Enyo- Greek GodDeity"Companion of Ares"

The Blood-Soaked Goddess

Enyo was a daughter of Zeus and Hera and sister of Ares, though some sources make her his nurse or even his child. Whatever the genealogy, she walked at his side on every battlefield. In the fifth book of the Iliad, Ares and Enyo lead the Trojans into battle together, and the Greek lines buckle under their assault. Homer calls her bearer of "the shameless din of combat" — where she goes, the noise of killing rises. In Hesiod's Shield of Heracles she strides through the carnage alongside Ares, Phobos, and Deimos, her hands and clothing dark with blood.

The post-Homeric poets give her a particular role at the fall of Troy. Quintus Smyrnaeus describes the last night of the city: Greek warriors poured through the gates behind the wooden horse, and the killing went street by street. Priam was cut down at the altar of Zeus and the infant Astyanax thrown from the walls. In every telling, Enyo is there — she does not win battles so much as she walks through the wreckage after they are won.

Bellona

The Romans identified Enyo with their goddess Bellona, who had her own temple near the Circus Flaminius. Before this temple stood the columna bellica, a small stone pillar. When Rome declared war on a distant enemy, a fetial priest hurled a spear over the pillar toward enemy territory — a symbolic cast that opened hostilities. Bellona's own priests, the bellonarii, served her in ecstatic frenzy: they slashed their arms with knives, smeared themselves with blood, and prophesied in a state of wild possession. Their rites drew crowds and revulsion in equal measure. Virgil depicts her on the shield of Aeneas, raging through the Battle of Actium with a bloody scourge.