The secret affair between Ares and Aphrodite produced Eros, Anteros, Phobos, Deimos, and Harmonia. Their union was exposed when Hephaestus trapped them in a golden net.
⚠ Hesiod's Theogony (120) places Eros among the first beings to emerge from Chaos, a primordial force predating the Olympians. The parentage from Ares and Aphrodite is the later Hellenistic tradition (Simonides fr. 575; Bibliotheca 1.3.3, Apollodorus).
Zeus and Hera's marriage was the most prominent divine union on Olympus. Together they produced Ares, Hebe, Eileithyia, and Hephaestus.
⚠ Some traditions, including Hesiod's Theogony, state that Hera bore Hephaestus alone without Zeus, in retaliation for his solo production of Athena.
Ares and Otrera produced the Amazon queens Penthesilea and Hippolyta, both inheriting their father's martial prowess and their mother's Amazon heritage.
The Amazons were said to be descendants of Ares, who fathered their race. Their martial nature and devotion to warfare reflected their divine parentage from the god of war.
Ares fathered Cycnus, a brutal son who waylaid travelers on the road to Delphi and used their skulls to build a temple to his father, until Heracles killed him.
Ares fathered Diomedes, the savage king of the Bistones in Thrace, who fed his man-eating mares on the flesh of strangers until Heracles slew him as one of his labors.
Ares fathered Oenomaus, the king of Pisa in Elis, who challenged suitors of his daughter Hippodamia to deadly chariot races until Pelops defeated him.
Ares rides to war attended by his fearsome retinue — his sons Phobos and Deimos spread panic and dread through enemy ranks, Enyo howls the war cry as cities fall, and Eris his sister drives men to murderous fury on the killing field.
The giant twins Otus and Ephialtes overpowered Ares and imprisoned him in a bronze jar for thirteen months, where he would have perished had Hermes not freed him at Eriboea's warning.
In the Iliad, Athena defeats Ares in combat twice — wounding him in Book 5 with Diomedes' spear and knocking him down with a boulder in Book 21.
Cadmus slew the dragon sacred to Ares that guarded the Ismenian spring near Thebes. The killing incurred Ares's wrath, and Cadmus served the war god for eight years in penance before founding Thebes.
In the Iliad, the mortal Diomedes wounded Ares with Athena's guidance, driving the war god screaming from the battlefield — an extraordinary humiliation for an immortal deity.
Hephaestus trapped Ares and Aphrodite in an unbreakable golden net to expose their affair before the Olympians, publicly humiliating the war god.
Heracles defeated Ares in combat when the war god tried to protect his son Cycnus, a brigand who murdered travelers. Even a god of war could not overcome Heracles in battle.
Ares sent a monstrous boar to gore Adonis to death, consumed by jealousy over Aphrodite's passionate love for the beautiful mortal youth.
⚠ Servius (on Aeneid 5.72) attributes the boar to Ares's jealousy, while Apollodorus (Bibliotheca 3.14.4) attributes it to Artemis avenging the death of Hippolytus.
Ares slew Halirrhothios, son of Poseidon, for raping his daughter Alcippe near the Acropolis. Poseidon brought Ares to trial before the Olympian gods on the hill that became the Areopagus — the 'Hill of Ares' — where the war god was acquitted.
The twelve principal gods of the Greek pantheon who overthrew the Titans and ruled from Mount Olympus. The canonical members varied by tradition, with Hestia sometimes yielding her seat to Dionysus.
Ares, Mars, and Laran are the Greek, Roman, and Etruscan war gods transmitted through cultural contact across the Mediterranean. Mars held far greater honor in Rome as father of Romulus and patron of the state, while Laran appears armored on hundreds of Etruscan bronze mirrors.
The first trial on the Areopagus took place during the reign of Cecrops, when Ares was judged by the Olympian gods for killing Halirrhothios, son of Poseidon, and acquitted.
The Colchian Dragon kept vigil over the Golden Fleece in Ares's sacred grove at Colchis, a sleepless serpent coiled around the oak from which the fleece hung, protecting the war god's consecrated ground.
When the twin giants Otus and Ephialtes imprisoned Ares in a bronze jar for thirteen months, Hermes stole the war god out by stealth, freeing him half-dead from his confinement.
Ares gave Hippolyta a golden war girdle as a mark of her sovereignty over the Amazons. This girdle became the object of Heracles's Ninth Labor.
Phrixus hung the Golden Fleece in the sacred grove of Ares in Colchis after sacrificing the ram Chrysomallus. The war god's grove and its guardian serpent protected the fleece until Jason retrieved it.
Poseidon negotiated the release of Ares and Aphrodite from Hephaestus's golden net, guaranteeing that Ares would pay the fine owed to the cuckolded smith god.
The Stymphalian Birds were sacred to Ares, god of war. After Heracles drove them from Lake Stymphalus, the survivors fled to the Island of Ares in the Black Sea.
Ares freed Thanatos after Sisyphus had chained him, furious that with Death imprisoned no warriors could fall in battle and his wars produced no casualties.
Ares' sacred dragon guarded the Ismenian spring near Thebes. Cadmus slew the dragon and sowed its teeth, from which the Spartoi — Thebes' founding warriors — sprang.
Zeus despised Ares above all other Olympians, openly rebuking him in the Iliad for his love of quarreling, wars, and bloodshed.
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