#godares

Series 6 Post 21: He is very often identified among the twelve Olympians as the god of war in a general sense, but this is an inaccuracy because in reality Ares is the god only of the more violent aspects of war and of the struggle understood as bloodlust.

🌸 The word "Ares" until the classical era was also used as an adjective, meaning enraged or warlike, for example we recall the forms Zeus Areios, Athena Areia, or even Aphrodite Areia. Some inscriptions dating back to the Mycenaean era report Enyalios, a name that survived into the classical era as an epithet of Ares.

🌸 Ares was the son of the king of the gods, Zeus, and the queen of the gods, Hera. His sisters were Hebe and Ilitia. According to Homer and Quintus Smyrnaeus, Ares had a twin sister: Eris. According to another myth, reported by Ovid and the First Vatican Mythographer, Eris and Ares were conceived by Hera simply by touching a lotus flower, without the goddess lying with Zeus.

🌸 Ares had a quadriga pulled by four immortal horses with fiery breath named: Ardente, Flaming, Strepito, Horror. Of all the gods he was distinguished by his gleaming bronze armor and in battle he habitually wielded a spear and shield. His sacred birds were the barn owl, the woodpecker, the eagle owl and, especially in southern Greece, the vulture. Is often represented on stone with the red color, red like blood, symbol of the ferocious acts that are carried out in war.

🌸From his fiery relationship with Aphrodite were born two sons, Deimos and Phobos, who personified the spirits of terror and fear. Usually Ares went to war accompanied by Cidoimo (the demon of the noise of battle), the Makhai (spirits of battle), the Hysminai (spirits of murder), Polemos (a minor war spirit) and his daughter of Polemos Alalà, personification of the war cry of the Greeks and whose name Ares decided to use as his own war cry. Even the god Eros was and is considered the son of Ares and Aphrodite.