The Ancients - Ares: God of War

Episode Date: March 12, 2023

Ares is the god of war and bloodlust in Greek mythology.One of the twelve Olympian gods, Ares was often depicted as a fierce and bloodthirsty deity - both feared, and revered by the Ancient Greeks. But despite being a major figure in the Greek pantheon, Ares has often been overshadowed by more famous siblings, or legendary heroes. So why in an Ancient society, so defined by warfare, was Ares not a more central figure?In the latest episode of our special series on Greek Gods and Goddesses, Tristan is joined by Professor Susan Deacy from the University of Roehampton to delve into Ares messy character. Together, they explore the role of Ares in Greek mythology, looking at the first kin-slayer and the reputation he left across history - asking just who was the god of war, and why should we be so afraid of him?The Senior Producer was Elena GuthrieScript written by Andrew HulseVoice over performed by Nichola WoolleyThe Assistant Producer was Annie ColoeEdited by Aidan Lonergan

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. Sing, muses, sing to me a story of Olympus and the deathless gods who govern earth, sea, and sky. That is Orestes' ask. He stands upon the edge of the Aeropagus and overlooks all Athens. Her temples, her walls, her every edifice is picked out in silver,

moonlight catching in the rain that streams down roofs and pools in gutters. He stretches out hands, feels the damp or dry against his palms like needles. It does little to wash away Clyamestra's blood. His mother's blood. Orestes thought he knew the price of kinslaying. Revenge was the wet stone against which he had needed his character, and he would gladly shatter to achieve it. But death would be a relief compared to the madness that haunts him now.

The furies pursue him relentlessly. In the temple of Apollo, he begged some relief, and the oracle answered, Head to Athens. Seek out the Aeropagus. But now that Orestes is here, he can find little clue as to what to expect. The escarpment is barren,

all cragged rock and parched scrub. The only feature is a single spear. It is plunged so deep into the rock that the bladed head is all but swallowed in stone. Why am I here? he asks. That is when the muses begin to sing, to dance, to play the lyre and the flute. This is a place of trial, they tell him. The hill is named for blood-soaked Ares, the manslaughterer, the god of war, the first kinslayer.

It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's episode we are continuing our special series all about the Greek gods and goddesses, and this time the spotlight is shining on the god of war, Ares. Now as we do in all of our special gods and goddesses episodes we're going to kick off our Ares episode with a story. A story about this particular god to give him some context and the story we've chosen is the tale of him being the first kinslayer and how he was taken to court to have his punishment decided. So sit back and relax as we first talk you through this story, this tale, this myth associated with the Greek god Ares. Following that, we've got an interview with Professor Susan Deasy. And what an interview this was. Susan, she is so passionate, she's so

and what an interview this was Susan she is so passionate she's so enthusiastic about the god Ares and about Greek gods and goddesses full stop we hear about his comparison with the likes of Athena they're both associated with war we hear about Ares's depiction in art his association with this region of Thrace where the warriors were renowned as having hearts of Ares and we also look into how Ares transforms in the Roman world to become the god Mars. Susan explains all of this and more and I know you're going to absolutely love it. So without further ado the next episode in our special Greek gods and goddesses series, Ares, your time is now. The Muses' song starts with a son and a daughter. They are each the mortal child of a god. They are each the mortal child of a god.

Halirothius, the son, is arrogant and brutish. He is a scion of the sea, a child of Poseidon, lord of the deep. He is as wild as the waves that begot him. Alcippi, the daughter, is fair and noble, and so few would guess at her parentage. Her father is blood-soaked Ares, but she is the best of him. Her ferocity is her passion, his destruction her creativity.

While Alcippi may take little heed of her origins, Halerotheus is consumed by his. He wears his ancestry like a crown. After all, he convinces himself. He is as good as a god. And when he first spies Alcippi, he recognizes one worthy of him. Her beauty is another divine inheritance. A perfectly faceted gem he would claim for his crown. But she will not have him.

Alirotheus' temper is tempest, and in that rage, like a sudden turn of the tide, he forces himself on Alkippi. He believes it is his right, for who would dare deny a god such as him? But gods are deathless. And when Ares' blazing spear plunges into Elirothius' chest, tearing flesh from bone, boiling his blood like the sea foam from which he is named, it puts an end

to his pretensions. Herlerotheus is no god. He is dead before he even hits the ground. The killing is novelty. You see, the world was young then. Death was still something new to Olympus. True, their reign was forged in war. Titanomachy, Gigantomachy. But those were deathless wars. And when neither side could die, the loser's fate was always usurpation. Imprisonment. As for the Olympians' own fights.

Little more than squabbles. Sport. Pain without bite. Wound without injury. A justice that set eye for an eye without ever risking sight. But something had changed when the gods began to sire children with mortal beings. Children who could die. Children who would die. And with Allerothius, the inevitable has happened. He is. He was. Ares' cousin.

The child of his father's brother. So the act is not merely murder, homicide, the killing of Kith. It is the slaying of Kin. A deathless child of Olympus vanquishing a mortal one. And Olympus does not know how to react. Poseidon has lost a son and demands some retribution. The matter requires careful adjudication. So, to the escarpment overlooking Athens, to the place where the murder was committed, the Olympians descend. Their appearance is the blink of an eye.

The Olympians descend. Their appearance is the blink of an eye. They will hear both sides. They will make a judgment. Poseidon is the prosecution, and his indictment is the roar of a sea school. Of all the gods, of course blood-soaked Ares would be the first to kinslay. Is not his aspect war at its most indiscriminate?

He is control discarded, restraint relinquished. All he understands is blood, so blood must be his punishment. It does not run in his veins, only deathless ichor, but it does in those of his daughter, Alkippi. Ares steps forth then, and his defense is Poseidon's charge. He was protecting his own child, his daughter. They are fragile, these mortal children, and so they must be defended with a comparable ferocity. His ferocity. The Olympians begin their deliberation. They turn the testimonies this way and that. They weave their thoughts and wind their reckonings. And at last, this jury of the gods makes their judgment known. They acquit Ares. But they also set precedent. For revenge is a cycle without end, a snake gorged on its own tail.

And so, at this hill where Ares' spear still stands, murder, kinslaying by deathless and mortal alike, will henceforth be subject to trial. Only the jury will decide punishment. The muses bring their song to a close then, but they and Orestes are no longer alone. song to enclose them. But they and Orestes are no longer alone. The Olympians have descended. Their appearance is the blink of an eye. Ares stands among the jury of the gods. The moonlight picks out his peaked helmet, the intricacy of his breastplate, the adamantine sword slung on his hip. He meets Orestes' eye. Then his gaze drops to the mortal's blood-soaked hands.

His acknowledgement is the slightest of knots. One kinslayer to another. Susan, it is wonderful to have you on the podcast today. I'm so glad to be here. It is wonderful to have you on to continue our Greek gods and goddesses series. And today, none other than Ares. Now, Susan, this god feels like the most unhinged of all the Greek gods and goddesses. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I suppose you could argue that all of the gods are unhinged, but maybe we can say that Ares, right, who is a god of things like bloody battle,

but also means war, you could argue is the most unhinged. Yeah. So we like today to think of gods as compartmentalised, so I can't say that. So we like to think of Aphrodite as god of love, Athena as god of war, wisdom, that kind of thing. And Ares we like to think of as god of war. Now, one thing I'm really passionate about doing is really challenging this notion that it's possible to compartmentalise gods in this way, except with Ares. It does work better than it potentially does with other gods. So maybe over the course of this interview, I will set out to show or try to make a case for Ares as being more than a war god. But sure, we think of him today as the god of war. Yes,

his name means war. So he's this warrior who has warlike attributes. He loves the bloodiness of battles, sackings, killings, et cetera, et cetera. He's depicted sometimes covered in blood, for example. He also reflects the vulnerability of warriors. He's often getting defeated. He's often wounded, that kind of thing. It's so interesting because, as you mentioned, he's known as the god of war, but also, as you mentioned in passing there, Susan, Athena, she's also known as a goddess of war. So is it possible to distinguish between the two? I hoped you were going to ask that. Okay. Now, I could go on at length. I know we've only got about 40 minutes, but I could talk all day about this. One of the things that drives my practice is trying to challenge a scholarly and beyond scholarly convention,

I suppose, even fantasy, right? That war can be divided in the ancient world into two different types, war as bloody and terrible and violent, and war as intelligent about training and strategy. Now, obviously, all these aspects are all there. They are all there in relation to warfare. But coming up with a straightforward, clear-cut binary is, I would say, oversimple. And what tends to happen is that Ares is so often seen, and it goes, I've been trying to trace it back. It goes way back. I've got it as far back as John Ruskin, who does it. And it's an opposition that's been there from the very early days of scholarship on ancient Greek religion. And it's become this cliche, it's become this convention. I read about it in works of scholarship, I hear about it in popular podcasts, etc, etc. It's all about how Ares is the god of all the bad aspects of warfare,

as the ancient Greeks supposedly saw it, whereas Athena is all about intelligence, warfare, as the ancient Greeks supposedly saw it, whereas Athena is all about intelligence, warfare, strategy, inventions such as the chariot, that kind of thing. Now, it is possible to make a case for these, but there's also a lot more going on as well. So for example, Athena is the one who's often said, she's the one who's about Nike, about victory. It's one of her specialised components. She is Athena Nike. She is Athena of victory. She holds a winged Nike on, amongst other things, her most famous ancient statue, the statue of Athena Parthenos. Ares is also very much linked with victory. Ares is also a god of victory. He has a lot of children, right? I'd like to write the whole book

on the children of Ares and whatever that means. But one of the children listed amongst those of Ares is Nike. And also, what does it mean to talk about victory as well? It's all about victory, the spoils, the horrible things that happen with the sacking of a city. And Athena and Ares are both very much linked with this. There's one passage in the Iliad where Zeus describes Ares as someone who, what does he say? He said, strife, war, and battle are dear to you. Those things are also dear to Athena, right? She's the goddess of war. She's the goddess of battle. She's the god who loves, amongst other things, the spoil of warfare. So they're both terrible gods. They're often paralleled with one another. I suppose what you can say, and this is perhaps why the opposition is there, one is that Athena is many, many, many other things, right? And Athena

is very often seen as a goddess of many, many different things, but with something unifying them, namely civilization, intelligence, that kind of thing. She's often in this cliched way known as the goddess of war and wisdom, right? She is, but there's a lot more. And what's often in this cliched way known as the goddess of war and wisdom, right? She is, but there's a lot more. And what's often seen as linking these various features is civilization, right? And that is then imposed onto warfare. So if Athena is involved in warfare, it must be about intelligent warfare. But there is also the Athena of the terrible battle cry. There is Athena with the gorgon, the gorgonic stare that is actually paralleled with the stare of Ares at one point.

So Athena is born crying a war cry, paralleling the war cry of Ares. They are gods of war who also embody the terrible, dangerous violence and suffering that warfare brings. So they are very much linked with one another, but not in this binary opposite way that is so often trotted out time and again. It seems to be what us as human beings, we would like to perceive, isn't it? Something quite simple. One is bloodlust, one is control. But as you say, it's so much more than that. But if we go back to Ares and we focus on his origins, now with so many of these gods in the Greek pantheon, they seem to have their origins, well, maybe in the Bronze Age, maybe they're not Greek through and through. What do we think are

the origins of the god Ares? Looking at the origins of any deity can be an absolute nightmare. So as far as the ancient Greeks were concerned, Ares was linked with many places, right? It's often said by modern people that he wasn't worshipped as extensively as other gods. That makes a lot of sense. But there were cults of Ares all over the place. If in ancient Greek sources he's linked with anywhere, it's the region of Thrace. For example, when he gets wounded by Athena in the Iliad, that's where he goes. But also, when he gets caught in the net, in Phisus' invisible net, along with Aphrodite. After this sort of humiliation he and his lover goes through,

he goes off to his home area of Thrace. So there's a strong sense that this region of Thrace for ancient Greeks was always seen as a bit beyond the central, Greek-y bit of the ancient Greek world, a place that in some ways is extremely highly civilized. And as far as the ancient Greeks were also concerned, it was a sort of place that would appropriately be particularly linked with the war god. So the ancient Greeks liked to think of him as someone who's very much part of the Greek pantheon. He's one of the great Olympian XII, etc., etc. But they did also like to think of him as a bit other. So you could then come up with all sorts of theories about that he was originally a non-Greek god who was brought into the ancient Greek pantheon. No, he goes way back. He's there in Mycenaean sources. So as far as back as we can

go with ancient Greek writing, Ares is there. So he seems to be an authentically Greek god, whatever that exactly means. As far as the ancient Greeks were concerned, his key place of residence and origin was the region of Thrace. In terms of how the ancient Greeks like to think of his origins, in terms of who he's descended from, because that's always something to ask. It's always worth asking, where is a god particularly linked with? Also, who are they linked with? We've talked about Athena already. We can talk about other gods, mention Aphrodite very briefly already. But also, how gods are born and who they're born to is also worth very much thinking about. Ares is the child of Zeus and Hera. He's the first child of both of them who is born of their marriage, right? But in Hesiod's Theogony, he's the third child who appears during their marriage,

because this is no ordinary couple. So he's their first child, but he's also not. He has two siblings that are very interesting. So what happens is that Zeus, having married Hera, gave birth from his own head to a child who was his, but not Hera's, and that was Athena, who erupts from the head of Zeus, warrior-like. Hera is then furious, so she produces a child all by herself, and that is Hephaestus. And it's then that we hear about the children they have together. And it's very interesting that now there's been this violent conflict between the two deities. We then get a war god, Ares, is their child. And yet, right, and this is where trying to, you know, pigeonhole gods as straightforwardly one thing or another, things become a bit more tricky in that the siblings of this god, Ares, Ares, this god of war who is war. Arhebe, which means youth, something like that, goes on to become a wife of Heracles. And Eilithea, who is the birthing goddess, the goddess who presides over childbirth. So here we've got Ares as one of these,

we often think of him, I suppose, as this standalone God who is God of war, who stands for war, who is war. But he's also one of these three siblings, maybe triplets even. March 2023 marks 20 years since the start of the Iraq War. The war was waged to rid the world of a brutal dictator, yet it would end marred in controversy. So why did the Iraq war go so badly wrong? And what legacies has it left behind today? Well, I'm your host, James Patton Rogers, and every Monday on the Warfare podcast from History Hit, we're exploring a different aspect

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Just before we keep going on with Aries's relationships with these various other gods the greek gods and goddesses i want to quickly go back to when we were talking about his origins and the region of thrace which seems to be largely modern day bulgaria southern romania as you say on that distant edge of the greek world seem to be barbarians but also greek city states along the coasts. I find that really interesting with Ares, just keeping that a bit longer, because if I remember correctly, it's Aristophanes or Aeschylus or one of them, in one of the plays, they talk about the people, the Thracians, being these terrifying warriors, stereotypes of

terrifying warriors, and having hearts of Ares. So it's so interesting, isn't it? Even in ancient history, that association with Thrace, Ares has, even in written history, the Thracians become renowned as like these incredible warriors and they have that direct link to Ares. Oh yes, absolutely. And also as well as Ares being this particular god with a particular place of origins, et cetera, etc., the fact that his name means war is, I think, so absolutely significant. So whenever the word Ares appears, if you're someone who's translating a particular ancient Greek passage and you see the word Ares, you've got to make the decision as a translator whether to use a capital A to signal that it is

the god or a lowercase a to signal that it's war that's being meant. So when a warrior is described as, you know, Ereos, say, right? And certain gods are as well. I'll say something about that in a minute. What does that mean? Does that mean that they are being linked particularly with war as some abstract concept, or is it very much about they are being linked with Ares? What does it mean for him to be this personification? And why is he a male personification is another thing to add to the mix here. So the Greeks knew of and indeed worship many personifications. They're mostly female. They're mostly gendered as female, and they're regarded as female. Nike, for example, just to give the example of one we've

already talked about, Hygieia, good health, et cetera, et cetera. Ares, war, Hades, underworld, another male one. So obviously, male personifications are absolutely fine. Phobos, Deimos, children of Ares, personifications linked with Ares, they're male as well. But most personifications are female. So why is this one male? And what does that say about concepts of warfare as something highly masculinized? And also maybe you can come on later about how Ares is also seen as this idealized figure of manhood by the ancients as well. So it's certainly not enough to say that Ares is all about things that are reviled

and detested in the ancient world, unlike Athena, etc., etc. It just doesn't stand up. So when someone is particularly ferocious, the people of Thrace, the men of Thrace, whatever, or indeed particular warriors, they are of Ares. They are like Ares. Various gods have this Ereos, meaning Orveres as well. So, Maia may not surprise listeners because it's Athena. Athena is Athena Ereia, amongst other things. So, that's either warlike Athena or the Athena of Ares. Okay, they're both gods who do a lot of warfare, but it very much challenges this opposition between them. It's about two different kinds of warfare. They're not. See, there's also a warlike Zeus. Maybe that makes sense. Father of Zeus, wielder of the vines of the thunderbolt, etc., etc., who became king of

the gods because he managed to win a terrible battle. But this is the one that might well surprise listeners, used as they are to a notion of a certain way of looking at the goddess Aphrodite. There was a war like Aphrodite. So war like Athena makes sense, I suppose, to people. War like Aphrodite can really surprise people. I always find this a really good example to give people. Very much sort of shake-up notions of gods is all about being compartmentalised, right? So, there were various cults of a warlike Aphrodite, the Aphrodite of Ares around the ancient world. Corinth, for example, Sparta, to give another example. So, various places can be Ares-like, various particularly ferocious and impressive warriors can be Aries-like, thinking not least of various warriors in the Iliad who were described as

Aries-like, but also various gods can be as well. So for all that Aries is often seen as maybe the least extensive of all the major 12 Olympians. You could argue that he's the most far-reaching of all of them because of what his name means and given how other gods can have amongst their sort of specialised traits an Ares-ness. Well, let's therefore focus on Ares' relationship with Aphrodite that we have covered in the previous podcast episode, but it would be amiss not to mention it because they have this incredibly passionate relationship, don't they? Yeah, absolutely. So Ares has many relationships and many children, but the one that I suppose, yeah, the one that very much stands out is the one with Aphrodite. And one way to look at it here is that you've got these two opposite

forces coming together. They have this intense relationship. They have various children together as well. Perhaps the best known of their children is Harmonia, so harmony. So the obvious way to read this is that when war and love come together, you know, there's some kind of balance happens, as is symbolised by their child. Except another of their children is Eros. Not always. Eros is sometimes older than they are, but sometimes he is their child.

So what does that mean? So Eros is God of? Oh, sorry. Eros as in love. E-R-O-S. Ah, got it, got it got it yeah yeah so love but also lust right so eros is another of those male personifications so what's that about love so if war aries is male so is love or or lust and also uh listed amongst the children of phobos and

daimos fear terror fear and dread, something like that. So they are lovers. And the story that it's told, there's a bard telling the story in the Odyssey, and the story is told about how they were spied having illicit sex, illicit in the sense that Aphrodite was married to another deity, Hephaestus. And so Hephaestus took an interesting revenge. He's a god of technological ability, and he made a mesh so magically fine that it was invisible even to gods. And they were caught in it while they were having sex. And he then invited the other gods to watch them in their compromised position. When they're eventually released, the two of them go off. They just go away. They go away. Each of their own homelands,

and in the case of Ares, it's Thrace. So he's humiliated. He often loses. He often gets humiliated, and here's one great example of this. So there's that story about them. There are also various children linked with them. He is linked with a number of female figures with whom he fathers children, and Aphrodite is easily the most famous of them. So who are these other children then, Susan? So he has a number of children, and he's often very dedicated to supporting and defending these children. They can be quite terrible children. There's one called Kyknos, for example, who's this giant figure who completely went against one of the key ancient Greek values of hospitality, xenia, right? You're supposed to be well-disposed towards your guest friends. Well, he killed them and was going to make a tall temple out of their skulls. Heracles, as part of his great monster slaying, giant slaying activities, killed Cygnus. Well, then we have a problem because Cygnus is the child of Ares, and Ares is furious. Ares then wants to kill Heracles and Zeus has to intervene.

So that's one of them. Nike is listed as his child. That's about personifications being linked, as is the case with fear and dread. I don't know. The Amazons are his children. Amazons who are linked with, like Ares, they're linked with areas beyond the confines of the Greek world as the Greeks would have seen it. Amazon land is always located just a little bit beyond the area of Greekness. So Amazons, sometimes all of the Amazons, sometimes the Amazon queen are the children of Aries. He was also the father of the dragon at Thebes,

who was very key to the Theban foundation myth. Cadmus, right? Cadmus, the hero Cadmus, slew the dragon and ended up then having to be enslaved to Ares for some time, I think eight years, but I might be making that up because of what he'd done. The teeth of that dragon are sewn and these strange warriors spurt out of the ground as a result. But it's who is the father of that dragon. In this case, the mother is Arenis, meaning fury. So this dragon being the offspring of war and fury. of war and fury. During the fighting in the Iliad, Ares is distressed when one of his sons, who is fighting on the Greek side, is killed. And he's so devastated and upset that he wants to join the battle, right? And it's Athena who restrains him. Ares is so often seen as a god

who is completely linked with his armour, right? Athena can remove her weapons. Ares is so often seen as a god who is completely linked with his armour, right? Athena can remove her weapons. Ares is often seen as the one who's just always weaponed. But what Athena does, she takes his weapons away to stop him from joining battle. So he can be separated from his own warlikeness. I find that absolutely interesting and an interesting routine. But he's so upset when his son, Ascalathus, is killed. You know, gods very often have extreme versions of human emotions. And typically, in the case of Ares, he has the emotions that make sense of a parent who is upset at what's happened to their children. You know, he's very upset when Pensazalea, the queen of the Amazons, is killed by Achilles. Moving from the war at Troy to Athens. Well, Ares killed a son of Poseidon because that son of Poseidon was trying to rape his daughter, Alcibi.

I'll stop you there, Susan, because you mentioned that myth. And actually, that's the myth that we're kicking off the whole episode in with the story. So take it away with this myth, I believe is from the Oresteia, isn't it? So what is this story with Ares and this son of Poseidon? Okay, so it's the story that's at the origins of a particular hill in Athens, very important hill in Athens, very important to the Oresteia that you just mentioned, the hill of Ares. Okay. And there were two stories as to how this place came to be called the Hill of Ares. One of them is the one I just mentioned. It's where Ares sees a son of Poseidon,

Theos, trying to have sex with his daughter. So he intervenes and kills the would-be rapist. And as a result, Poseidon is therefore offended, etc., etc. Now, so what happens is that rather than this ongoing divine strife that would get creative, you know, one god kills another, and then that god would have to be avenged, etc., etc., Zeus steps in. And instead, a trial instead a trial happens on the site that would go on to be a key law court in Athens that would, amongst other things, try homicide cases, the Areopagus. So that's one explanation for how the Hill of Ares came to have its name. It's the hill where Ares was once put on trial and was acquitted. So this is about Ares, amongst other things, coming to the assistance of his daughter when she's being attacked. It's a very interesting story, not least because

when gods want to have sex with women, it's not usually the case that anyone steps in, parents or otherwise, in order to prevent the sex from taking place. You know, where Poseidon has sex with other women, nobody stops it. But Ares sees what's going on and is able to stop it. There is another version of how the hill got its name, and this is the one that's told in the Oresteia. What happens here is that Athena is about to have a trial, right? She's about to start a trial, the trial of Orestes for killing his mother. And it's going to be on this hill called the Areopagus. And now how Athena tells it is that once the Amazons invaded Athens, they wanted to take over the city of Theseus that was on the Acropolis. So what they did was to fortify the hill nearby, the hill of Ares, as a sort of second female-dominated city, right? So they set up camp there and they fortified it according to Athena.

And because the Amazons honoured their father, Ares, the hill was consequently called the Hill of Ares, the Areopagus. So very different reasons why it's founded, but both links with Ares. Well, there you go. There you go indeed. Thank you for explaining through that story, Susan. I mean, with Ares. Well, there you go. There you go indeed. Thank you for explaining through that story, Susan. I mean, before we completely wrap up, I'd also like to ask about Ares' depiction in art and potentially on sculpture and architecture too. Do we have many actual depictions of Ares and how is he normally shown in art? So he's normally shown as a warrior, okay? Which might mean sometimes, how do we know if it's Ares or just some man who is a warrior, or maybe some warrior who's impersonating Ares? And of course, as we've discussed, warriors could be ideal Ares-type figures anyway. So those are his distinguishing features.

One interesting depiction of him is on the Parthenon frieze. I think the Parthenon frieze's depictions of gods is a great way of trying to make sense of how gods are all paired up, because the gods are in pairs, right? And the pairs often make sense. Zeus and Hera, king and queen of the gods. Athena and Hephaestus, sort of king and queen of Athens in a way. Who Ares is paired up with is very interesting, because it's Demeter, sort of more peaceful, agrarian god. So what's going on there? And there we have an instance of Ares who is seated in a peaceful way. He's enjoying the celebrations of the Panathenaia. So he doesn't have to be represented as all warlike, but he is usually depicted as a male warrior. And he was also

very much regarded as an ideal of manhood in Sappho, for example. Now, you might expect Sappho, for example. Now, Sappho, you might expect Sappho to be the last place where there's Ares represented, given just how feminine and homosocial, in a female way, Sappho's poems are. In one of the bridal poems of Sappho, Sappho's gaze is on the bridegroom, who is this ideal of manhood, this Ares-like man, greater than all men. So here you've got, yeah, Ares very much is this ideal of manhood. It's a fascinating story, Ares, not just the mythological stories, but of course, you know, his actual depictions and how he is actually represented by those various ancient Greeks. Lastly, to kind of wrap it all up, when the Romans come along and the Roman god Mars, I mean, how is Ares transformed into this slightly

different god that is the Roman god Mars? It's so often said that when Mars comes along, what you have is a god who is more distinguished than his Greek equivalent counterpart or whatever. There are various interesting things going on with Mars, including Mars as this key foundation god of Rome as a parent of Romulus and Remus, etc. But Ares is father of lots of figures. Ares is more distinguished than the sort of cliché. Because we have this notion of him as god of war, it's hard for us to think of him being things other than war. Ares was an oracular deity, might have had links with snakes, maybe because of the oracular function, I don't know. I've got to look into that now because that's got me wondering. And he's also this ideal of manhood as well. A god linked with justice, right? In his Homeric hymn, he is linked with Themis, so something like law imposed from

above, etc. And of course, this site of a law court, the Areopagus in Athens, key city of justice, right, is very much signalled by the hill of Ares. So I suppose what I would say is that Mars is so often seen as this more distinguished god than Ares. But I think we can make a case for Ares as, like so many of the major gods of the ancient Greeks, a personification of something, but also much more as well, including, you know, from war to law. From war to law. Well, Susan, I think that's a brilliant way to end this episode. Last thing from me, though, you've written a number of books all about the various Greek gods and goddesses. Oh, that's right. Okay, so I consider one of my achievements, I suppose, as a scholar,

to put gods back onto the agenda of classical scholarship, because God had kind of fallen away in the second half of the 20th century. It's Athena that I've been particularly been researching. And it was thanks to looking at Athena and being a bit frustrated by how oversimplified Athena was that I got led into writing about Ares a few years ago. I have written an article on Athena and Ares, and I think I was only scraping the surface there, both of Athena and Ares, and indeed Ares. I've been the editor of a series for Routledge called Gods and Heroes of the Ancient World for quite a while now. The first book came out in 2005. And so each book is on a particular god or hero. They're scholarly, they're accessible, they're pitched for students, amongst other types of readers. And I'm really pleased to share with you that whereas Athena

came out a while ago, Aphrodite's been out for a while, Dionysus has been out for a while, Zeus has been out for a while, Ares is going to be one of the next books that comes out. Not authored by me, authored by someone who did their PhD on Ares. And in the early days of the series, the publisher said, surely Ares wouldn't be a viable subject for a book, or it would have to be a very slim book. No, it's going to be a perfectly thick book, as I think is appropriate to a god who is war, and that itself is obviously absolutely huge for an ancient Greek culture that was so much centred on warfare, but he's so many other things as well. And he's linked with so many sites, so many

offspring, so many fields of ancient Greek life and culture. And I hope I've given at least a bit of a flavour of just what a varied, misunderstood, oversimplified god Ares is. Well, there you go. Misunderstood, oversimplified. Those are words that you see over and over again with these Greek gods and goddesses. Susan, it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Oh, thank you so much. I've really loved it. Well, there you go. There was Professor Susan Deasy talking all things Ares, god of war. I hope you enjoyed the episode, the latest in our special series about the Greek gods and goddesses. Thank you so much for listening and thank you,

of course, to Susan. The senior producer was Elena Guthrie, the scriptwriter was Andrew Hulse, the voice actor was Nicola Woolley and Annie Colo was the assistant producer. Aidan Lonergan was the editor. Next time in this series, we're exploring Athena. Also, as Susan mentioned, another god of war, but also associated with wisdom and more. Can't wait for that episode to be released. Now, last things from me, if you've been enjoying these episodes on the ancients, then you know what you can do. You know what I'm going to say. You can leave us a lovely rating on apple podcast on spotify wherever you get your podcast from it's always greatly appreciated as we continue our mission to share these amazing stories from our distant past with you and with as many people as possible that's enough rambling

on from me and i'll see you in the next episode