Why the Greeks held their god of war in such deep, uneasy contempt
In short: Ares was an Olympian, yet he was frequently mocked, humiliated, and feared. Unlike his sister Athena, who represented strategic brilliance, Ares embodied the raw, mindless brutality of the battlefield. To the Greeks, he was a necessary but dangerous force, often treated more like a volatile prisoner than a divine protector.
Ares, the son of Zeus and Hera, occupied a complex space in the Greek imagination. While he was one of the Twelve Olympians, his presence was often met with ambivalence or outright revulsion. Literature frequently depicts him as a figure of ridicule, such as when the craftsman-god Hephaestus trapped him and Aphrodite in an invisible net to expose their affair to the other gods. Even Zeus, his father, expressed disdain for him, particularly when Ares returned from the Trojan War wounded and complaining.
The god’s reputation for savagery was often linked to his perceived origins as a Thracian deity, a region the Greeks viewed as barbarous. This association with violence extended to his cult practices. In some areas, such as Pamphylia, oracles instructed cities to keep statues of Ares ritually chained to ensure he remained a peaceful protector rather than a destructive force. These fetters were intended to bind his bloodlust, a practice that mirrored the mythic accounts of him being imprisoned in a bronze urn by the giants Otus and Ephialtes for a full lunar year.
Despite his limited role in mainstream Greek mythology, Ares held significant influence in other regions. In Asia Minor, he was sometimes venerated as an oracular deity, and in the kingdom of Aksum, rulers like Ezana invoked him as an invincible, life-giving force. His character also shifted significantly when adopted by the Romans as Mars, where he was elevated to a dignified, ancestral protector of the state. This transformation highlights the stark contrast between the Greek view of Ares as a chaotic, untamed spirit of slaughter and the later, more structured Roman interpretation of his martial power.
The ambiguity of his nature is further reflected in his companions, such as Deimos (Terror) and Phobos (Fear), and his shifting allegiances on the battlefield. Whether he was being driven from the fight by Athena or serving as the progenitor of the dragon whose teeth birthed the warriors of Thebes, Ares remained a symbol of the unpredictable and often devastating reality of war. He was the personification of the battle-throng, a force that could be harnessed for victory but never truly tamed.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Ares
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