Ares was one of the twelve great Olympian gods, and the Greek god of war. He was relatively little worshipped by the Greeks, but his Roman equivalent, MARS, was a very important god, second only to JUPITER (ZEUS). While ATHENA presided over the disciplined and rational use of war to protect the community, Ares stood for the bloodlust and mindless frenzy of battle, delighting in the blood and slaughter, and relishing all the tumult, confusion and horror of war. His sons PHOBOS AND DEIMOS (Terror and Fear) often accompanied him on the battlefield, as sometimes did ERIS (Strife) and the war-goddess ENYO (1).
Ares was the son of Zeus and HERA. He himself was not married, but he had many liaisons, most famously with APHRODITE, goddess of love and wife of the crippled smith-god HEPHAESTUS, as recounted by the bard Demodocus in Homer's Odyssey (8.266–366). Hephaestus caught the lovers in the act by trapping them beneath a magical, invisible net, then called in the other gods to witness their humiliation. Poseidon at length persuaded Hephaestus to release them on the understanding that Ares would pay a fine. The war-god disappeared off to Thrace – a favourite country of his, full of warlike peoples – while Aphrodite went to her sacred precinct on Cyprus.
