Ares / Mars
The name for the Roman god Mars may derive from the same
root as Ares, the Greek god of war, but Mars represented heroic valor while
Ares represented the violence and bloodlust of war. Ares was thus very different
from Athena, who espoused military intelligence and strategic thinking.
Outright opposite to Ares was Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Yet the two
became lovers, even though she was married to the crippled god Hephaestus, whom
she despised. The sun god Helios, who sees all, informed Hephaestus of the
affair, and so the craftsman god contrived a trap of a fine golden mesh
suspended over the wedding bed.
He told his wife that he was going to Lemnos, but he soon
returned to catch Ares in bed with Aphrodite. He sprang the trap, and the net imprisoned
the naked gods. All the other Olympians came to look and sneer, but the goddesses
held back for modesty. At last the lovers were freed. Ares went to Thrace, his homeland,
and Aphrodite went to Paphos in Cyprus, the site of her birth. Deimos
("terror") and Phobos ("fear") were the offspring of Ares and
Aphrodite, and today give their names to two moons of the planet Mars.
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