Ares is the most uncomfortable of the Olympians. He is the god of war — not the noble, strategic kind represented by Athena, but the raw, undifferentiated bloodlust of battle. He loves the clash of weapons for its own sake, the screaming of the wounded, the smell of blood. He is chaos given a divine face. And the Greeks, who built a civilization on reason and order, despised him for it — even his own father Zeus called him the most hateful of all the gods.
Yet Ares endured. He was prayed to by soldiers before battle, honored by warriors who understood that war is not always clean or noble, and his Roman counterpart Mars became one of the most revered gods in the empire that conquered the ancient world. He is the shadow side of human aggression — denied, deplored, and yet inescapably present.
Origins and Birth
Ares was the son of Zeus and Hera, making him one of the few Olympians who was the legitimate child of both king and queen of the gods. This should have given him a place of honor on Olympus. Instead, the circumstances of his character made him an outcast among his own divine family.
Some ancient sources suggest Hera may have conceived him alone, without Zeus, in retaliation for Zeus giving birth to Athena from his own head. In this version, Hera used a magical herb to conceive Ares independently — a mirror image of Zeus's solo parenthood. Whether or not this tradition is followed, Ares grew up as the difficult child among the Olympians: loud, aggressive, reckless, and difficult to love.
His Thracian origins are significant. Thrace — the wild, cold region north of Greece — was associated with barbarism and ferocity by the Greeks, who considered it a land of fierce warriors with little of the refinement Athens prized. By making Ares a Thracian deity at heart, the Greeks encoded their ambivalence about martial violence directly into his mythology.
Powers and Domains
Ares embodied the physical, visceral reality of combat: courage in the face of death, the animal drive to kill or be killed, the terror that descends on a battlefield. He delighted in the chaos of war and often descended to fight directly alongside mortal armies, his presence driving soldiers into frenzy.
His twin companions were Deimos (Terror) and Phobos (Fear) — in some myths his sons, in others his attendants. They accompanied him everywhere on the battlefield, riding beside him in his war chariot. Eris, the goddess of strife and discord, was his sister and frequent companion. Together they represent the full psychological spectrum of warfare: the fear before battle, the terror within it, and the strife that causes it.
Unlike Athena, whose warfare was planned and purposeful, Ares was associated with the side that fought viciously but not necessarily wisely. He was big, fast, and nearly unstoppable in direct combat — but he could be outwitted, and he frequently was. In the Iliad, he is wounded twice by mortal heroes acting under divine assistance, something almost unheard of for an Olympian.
Key Myths and Stories
The most celebrated story involving Ares is his affair with Aphrodite, the goddess of love who was married to Hephaestus. The two carried on a passionate secret liaison while Hephaestus labored at his forge. The sun god Helios, who sees everything under the sky, reported the affair to Hephaestus. The smith god devised his revenge with characteristic ingenuity: he forged an invisible net of fine golden chains and spread it across the bed where the lovers met. When Ares and Aphrodite fell into each other's arms, the net snapped shut, trapping them both.
Hephaestus then called all the other gods to witness his humiliation — and their laughter. The gods roared at the sight of the mighty war god and the beautiful love goddess trapped and helpless. It is one of the great comic episodes in Greek mythology, and it accomplishes something remarkable: it shows Ares, the most dangerous of gods, made utterly ridiculous by a trap built by the god he had scorned as weak and lame.
In another famous episode from the Iliad, Athena helped the mortal hero Diomedes wound Ares himself. The god fled shrieking back to Olympus, where Zeus offered no sympathy: "Do not sit beside me and whine, you double-faced liar," the king of gods told him. "To me you are the most hateful of all gods who hold Olympus." Even in his own divine family, Ares found no comfort.
Ares fathered many children, both divine and mortal. Among the most famous are Eros (sometimes attributed to him and Aphrodite), the Amazons — the fearsome warrior women who traced their lineage to him — and several mortal heroes. Cycnus, a son of Ares, was so violent that even Heracles was sent to stop him.
Symbols and Attributes
Ares was typically depicted as a mature warrior clad in full battle armor: helmet, shield, and greaves. His weapons were the spear and sword. His sacred animals were the vulture — which feeds on the battlefield dead — and the dog, whose aggression and pack instincts were seen as martial qualities. The woodpecker was also sacred to him in some traditions.
His war chariot was drawn by four fire-breathing immortal horses: Aethon (Blazing), Phlogios (Fiery), Konabos (Tumult), and Phobos (Fear). The serpent was another of his symbols, representing the coiling, relentless danger of the battlefield. In art, he was often shown standing over fallen enemies or riding into battle with his divine companions.
Worship and Temples
Despite his unpopularity among the literary tradition, Ares was widely worshipped across the Greek world, particularly in regions with strong martial cultures. Sparta, the militaristic city-state that prized warrior virtue above all else, honored Ares deeply. Spartan boys reportedly made sacrifices to him. In Athens, the Areopagus — the Hill of Ares — was the city's oldest judicial council, named for him, where murder cases were tried.
In Rome, Ares was transformed into Mars, one of the most important gods in the Roman pantheon. Mars was elevated far beyond his Greek counterpart — he was considered the divine father of Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, making him literally the ancestor of the Roman people. The month of March bears his name. Roman soldiers venerated him as the protector of the legions, and his transformation from a despised outcast into a national father figure is one of the most striking reversals in the history of religion.
Legacy and Modern Influence
Ares endures in our cultural vocabulary as the archetype of unchecked aggression — the shadow warrior within the human psyche. His image haunts every culture that romanticizes warfare while quietly condemning the damage it does. In Jungian terms, he represents the warrior archetype in its most primitive form: necessary, dangerous, and impossible to fully civilize.
In modern popular culture, Ares appears as a villain in the Wonder Woman franchise, as a powerful antagonist in the Percy Jackson and God of War series, and as a recurring figure in fantasy literature. His name has been given to a NASA launch vehicle — Ares I — as well as to countless military operations and weapons systems. The uncomfortable truth that Ares represents — that humans love war even as they hate it — is why he has never quite gone away. He is the part of ourselves we refuse to accept, and in refusing, keep alive.
