Ares

Who Ares actually is

Ares (Ἄρης — possibly from a root meaning "ruin" or "curse") is the son of Zeus and Hera. Unlike his sister Athena, who governs the *just war* (the defense of the polis, the strategic war), Ares governs *war-as-slaughter* — the bloodlust, the battlefield rage, the courage that is indistinguishable from violence-addiction. He is the *least-loved* Olympian: Iliad 5.890-891 has Zeus saying to the wounded Ares — "Most hateful of all gods to me are you, for forever quarreling and wars and battles are your delight." In the Iliad Ares fights for the Trojans (in opposition to Athena, who fights for the Greeks) and is *wounded twice* — first by Diomedes (with Athena's help, Iliad 5), then defeated by Athena directly (Iliad 21). His chief myth-cycle is the *adultery with Aphrodite*: Aphrodite was politically-married to Hephaestus but took Ares as her lover; Hephaestus caught them in a golden net and exposed them to the laughter of the assembled gods (Odyssey 8.266-366). From their union came Eros (in some traditions), Phobos (fear, who attended Ares on the battlefield), Deimos (terror, his counterpart), Harmonia (paradoxically the goddess of harmony — the mythic statement that *new harmonies come from the resolution of conflict*), and several lesser children. Ares's cult was *less central* in classical Greek religion than the Roman Mars-cult would later become: he had a few sanctuaries (one at the *Areopagus*, "the hill of Ares," the rocky outcrop in Athens where homicide-cases were tried — said to have been the site where Ares was tried for killing a son of Poseidon), but no Pythian Games, no Eleusinian Mysteries, no Apollo-scale oracular center. When Greek war-religion was needed, the Greeks tended to honor Athena (strategic war) or Apollo (plague-as-war) rather than Ares (slaughter-as-war). The Roman *Mars* underwent a major theological rehabilitation: Mars was the *father of Romulus and Remus*, the founder-god of Rome, second-only-to-Jupiter in Roman state-cult, the patron of the legions and of *agriculture* (the *Campus Martius* was the Roman military training-field, and March/*Martius* was the start of both the war-season and the agricultural year). The Roman Mars therefore carries dignities the Greek Ares never had.

Iconography

Powerful, fully-armored warrior. Often beardless in earlier art, bearded in later. Bronze helmet (sometimes with the visor down, which obscures the face). Spear and shield. Sometimes nude with helmet only (the heroic-nude convention). Riding in a chariot pulled by *Phobos* and *Deimos* (his sons-as-fear-and-terror). Sometimes accompanied by *Enyo* (his sister or consort, goddess of war-cry). The vulture is sometimes his sacred bird (the carrion-bird of the battlefield); the dog and the boar are also sacred. Roman Mars iconography is grander — armored emperor-figure, often standing over a defeated enemy, sometimes paired with Venus (the rehabilitated Aphrodite-Ares marriage of the Roman pantheon).

How to invoke Ares

Tuesday (Latin *dies Martis*, French *mardi*, Italian *martedì*, Spanish *martes* — the day of Mars/Ares across Romance languages). Offer at the threshold of a necessary fight (a difficult conversation, a court case, a confrontation, a military deployment, the saying of the difficult-no). Iron is his metal. Red is his color. Offerings: red wine, an iron object, a sharpened blade (held, not used). At the boundary of a contested territory (the property-line, the discipline-meeting, the negotiating table). The traditional invocation: *Ἄρες Ἄρες βροτολοιγέ μιαιφόνε τειχεσιπλῆτα* (Ares, Ares, man-slayer, blood-stained, wall-piercer — Iliad 5.31). Modern reading note: Ares-invocation is *not* invocation of war-tourism — it is the recognition that some situations require the slaughter-energy and that pretending otherwise (insisting Athena will solve everything) is a different kind of cowardice. Especially called by soldiers, by people in physical combat-sport, by people in necessary boundary-defense, by anyone whose work requires *naming the violence already happening*.

In love

Ares in love is *the passionate, sometimes-volatile lover* — the partner whose desire is direct, whose anger is direct, whose body shows up fully. The Aphrodite-Ares affair is the mythic charter: erotic-love and war-rage are theologically linked, the same fire kindled in different rooms. Ares-energy in a partnership is *the willingness to fight for what matters* and the willingness to *be the one fought-with* (couples therapy is fundamentally Ares-work, the structured field on which the fight can happen). The shadow is the partner whose Ares-fire has become domestic violence, the rage that crosses from passion into harm. The other shadow: the partner who has confused *being fought for* with *being fought over* — the Helen-of-Troy register where two Ares-figures battle each other in the partnership's name.

In work

Ares in work is the soldier, the firefighter, the contract-negotiator, the labor-organizer (the strike *is* the Ares-move when Athena's court-petition has failed), the trial-lawyer in adversarial proceedings, the surgeon at the moment of cutting, the contact-sport athlete, the security worker. Ares-energy is *necessary violence well-channeled*. The shadow is the worker whose Ares-energy has become *gratuitous aggression* — the manager whose every meeting is a battlefield, the lawyer whose every motion is hostile when collaboration would have served, the surgeon who has become the scalpel.

The gift

Ares gives the recognition that *some situations require the slaughter-energy*. The Olympians prefer Athena, and the cult of *just war* is the prevailing Greek register, but the Iliad does not deny that Ares is real — that battlefield rage is its own gift, that *courage-indistinguishable-from-violence-addiction* is what actually carries soldiers through a battle they did not start. The gift is the willingness to name the fire that is in the work and to direct it well, rather than to pretend it is not there.

The shadow

Ares has been the most *militarist-coopted* Olympian. The Roman Mars-cult rehabilitated him as the dignified patron of legitimate empire, and from that point the European state-religions of war have used Mars-imagery for two thousand years. Every Western military uses Mars/Ares motifs in heraldry; the *USS Mars*-type ship-naming convention, the *Mars Attacks* / *Bringer of War* (Holst, *The Planets*, 1916) cultural-imaginary, all carry the dignification. The other shadow: the *Mars in astrology* register has been over-individualized — your "Mars sign" treated as a personality-trait when the historical Mars/Ares was *cosmically-disruptive*, the principle by which any new thing has to break the old order before it can establish itself. The third shadow: the *Aphrodite-Ares affair* has been romanticized into a beauty-and-beast aesthetic in Western painting (Botticelli's *Mars and Venus* c. 1485 is the prototype) that strips the theological seriousness — *Harmonia is their daughter*, the goddess of harmony comes from the union of slaughter and beauty, the mythic statement is that *new harmonies are forged through conflict*, not that Mars and Venus are a cute mismatched couple.

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