59 Fun Facts About Ares

The planet symbol for Mars, Ares's Roman counterpart, is traditionally read as which two of his belongings?

A shield and spear, by the usual reading: the circle is the shield and the arrow the spear. The same sign now also means 'male', just as the Venus symbol, read as the goddess's hand mirror, means 'female'.

Who were the parents of Ares?

Zeus and Hera. In the Iliad Zeus tells the wounded Ares he is the most hateful god on Olympus, then has him healed anyway because he is his own son.

Which daughter of Ares wore the belt sought in a famous labour?

Hippolyta. In Apollodorus she promised to hand the belt over, until Hera spread a rumour that she was being kidnapped and the hero, suspecting a trap, killed her for it.

Which goddess was Ares's famous lover, caught with him in a trap set by her husband?

Aphrodite. The pair were let go only when another god offered to stand surety for what Ares owed, and she slipped away to her shrine at Paphos on Cyprus.

Which god netted Ares and his lover in an invisible trap and invited the Olympians to laugh?

Hephaestus. He forged chains as fine as spider's web and pretended to leave for Lemnos; the goddesses stayed home out of modesty, but the gods laughed and one said he'd gladly swap places.

Which god spotted Ares's secret affair and reported it to the wronged husband?

Helios. As the sun he sees and hears everything from the sky; he is also the god who tells Demeter that Hades has carried off her daughter.

After being caught in a net with his lover, Ares fled to which region, regarded as his homeland?

Thrace. The Greeks gave this unpopular god a home among the Thracians, a northern people they regarded as wild and war-loving.

Ares punished Alectryon, the lookout who overslept, by turning him into which animal?

A rooster. Alectryon was posted at the door while Ares visited his lover and dozed off; Lucian jokes that the bird has crowed before dawn ever since to make up for it.

Which two sons of Ares, his companions in battle, share their names with the moons of Mars?

Deimos and Phobos. Their names mean dread and fear, Phobos being the root of 'phobia', and in the Iliad Ares orders the pair to yoke his horses when he wants to storm into battle.

Which author's 1726 satire gave Mars two moons, 151 years before astronomers found the pair named for Ares's sons?

Jonathan Swift. In Gulliver's Travels the astronomers of the flying island Laputa have already tracked two small satellites circling Mars, so a crater on one of the real moons now carries his name.

Which daughter of Ares became the wife of the hero Cadmus?

Harmonia. All the gods came down to feast at the wedding, but the necklace she was given there was said to bring misfortune to everyone who later owned it.

What sprang from the ground when Cadmus sowed the teeth of the dragon that guarded Ares's spring?

Armed warriors, known as the Spartoi. In one telling Cadmus threw stones among them, each man thought a neighbour had hit him, and they fought until only five were left.

After killing the dragon of Ares, Cadmus served the god for eight years before he could rule which city?

Thebes. Apollodorus calls the penance an 'eternal year', which then meant eight of ours, and only once it was served did Athena secure Cadmus the throne.

In the Argonautica, who steals the Golden Fleece from a grove sacred to Ares?

Jason. The fleece hung on an oak in Ares's grove at Colchis, watched by a dragon that never slept, until Medea drugged the beast and the prize could be carried off.

In Apollodorus, which goddess tricked the two giants who had jailed Ares into spearing each other?

Artemis. She turned into a deer and leapt between Otus and Ephialtes on Naxos; each brother threw at the animal and hit the other.

Which god rescued Ares from the bronze jar where two giants had kept him chained?

Hermes. The giants' stepmother tipped him off after thirteen months, and Homer says Ares was close to death in his chains when Hermes stole him out.

In the Iliad, which Greek hero wounded Ares with a spear driven home by Athena?

Diomedes. Ares bellowed as loud as nine or ten thousand warriors and fled to Olympus to complain, and the side he had been helping had to fall back.

In the Iliad, Ares broke a promise to fight for the Greeks and led the Trojans beside which prince?

Hector. A Greek captain who spotted the god at the prince's side, disguised as a mortal, told his men to back away slowly, since no one should fight the gods.

How did Athena overpower Ares when he attacked her in the Iliad?

She struck him with a boulder, a field's boundary stone that she snatched up from the plain, then laughed as he crashed down in his clanging armour.

Which Greek hero killed Penthesilea, a warrior daughter of Ares who came to fight for Troy?

Achilles. Apollodorus says he fell in love with her once she was dead, then killed Thersites, a fellow Greek who jeered at him for it.

Which hero killed Cycnus, a son of Ares who preyed on travellers bound for Delphi?

Heracles. In the Shield of Heracles Ares then attacks him to avenge his son and is speared in the thigh; in another telling Zeus parts the two with a thunderbolt.

In Antoninus Liberalis, which monster's attack on Olympus sent Ares fleeing to Egypt disguised as a fish?

Typhon. Nearly all the gods hid in animal shapes until Zeus struck the monster with a thunderbolt and piled Mount Etna on top of him.

On the Areopagus, Ares was said to have been tried for killing whose son?

Poseidon's. His son Halirrhothius had assaulted Ares's daughter Alcippe, so the gods acquitted Ares, and Athens later tried its murder cases on the same hill.

Which apostle preached a famous sermon on the Areopagus, the Athenian hill of Ares?

Paul. Acts 17 has him tell the Athenians he had found one of their altars inscribed 'to an unknown god'; some listeners scoffed, but Dionysius the Areopagite was won over.

Pausanias reports that Spartan youths sacrificed which animal to the war god as the bravest of tame beasts?

A puppy. Each team offered one at night, then fought with fists, feet and teeth on a moated island until one side had shoved the other into the water.

Plutarch says Spartans gave Ares a small bird for winning by open assault, but which animal for winning by trickery?

An ox. The bigger gift for the cleverer win, Plutarch explains, was meant to teach Spartan commanders to be tacticians and not merely fighters.

According to Herodotus, the Scythians worshipped their form of Ares through what cult object?

An iron sword. Each district planted an ancient blade on a huge platform of brushwood, and Herodotus says its yearly offerings included the blood of one war captive in every hundred.

In some tellings, a jealous Ares was behind the wild boar that killed which beautiful youth?

Adonis. The late poet Nonnus has Ares take the boar's shape himself to get rid of a rival in love, while other versions blame different gods for sending the animal.

An oracle told the coastal city of Syedra to chain up a statue of Ares so that he would drive off whom?

Pirates. Each year the statue was to be bound and put on trial like a prisoner begging for mercy, after which the oracle promised the city a gentler god and prosperity.

In parts of which region was Ares, unusually, an oracular deity with cults at 29 sites?

The Hellenistic city of Metropolis in what is now western Turkey built him a monumental temple as its protector.

King Ezana of Aksum, who called himself a son of 'the invincible Ares', later converted to which religion?

Christianity. Aksum's kings had invoked their own war god Mahrem as Ares in Greek inscriptions; after Ezana's conversion in the 300s his coins swapped the old disc and crescent for a cross.

Which day of the week did ancient Greeks call the 'day of Ares', and Romans the day of Mars?

Tuesday. Germanic peoples translated the Roman name with their own war god, Tiw, giving English 'Tiw's day', while French kept Mars in mardi.

In Ovid, Juno bore Mars with no father, to get even with Jupiter for producing which goddess by himself?

Minerva. Stung that Jupiter had managed a child without her, Juno set out to do the same, and the flower goddess Flora made her pregnant with the war god by the touch of a single bloom.

In a late tale, Ares had the cannibal Agrius turned into which bird?

The vulture. Agrius and his brother ate passing strangers and were about to lose their hands and feet when Ares, their ancestor, had them changed into birds instead.

The name Ares is traditionally linked to a Greek word meaning what?

Bane or ruin, the Greek word arē. Homer could also use 'ares' as an ordinary noun for battle itself, so the god and the fighting shared a single word.

Pausanias says Spartans chained their statue of Enyalius, a double of Ares, for the same reason Athenians denied their Victory statue what?

Wings. A war god in fetters could never run away from Sparta, he explains, just as a Wingless Victory could never fly off from Athens.

In Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, the chorus blames Ares for which disaster?

A plague. The chorus pictures the sickness as Ares attacking without his armour, and prays for him to be driven far out to sea.

In Homer, which goddess is the sister and battle companion of Ares?

Eris. Homer's Strife starts out small, he says, then grows until her head strikes the sky while her feet still walk the earth, spreading the quarrel through both armies.

The Homeric Hymn to Ares closes by asking the war god for the courage to live in what?

Peace. The singer begs Ares to restrain the fury in his own heart; scholars think this hymn was written long after the others, perhaps as late as the 5th century AD.

Ares's jealous lover cursed which rival goddess with endless desire for mortal men?

Eos, goddess of the dawn. Apollodorus uses the curse to explain why she kept carrying off handsome mortals, the hunter Orion among them.

In the 2005 video game God of War, who is tasked by Athena with killing Ares?

Kratos. The Spartan warrior turns out to be Ares's own former servant, out for revenge because the god had tricked him into killing his family.

In God of War (2005), what object does the hero seek as the only thing capable of stopping Ares?

Pandora's Box. The game hides it in a temple chained to the back of a Titan who crawls across the desert, and says it holds the power to kill a god.

Which actor played Ares in the 2017 film Wonder Woman?

David Thewlis. The film points at the German general Ludendorff, then unmasks the god as Sir Patrick Morgan, the mild British politician who has been arguing for an armistice.

Under which emperor was a classical temple moved into the Athenian agora and rededicated to Ares?

Augustus. The transplanted temple worked, in effect, as an Athenian home for his own Mars the Avenger, the god he took as personal guardian for avenging Julius Caesar.

Which film's astronauts belong to an expedition called Ares III?

The Martian. Ares is the Greek name of the god the Romans called Mars, and a NASA orbiter has photographed the real spot on the planet where the story's crew lands.

The Romans revered Mars, their counterpart to Ares, as the father of which hero of their founding legends?

Romulus. Mars was said to have fathered him and his twin Remus on the Vestal Virgin Rhea Silvia, which made the war god an ancestor of the whole Roman people.

In the Argonautica, the feather-shooting Birds of Ares guard an island temple of the god built by which people?

The Amazons. Two of their queens built the stone temple on their way to war, and the Argonauts scared off its birds by roofing the ship with shields and clashing on them.

Often confused with Ares, the zodiac sign Aries takes its name from the Latin word for which animal?

Ram. The two names are unrelated, but there is a link: the constellation was identified with the golden-fleeced ram of the Argonaut legend, whose skin ended up hanging in a grove of Ares.

Besides war, the early Romans looked to Mars as a guardian of what?

Agriculture. His festivals marked the start and end of both the farming year and the fighting season, and he was invoked by priests whose task was to keep harm away from crops and herds.

Which actor voiced Ares in the 2009 animated film Wonder Woman?

Alfred Molina, Spider-Man 2's Doctor Octopus. His Ares spends the opening of the film as a prisoner on Wonder Woman's home island, shackled with enchanted bracelets that hold back his powers.

Which actor plays Ares, a combat program sent into the real world, in Disney's 2025 film Tron: Ares?

Jared Leto. His Ares is a piece of military software who crosses from the digital world into ours, which Disney billed as humankind's first encounter with A.I. beings.

Ares fights the Giants on a great altar frieze, now rebuilt in Berlin, from which ancient city?

Pergamon. Many pieces of the altar, whose frieze shows the gods at war with the Giants, had been built into a later wall, where the German engineer Carl Humann found them.

Which trickster king chained up Death until Ares came to set the god free?

Sisyphus. While Death sat in chains nobody on earth could die, until the war god set him loose and handed the king over to him.

Greek soldiers charged shouting the name of which goddess, hailed by Pindar as the daughter of War?

Alala. Her name is simply the war-cry itself turned into a goddess, and Pindar calls her the prelude of spears, to whom soldiers are offered up for their city's sake.

Who bought the Ares Borghese, a Roman marble statue, from the Borghese collection in 1807?

Napoleon bought it from his own brother-in-law: Prince Camillo Borghese, his sister's husband, sold him hundreds of the family's antiquities, and they went to the Louvre.

Which young sculptor lightly restored the Ludovisi Ares after its 1622 rediscovery in Rome?

Bernini, then in his early twenties, cleaned up the marble's surface and carved it a new right foot.

Which Marvel hero recruited Ares, long a villain, to the Avengers in 2007?

Tony Stark. He and Ms. Marvel picked the war god for a new line-up after Marvel's Civil War, and Ares stayed on even when the villain Norman Osborn took the team over.

Which composer's suite The Planets opens with the planet named after Ares's Roman counterpart?

Gustav Holst. He insisted the pieces had no connection with the gods of classical mythology: each movement, the opening one included, takes its character from astrology.

NASA's Pathfinder landed in 1997 in Ares Vallis, a valley on Mars, carrying which rover?

Sojourner. Built to last a week, the first rover to drive on another planet kept exploring the valley for nearly three months.