ARES
(AIR-eez)
From
Greek mythology, the god of war Common clues: War god;
Bellicose god; Son of Zeus; Lover of Aphrodite; Son of Hera;
Father of Phobos; Mars, to the Greeks; Trojan ally, in the
“Iliad”; Olympian hawk Crossword
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Insults of the Iliad
Ares
("man," "male", "strife"), in Greek
mythology, is the god of war and son of Zeus and Hera.
Identified with Mars in Roman mythology. He was worshiped
primarily in Thracia.
Statue
of Ares at Hadrian's Villa
One
night, while in bed with Aphrodite, Ares put a youth named
Alectryon by his door to guard them. He fell asleep and Helios,
the sun, walked in on the couple. Ares turned Alectryon into a
rooster, which never forgets to announce the arrival of the sun
in the morning.
During
the Trojan War, Diomedes fought with Hector and saw Ares fighting
on the Trojans' side. Diomedes called for his soldiers to fall
back slowly. Hera, Ares' mother, saw Ares' interference and asked
Zeus, Ares' father, for permission to drive Ares away from the
battlefield. Hera encouraged Diomedes to attack Ares and he threw
his spear at the god. Athena drove the spear into Ares' body and
he bellowed in pain and fled to Mt. Olympus, forcing the Trojans
to fall back.
In
some versions of the story of Adonis, Artemis or Ares (her lover
in this story) sent a wild boar to kill Adonis. This version is
suspect because it implies that Artemis had sex with Ares and, by
virtually all accounts, she remained chaste throughout time.
Although
important in poetry and myth, Ares was only rarely the recipient
of cult worship. Even then, he was venerated most often in
conjunction with other gods; for example, he shared a temple with
Aphrodite at Thebes.
Ares
Enyalius was sometimes used as an epithet for Ares.
Interestingly, the Mycenean Greek Linear B tablets list a god
Enyalios, while ares
seems to be a common noun meaning "war". By
Classical times, however, Enyalios has been demoted to the status
of hero (as in the Iliad) and Ares promoted to god.
Enyalios
survives as a cult-title in only a few settings, most notably in
the oath of the ephebes at Athens.
This
article is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia
article "Ares".
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