BC. C., until they were conquered by the Romans in the 2nd century BC. C. But, despite that warrior ardor, Ares aroused little sympathy between them. The poet Homer, for example, calls it in the Iliad “havoc of mortals, stained with crimes, robber of walls”.

The reason for this disdain was the type of war that Ares embodied: a war based on blind and thoughtless deployment of brute force; a war that, even more than victory, sought the most savage devastation and the most atrocious bloodshed. Quite the opposite, therefore, of that other war in which the personal courage, strategy and nobility of the winner take precedence over the defeated. Those virtues were what represented another warrior goddess, Athena. It is not strange, then, that the relationship between Ares and his sister was not exactly fraternal.

The worst of all, however, is that Ares wasn’t even a good warrior…

Ares, the most hateful of the gods

Son of Zeus and Hera, Ares was born in Thracea region with an inhospitable climate located north of the Aegean Sea, famous in ancient times for the warlike and semi-savage people who lived there. From there, for example, were the Amazons, warrior women who were said to be daughters of the god.

From the beginning, Ares showed an impulsive character that earned him rejection, not only from Athena, but also from his own father: “you are for me the most odious of the gods who own Olympusbecause you always like disputes, combats and fights«, Zeus tells his son in the Iliad. Hera, on the other hand, held him in high esteem, perhaps because, as Homer explains, she had inherited his «uncontainable and irrepressible fury”.

Myths about the god Ares, an ill-fated warrior

These qualities, however, were not the most appropriate for a warrior, and this is seen in many of the myths starring Ares. One of them tells how The giants Otho and Ephialtes chained him and locked him in a bronze urn.where he remained until, after thirteen months, he located him Hermes and freed him.

His participation in the trojan warin which Ares fought on the side of the Trojanswas not particularly brilliant either. In one of the incidents in which he participated was wounded by the spear of one of the Greek heroes, Diomedeswhich led him to flee to Olympus to be cured and, in the process, whine to Zeus for the little respect in which he was held.

In that same war, the tension between Ares and Athena ends up breaking out into a confrontation in which we see how brute force has nothing to do with intelligence. Thus, Athena knocks down her brother with a stone when he attacks her, screaming. “Foolish! You have not yet realized how much better I boast of being than you, who seek to rival my fury!the goddess then tells him between laughs.

Amorous conquests of the god Ares

Ares, therefore, was a god more feared than respected.. However, there were exceptions. Like Hades, the divinity of the underworld in which the spirits of the dead dwell, who saw in his nephew Ares an excellent provider of subjects for his kingdom. But it was especially among women, both immortal and mortal, who felt hopelessly attracted to that mass of muscles given to excess that was Ares. The goddess of love Aphrodite was no exception. Isn’t love a kind of war?

The relationship between Ares and Aphrodite was one of the most notorious scandals of Olympus already given to infidelities. Hephaestus, the lame husband of Aphrodite and god of the forgeone day forged a network of extraordinary finesse with which caught the lovers red-handedafter which he called the rest of the Olympians so they could see them naked and hugging. Laughter filled the divine palace, although more than one, like Apollo or Hermes, recognized that they would have gladly exchanged for Ares, since lying with the most beautiful of the goddesses well compensated for that small humiliation.

Ares and Aphrodite had four children. Two inherited the violent and brutal nature of their father, whom they accompanied in the heat of combat. Their names couldn’t be more descriptive: Deimos, “pain” or “terror”, and Phobos, “fear”. The other two, however, looked like their mother: they were Eros, the god of the love impulse, and Harmony, the goddess of concord.

Ares also had many children with mortal women.most of them as violent as they are bloodthirsty. This is the case of Cycnus, a thief who murdered travelers heading to the sanctuary of Delphi, or Diomedes of Thrace, famous for his mares that ate human flesh. The hero Heracles killed them both.

The cult of the god Ares

Ares’ passion for bloodshed meant that there were hardly any places in Greece where he was worshiped. An exception was the city ​​of Thebeswhose princes and nobles were proud to carry the blood of the god in their veins. And all because its founder, the Phoenician Cadmushe killed a dragon that was the son of the god and sowed its teeth, from which terrifying warriors soon emerged who began to massacre each other. Those who survived became the ancestors of the Theban nobility, while Cadmus married Harmonia, the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite..

Outside Thebes, Ares had temples in which he was worshiped in Gerontras (Laconia) and Halicarnassus (present-day Bodrum, Turkey). In Athens he is remembered on a hill in front of the Acropolis: the Areopagus or “Hill of Ares”. It was there where, according to myth, the gods gathered to judge Ares, who had killed Poseidon’s son, Halirrhotius. On this occasion he was acquitted, because, for once, his murder was not gratuitous: he killed, yes, but to defend his daughter Alcipe, whom Halirrotio intended to rape.