Apparently, it doesn't take much to be the Olympian family disappointment.
I mean, when you consider the competition Ares deals with from his siblings,
You know, the drunken parties and the felonies and the constant murders, it's kind of impressive that Ares is the only one who seems to be actually disliked.
Zeus is definitely the kind of parent who like conspicuously brags about only some of his children, like at the family reunion
He'll be all like "Hey, Athena! How's my favorite war god doing?"
And Ares is just like one chair over.
It's almost unfair, but it's also hilarious.
Now mythologically speaking, it's a little hard to tell why Ares takes so much crap from everyone.
The general theory is that Ares embodies the brutality of war.
The violence, the suffering, basically all the ugly, unpleasant parts.
Meanwhile, Athena gets to represent the more noble parts of war: strategy, tactics, leadership, etc.
A handful of smaller gods covered other aspects of war like Nike, goddess of victory.
And while in some versions Ares is Nike's father (which is a positive connotation), on the battlefield Ares only brings three gods.
His sons Phobos and Deimos (aka Fear and Terror) and his sister Enyo, war goddess of discord and strife.
Ares brings all the bad stuff with him and from this perspective, it makes sense why Ares would be vilified but still worshipped.
All of these bad aspects of war are non-negotiable: you don't like them, but if you want a war you're gonna get them. You can't have a war without the ugly parts.
Etymologically, Ares' name might even mean ruin or bane, which I guess would make him a
*Bane voice* NECESSARY EVIL
Ah, that joke would have killed it eight years ago.
Anyway, Ares gets surprisingly little press in the mythology.
He doesn't really make many appearances.
I mean, he's in the Iliad, but he's not exactly the leading man. And he doesn't really come out looking very good.
He most commonly shows up cameoing in other stories or in his seminal role as Aphrodite's boy toy and there aren't really that many stories about him.
That's not to say he wasn't well liked in certain circles.
The Spartans loved him (unsurprisingly) and the Homeric and Orphic hymns paint a pretty flattering picture, praising his glorious strength and indomitable spirit.
Which is going to make this myth pretty embarrassing.
So our story begins far from Olympus in the region of Thessaly where two giants, Ephialtes and Otus, are weaving a very sinister plan.
Now Ephialtes and Otus aren't your garden-variety giants.
They're sons of Poseidon by a mortal woman, Iphimedeia, who also happens to be married to this dude Aloeus, and in honor of their stepfather, the giants are called the Aloadae.
Now the Aloadae are sometimes credited as being bringers of civilization and were hailed as founders in the regions of Naxos and Ascra.
But none of that particularly matters right now because the more important thing is that they're planning on kidnapping some goddesses to be their wives.
Ephialtes has his eyes set on Hera and Otus is enamored with Artemis.
And I'm not here to critique anyone's kidnapping plans, but of all the goddesses you could have chosen, way to pick ones who are 100% guaranteed to not be down with it.
Anyway, the main problem the Aloadae are currently dealing with is that Olympus is pretty tall and hard to climb.
And while the timeline is a little screwy, the last time a bunch of giants tried to storm Olympus
They all died mostly from getting shot and hit by lightning.
Tactically speaking, charging uphill is always a little dicey and Mount Olympus kind of cranks that up to 11.
But the brothers hatch a plan to level the playing field a little and the Olympians are very surprised one morning to find a whole stack of mountains on their front lawn.
The Aloadae are piling mountains on top of each other to reach the summit of Mount Olympus.
Obviously the Olympians aren't down with that and there is a bit of a scuffle.
But when the dust settles and the giants run off, the gods notice that someone's missing.
The giants have KIDNAPPED ARES.
Well, this is TERRIBLE
AWFUL
WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING
In 8 to 13 business months...
Presumably not sure what else to do with him, the giants chain Ares up and lock him in a big bronze jar for an entire lunar year
Before their stepmother Eriboea quietly contacts Hermes to let him know that Ares is stuck in her basement.
(I assume there is no other way to file a divine noise complaint.)
Anyway, with nothing else on their schedule, Hermes and Artemis embark on a rescue mission to the Aloadae's lair.
And while Hermes sneaks around the back to find Ares, Artemis like awkwardly props an elbow on the door and goes all,
"Hello boys. Looking for me?"
So after first getting over their shock at the presence of a real live girl in their man cave, Otus is overjoyed that his waifu of choice has made an appearance,
But Ephialtes is jealous because his waifu hasn't and the brothers start fighting.
As the battle escalates, Artemis transforms herself into a deer and jumps between them.
Not in a "Boys please, there's enough of me to go around" kind of way, more of a circular firing squad situation.
When they throw their spears at her, she nimbly dodges out of the way and they kill each other.
With that problem handily solved, she and Hermes bust Ares out of the jar and head back to Olympus presumably to roast him for the next hundred years.
Oh, and before we go, we have two new Olympian pins. It's Hermes and Ares, it's great.
Ares is in a jar, he looks really cranky. It's really fun. Check him out. It's great.
Some folks inherit star-spangled eyes
Oh, they send you down to war
And when you ask them, "How much should we give?"
Oh, the only answer is more, more, more
It ain't me