Ares

The spirit of battle

Where Athena stood for strategy and the defence of the city, Ares stood for the raw rage and chaos of war. He rode into battle with his sons Phobos, fear, and Deimos, terror, with Eris, the goddess of strife, at his side. In the Iliad even his father Zeus calls him the most hateful of all the gods.

Defeats and embarrassments

For a war god, Ares lost surprisingly often. Athena twice got the better of him at Troy, the hero Diomedes wounded him, and two young giants, the Aloadae, once shut him in a bronze jar for thirteen months until Hermes rescued him. His affair with Aphrodite ended in humiliation when her husband Hephaestus caught the lovers in an unbreakable net and invited the other gods to laugh.

Key myths

• The net of Hephaestus
• His wounding by Diomedes in the Iliad
• His trial on the Areopagus for killing a son of Poseidon
• Fathering Harmonia with Aphrodite

Worship

Ares had few temples in Greece, though one stood in the Agora of Athens. The Spartans honoured him as Enyalios, and the Romans, who knew him as Mars, made him one of their most important gods.