Ares

Ares, the Roman Mars, is the god of war in its rawest form — the blood-lust and tumult of the battlefield, the spirit of slaughter itself. The Greeks regarded him with more dread than affection; even his father Zeus calls him the most hateful of the gods. His destructive fury stands opposed to the strategic, ordered warfare of Athena.

Yet the Romans, who traced their descent from him through Romulus, honored Mars far more highly, as a dignified father of the people and guardian of the state, second only to Jupiter. His celebrated love affair with Aphrodite — Strife joined to Love — was read by allegorists as the union of the two cosmic forces whose mingling, as the philosopher Empedocles taught, composes and dissolves the world.

Epithets

• Enyalios Ἐνυάλιος — the warlike
• Brotoloigos Βροτολοιγός — bane of mortals
• Miaiphonos Μιαιφόνος — the blood-stained
• Mars Ultor Lat. — Mars the Avenger
• Gradivus Lat. — the marching god of war