Hate me, you may, stop me, you cannot.
For I am in your nature, I am in your blood.
I am war, I feed the fields with blood splatter,
I cover altars in war-spilled blood.
I am the sound of prisoners wailing, the fires lit from burning cities,
the gore, the kills, the spoils from every land.
I am the master of arms, I am Rebelliousness.
I am the darkness in all of you.
I am the god of war.
Ares, is one of the 12 Greek olympians, and god of war, the spirit of battle, the personification
of violence and bloodlust.
He was called, “the bane of mortals,” “the slayer of men,” “the city-stormer,”
“the armor-clattering”.
Known by the Romans with the name, Mars, he represented sheer brutality, the violent,
and untamed aspect of brutal warfare and slaughter, making him a total opposite of the wisdom
and war goddess, Athena, who represented the civilized form of war, and military strategy.
Ares was the oldest child of Zeus and Hera, and brother to, Eileithyia, the goddess of
childbirth, Hebe, the goddess of eternal youth, and Hephaestus, the god of fire and the forge.
Ares is usually depicted, wearing a helmet, a shield and a bloodstained sword, or spear.
He drives a four-horse chariot and is followed by dogs, or vultures.
And is sometimes, shown alongside his sons, Deimos, and Phobos.
On the battlefield, He is often accompanied by a number of bloodthirsty deities, each
symbolizing the terror of war.
His two sons, Deimos, and Phobos (represented Panic, and Fear), His comrade, or sister,
Eris (represented Strife), Kydoimos,represented confusion, and the lesser deity, Enyo ( was
the Sacker of Cities and “sister of war”).
In addition, the Keres, who were horrid, grim-eyed female Spirits of Death, and dressed in cloaks,
drenched in human blood, also hovered alongside Ares and his companions, on the battlefield.
Now, although Ares was an overwhelming force, whose mere sight filled mortals with terror,
he was not as mighty, and undefeatable, as he appeared to be.
There were a number of encounters where the war god's skills were bested.
in his battle with Diomedes, Diomedes wounded, and defeated the war god, fair and square.
During the Trojan war, Athena, easily bested him, after which she mocked him, and bragged
of her superiority as a warrior.
Heracles, also defeated Ares twice, first during the battle of Pylos, and then after
killing Ares' son, Cycnus.
In addition, homer tells us, that the twin brothers, Otus and Ephialtes, once abducted
the war god, and locked him up in a bronze jar for thirteen months, with no means of
escape.
Perhaps, if their stepmother, Eriboea hadn’t told the messenger god, Hermes, about the
incident, Ares would have spent eternity, in that bronze jar.
Since he was the savage and brutal god of senseless war, Ares was neither loved by gods
nor by men, except Aphrodite, goddess of beauty, whom he had an adultrous affair with.
He was repulsive to his own father, zeus, to the extent that after he was wounded in
battle by Diomedes, Zeus called him “the most hateful of all the gods,” adding that
if Ares hadn’t been his son, he would have surely thrown him into Tartarus, with Cronus
and the rest of the Titans.
The war god, had perhaps, a lot of consorts, with the most popular being the goddess, Aphrodite.
who was at that time, married to his brother, Hephaestus.
Aphrodite bore him, Deimos, Phobos, and Harmonia, and the four Erotes, namely, Eros, Anteros,
Pothos, and Himeros.
Ares also fathered a whole race of female warriors, known as the Amazons.
His consort, Otrera, bore him the most famous four Amazons, who were by names, Hippolyta,
Antiope, Melanippe, and Penthesilea.