Source Verification: Ares
Every claim below is either what a named ancient source attests, in its own line or section, or a point where the sources themselves disagree.
What the Sources Attest
What is Ares the god of?
Ares is the Greek god of war, specifically its violent and chaotic aspects: bloodshed, slaughter, and the frenzy of combat rather than its planning. Homer's Iliad and Hesiod's Theogony both list him among the twelve Olympians, born to Zeus and Hera. His domain also extends to civil disorder and raw courage in battle, distinct from Athena's domain of strategic, disciplined warfare.
Source: Hesiod, Theogony 921-923
How is Ares different from Athena?
Both Ares and Athena preside over war, but ancient sources draw a sharp line between them. Ares represents war's brutal, undisciplined violence: bloodlust, panic, and slaughter without regard to cause. Athena represents strategic, disciplined warfare in service of a just cause. In the Iliad, she fights on the Greek side and wounds Ares herself with a boulder while he fights for Troy, and Greek tradition consistently favored her calculated restraint over his savagery.
Source: Homer, Iliad, Book 21
Why did the other gods dislike Ares?
In Homer's Iliad, Zeus tells Ares to his face that he is the most hateful of all the gods on Olympus, tolerated only because he is Zeus's son. The immediate cause is a wound: the mortal hero Diomedes, aided by Athena, drives a spear into Ares during the Trojan War, and Ares flees to Olympus complaining. Zeus's response reflects a wider pattern in Greek sources: Ares' love of violence for its own sake, without strategy or justice behind it, set him apart from more respected Olympians and made him an outlier even among war deities.
Source: Homer, Iliad, Book 5
Who were Ares's children?
With Aphrodite, Ares fathered Phobos (Fear) and Deimos (Dread), who accompany him into battle as personified terrors, and Harmonia, goddess of harmony, whose marriage to Cadmus of Thebes later sources treat as cursed by the unlikely union of War and Love. Ares also fathered several mortal sons associated with violence and banditry, including Cycnus, who was eventually killed by Heracles.
Source: Hesiod, Theogony 933-937
Was Ares ever captured or humiliated?
Yes, more than once. Homer's Odyssey tells how Hephaestus caught Ares and Aphrodite together in an unbreakable golden net and displayed them naked before the laughing gods. The Iliad also has the giant twins Otus and Ephialtes, the Aloadae, capture Ares and imprison him in a bronze jar for thirteen months, until Hermes learned of it from the giants' stepmother and freed him, nearly dead from confinement.
Source: Homer, Iliad 5.385-391
Where Accounts Differ
- Greek versus Roman reception divergence
- Ares' affair with Aphrodite and its exposure by Hephaestus is told in Homer's Odyssey, Book 8, as a song within the narrative; it is a separate episode from his role in the Trojan War, which belongs to the Iliad.
- Greek and Roman reception of this god diverge sharply. Homer's Iliad and Hesiod's Theogony present Ares as a disliked, hot-tempered outlier among the Olympians, openly called the most hateful god by Zeus, while Roman sources elevate his counterpart Mars to one of the state's most honored gods, ranked second only to Jupiter and credited as father of Romulus and Remus.
Sources
- Homer, Iliad 5.846-909
- Homer, Odyssey, Book 8
- Hesiod, Theogony 921-923
- Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth (1993)