Ares and Enyalios

In Homer, Ares is both an abstract noun denoting “war” and the deity, blood-stained and bellowing, who personifies the grim and horrific aspects of war (e. g. II. 2.381, 5.859-63). Not surprisingly, Ares enjoyed only a limited worship, concentrated in the Peloponnese and central Greece. Yet he was father to numerous ancestral heroes, and played an important role in the legendary origins of Thebes. As god of war, Ares was early paired in myth and cult with Aphrodite, goddess of sexual desire, and their relations were a favorite subject of artists and poets from Homer on. Their daughter was Harmonia, bride of Thebes’ founder Kadmos, and Ares was the patron (or father) of the great serpent that guarded the spring on the site where Thebes was founded. The pair had a double temple in Argive territory, with ancient statues said to be gifts of Polyneikes before his march on Thebes.1 Cults of Ares were often connected to battle lore, and as the ancestor of the Amazons, Ares was associated with stories of women warriors. In Argos and Tegea, legends told how the women of the city took up arms to battle invading Spartans, and having achieved victory, established cults of Ares from which men were excluded. The Tegeans, who often served as mercenaries, also worshiped Ares Aphneios (of Abundance), in hopes that he would increase the spoils of war.2

Both Ares and Enyalios appear in lists of deities on Linear B tablets from Knossos, and in later centuries the two were syncretized. Enyalios, a war deity, and his female counterpart Enyo also survived as independent cult figures in many parts of the Greek world. Again, the strongest evidence comes from the Peloponnese, particularly Arkadia and Lakonia. The Arkadian city of Mantineia possessed a sanctuary of Enyalios, which ultimately gave its name to one of the civic tribes designated during the political unification of Mantineia in the fifth century. The Spartans had a thriving cult of Enyalios, whose statue was kept in chains, probably to hold its dire influence in check. The same deity presided over a ritual fight between adolescent boys, who made a preliminary sacrifice of puppies. Finally, an Argive bronze plaque inscribed to Enyalios shows a rider on one side and a spearman on the other; it belongs to the seventh century.3

Because of their shared functions as deities of war, Ares and Athena (often with the title Areia) could be worshiped together. A decree from the Attic deme of Acharnai (SEG 21 [1965] 519) shows that the demesmen, having consulted the oracle of Delphi, constructed new altars for the local sanctuary of Ares and Athena Areia. The sculpted scene on the inscription depicts Athena crowning a youthful Ares in hoplite armor. Several clues suggest that the worship of Ares and Enyalios was an ancient, if minor, institution among the Athenians. Solon is said to have founded a sanctuary of Enyalios, and the Athenian polemarchos, a magistrate who was responsible, among other things, for the funerals of the Athenian war dead, offered sacrifices to Artemis Agrotera and Enyalios. The Athenian ephebes swore an oath to protect their homeland with Enyalios, Enyo, Ares, Athena Areia, and other ancestral deities as witnesses. Though the oath is first explicitly attested in the fourth century, it probably dates back to the fifth or earlier; the preservation of the distinction between Enyalios and Ares is an archaic feature.