ARES, in ancient Greek mythology, the god of war, or rather of battle, son of Zeus and Hera. (For the Roman god, identified with Ares, see MARS.) As contrasted with Athena, who added to her other attributes that of being the goddess of skilfully conducted military operations, he personifies brute strength and the wild rage of conflict. His delight is in war and bloodshed; he loves fighting for fighting's sake, and takes the side of the one or the other combatant indifferently, regardless of the justice of the cause. Splendidly armed, he goes to battle, sometimes on foot, sometimes in the war chariot made ready by his sons Deimos and Phobos ("Panic" and "Fear"), his usual companions. In his train also are found Enyo, the goddess of war (cf. the Roman Bellona), who delights in bloodshed and the destruction of cities; his sister, Eris, goddess of fighting and strife, and the Keres, goddesses of death, whose function it is especially to roam the battle-field, carrying off the dead to Hades.
The primitive character of Ares has been much discussed. He is a god of storms; a god of light or a solar god; a chthonian god, one of the deities of the subterranean world, who could bring prosperity as well as ruin upon men. In this last aspect he was one of the chief gods of the Thracians, amongst whom his home was placed even in the time of Homer. In Scythia an old iron sword served as the symbol of the god, to which yearly sacrifices of cattle and horses were made, and in earlier times (as apparently also at Sparta) human victims, selected from prisoners of war, were offered. Thus Ares developed into the god of war, in which character he made his way into Greece. The story of his imprisonment for 13 months (Iliad, v. 385) by the Aloidae (q.v.) points to the conquest of this chthonian de stroyer of the fields by the arts of peace, especially agriculture.
In the Odyssey (viii.) Ares is the lover of Aphrodite, the wife of Hephaestus, who catches them together in a net and holds them up to the ridicule of the gods. In what appears to be a very early development of her character, Aphrodite also was a war-goddess, known under the name of Areia; and in Thebes, the most important seat of the worship of Ares, she was his wife. His worship was not so widely spread over Greece as that of other gods, although he was honoured here and there with festi vals and sacrifices. At Sparta young dogs were offered to him under the name of Thereitas. At Athens he had a temple at the foot of the Areopagus, where he was tried and acquitted by the gods for the murder of Halirrhothius, who had violated his daughter.
The figure of Ares appears in various stories of ancient my thology. Thus he engages in combat with Heracles on two occa sions to avenge the death of his son Cycnus; once Zeus separates the combatants by a flash of lightning, but in the second en counter Ares is severely wounded by his adversary, who has the active support of Athena; maddened by jealousy, he changes himself into the boar which slew Adonis, the favourite of Aphro dite ; and stirs up the war between the Lapithae and Centaurs (q.v.). His attributes were the spear and the burning torch, symbolical of the devastation caused by war (in ancient times the hurling of a torch was the signal for the commencement of hostilities). The dog and the vulture were sacred to him.
The worship of Ares being less general throughout Greece than that of the gods of peace, the number of statues of him is small ; those of Ares-Mars, among the Romans, are more fre quent. Previous to the 5th century B.C., he was represented as full bearded, grim featured and in full armour. From that time, apparently under the influence of Athenian sculptors, he was conceived as the ideal of a youthful warrior. He then appears as a vigorous youth, beardless, with curly hair, broad head, and stalwart shoulders and wearing helmet and chlamys. In the Villa Ludovisi statue (after the style of Lysippus) he appears seated in an attitude of thought; his arms are laid aside, and Eros peeps out at his feet. In the Borghese Ares (also taken for Achilles) he is standing, his only armour being the helmet on his head. He also appears in many other groups, with Aphrodite, in marble and on engraved gems of Roman times. But before this grouping had recommended itself to the Romans, with their legend of Mars and- Rhea Silvia, the Greek Ares had again be come under Macedonian influence a bearded, armed, and power ful god.