We Americans have a problematic relationship with Ares.

I didn’t realize this until recently. It started with Galina’s Ares agon in March, and the revelations have been coming over time since.

Lest this seem primarily academic, I’d like to note that has become increasingly clear to me that Ares is (and always was) a powerful force in American culture. Indeed, the great conflicts tearing at our nation can be viewed as having their root in the unresolved conflicts between an Athenian worldview and an Arean worldview.

We need to be able to synthesize the union of both if we are to have any hope of healing our nation and preserving the worldwide progress (yes, there’s actually been a lot of good) made possible by our divinely-inspired experiment of a republic.

Let’s start with our typical, Western understanding of Ares. We know Him as the God of War… and that’s about it. The portrayals of Him tend to fall into one of two camps- a god of courage and honor in the face of bloody horror or a god who delights in unmitigated slaughter.

Here is a clip from the film Patton, based on a real (and more profanity-filled) speech General Patton gave. If you can find the entire speech, it typifies attributes we might associate with Ares as a god of courage and bloodlust:

The latter portrayal, fairly common in media, holds Ares up as some sort of “god of war crimes”. For instance, the recent Wonder Woman film imagines a character (very) loosely based on Ares guiding humans in the creation of chemical weapons. Other example can be found in the game God of War, in which the protagonist becomes embodiment of this stereotype in his quest to kill Ares for tricking him into slaying his wife and child.

To be fair, courage and bloodlust are both most certainly aspects He embodies. But is that really all?

In the Iliad, Homer represents Ares as dishonest for supporting both sides in the Trojan War. Homer even goes so far as to suggest that Zeus Himself holds this view. But of course, the Iliad is also a story, one passed down verbally across generations and likely to some degree altered to fit the prejudices of its audience- namely scholars.

I find it interesting that a deity who is frequently named among the Olympians is always presented so two-dimensionally and nearly always antagonistically.

If Ares is a cardboard villain, why is He an Olympian? In fact, given that He is usually portrayed as losing, why is He the God of War at all?

Because He’s not a caricature.

Look at the Classical antagonism between Athena and Ares. Clearly there is a difference in methods and mentality between Them, despite both being associated with war.

Athena is generally shown as consistant, intelligent, and considered. Ares, on the other hand, is usually represented as inconsistent, stupid, and foolish.

Laying aside the prejudices of Athens-aligned Greeks, why is that? Why would the Spartans have held Ares up as a model soldier if He were indeed wavering, mulish, or prone to losing?

Let’s remember that the Hellenic powers often carry opposing mysteries, not good-and-evil, but rather differening sides of a “higher” concept. Take the titan Prometheus (“Forethought”) and His brother Epimetheus (“Afterthought”). In Them we find a dichotomy of divinities, one clever and the other foolish.

Does this mean that since Athena carries the trait of wisdom, Ares must carry the trait of foolishness? Only if wisdom is the trait in question. I suspect the conflicted distinction between Them is something else entirely.

Let’s leave aside this question of wisdom for now and look at what else we know about Ares from the little that comes down to us.

Ares killed another divinity for raping His daughter Alcippe. He stood trial and was acquitted because the other gods considered the murder justified. Even the people of Athens (who typically gave Ares short shrift) enshrined this facet of Him by continuing to hold their most serious criminal cases on the same hill where that first trial is said to have taken place.

So is He a god of justice? Certainly not in the traditional sense, though the Hellenes had no shortage of such deities. Dike and Themis stand amongst the most notable, yet there are others such as Nemesis and Adrestia and even the Erinyes. These latter powers carry more vengeful forms of addressing wrongdoing- yet the people of Athens also acknowledge Them as employing valid methods in the correct time and place.

Adrestia, in particular, is of note here because She is the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite. Another daughter of Theirs is Harmonia, the Goddess of Concord (yes, PEACE).

It doesn’t make much sense that a god whose only traits are slaughter, machismo, and foolishness could father such a child, even in the arms of Aphrodite, whose love is beyond human comprehension. Given that some of their other children include Phobos (“Fear”) and Deimos (“Dread”) who bring much of the horror associated with Their father, it’s clear that the apples didn’t fall far from the tree.

Let’s look at a couple of the other deities who arise from the union of Aphrodite and Ares- Eros and Anteros. Eros holds the mystery of sexual passion, while His brother Anteros both blesses mutual (requited) love and avenges wrongful spurning.

Are you noticing the trend here? There are other traits than violence, or perhaps one big trait, at work in these offspring. Of course, given the variances between different Hellenic cosmogenies they might be more allegorical than literal; but, if so the stories become all the more valuable in helping us to understand how Classical polytheists understood Ares.

One of Athena’s defining characteristics is how She exemplifies a rich internal life replete with introspection, knowledge, careful consideration, and precise exercise of Her strength to achieve an end. She is patient, observant, and measured, to some observers even cold and unemotional. She is also no stranger to subtlety and uses Her superior intellect to lay traps for Her foes.

If we examine Ares through this lens, we find something interesting. He rarely hides anything (and fails when He tries). He acts, rather than taking time to weigh options. He speaks His mind, to the point of seeming boastful, childish, or inconsistent to some observers. Ares’ life is almost entirely external and filled with intense passion and emotional honesty.

While some might see this as akin to a male-female dichotomy, or something like the interplay in the Taiji, I suspect the Hellenes viewed these traits more granularly. After all, while Ares is certainly very masculine, so is Zeus, who carries mysteries that require much more internalization and consideration.

If this raw openess, not slaughter or courage, is the great mystery of Ares, how then does this change our understanding of Him? How does this alter our perceptions of the Hellenic relationship with Him and how should it refine and redefine how we seek to build and sustain relations with Him?

Let us stop to consider some common American phrases that might help us bridge to these other faces of Ares:

• “Oh, HELL No!” – An expression of determined opposition to something perceived as unfair or otherwise morally wrong.
• “Hold my beer.” – An expression of an intent to attempt to overcome some seemingly insurmountable obstacle, regardless of the advisability of the attempt.
• “Over my dead body.” – An expression of firm, open opposition implying that the speaker will fight to the death to prevent something.

All of these (and more) seem to me to carry some small spark of this mystery of Ares, the power of externalizing and acting instead of internalizing and contemplating.

That’s not to say that there is no place in a human life for Athena’s mysteries- of course there are. What I’m suggesting is that we are unbalanced as a society. Those of us on the more educated side of things tend to favor an Athenian approach, perhaps even to the complete exclusion of Arean methods where appropriate.

Again, if we stop thinking of Him purely as the God of War and instead respect Him in this wider role, we have much to learn that is to our benefit. For instance, as the patron of “Oh, HELL no!”, Ares lends validity to our first, instinctive gut reactions. How many of us have known going into a situation that it would turn out badly, but intellectualized our way into it anyway?

As the patron of “Hold my beer”, Ares encourages us to take risks and to challenge ourselves in new ways. Our nation was built largely by people who risked everything for something they hoped would be better. While plenty of avoidable conflict resulted, risk-taking also gave us new forms of art, explosive growth in science and technology, and even many experimental social reforms that once seemed unthinkable.

Speaking of social reform, as the patron of “Over my dead body”, Ares gives the strength of conviction in times when no rational person would do what is necessary:

Notice there is no howling, no bloody berserker rage, and yet this is a battlefield. You can’t see it in the picture, but by the end, hundreds would die. Any one of those tanks could have ground that protester into hamburger without hesitation. But they did hesitate. They hesitated because that young man embodied “Over my dead body”, not with violence but with the willingness to suffer it.

Was Ares involved in that exact incident? I can’t say for sure. However, I suspect some power stepped in. Given that a statue of a torch-wielding Goddess of Liberty was destroyed nearby the night before, it’s certainly possible that Athena and Ares were both paying close attention.

On the flip side, of course, our nation has many citizens who only operate from an in-the-moment, gut-driven viewpoint. Obviously they have a great deal to learn from Athena’s mysteries.

In general, though, those people aren’t reading this.

I’m writing this to me, and to you… and we both have a lot to learn from a holy power that many our culture has written off as a monster, or a moron at best. Ares is Ares, and we need to embrace His mysteries too if we want to become healthy, balanced human beings.