Ares
(Mars)

Son of Zeus and Hera, the God of War was to the Greeks a fearsome bully who lacks both intellectual strength and virtue, and so appears contemptible beside the other Gods of Olympus. To the Romans, however, Mars was magnificent, and death in battle a glorious sacrifice.

The children of Ares are Terror and Fear:

And to Ares, who pierces shields,
Cytherea bore Terror and Fear, dread gods
Who come with Ares, sacker of towns, and spread
Confusion in the close-packed ranks of men
In numbing war.
-- Hesiod, Theogony (trans. Dorothea Wender)

"Ares figures little in mythology. . . . For the most part he is little more than a symbol of war. He is not a distinct personality, like Hermes or Hera or Apollo."
-- Edith Hamilton

Demodocus's tale (in the Odyssey) of Aphrodite's adulterous liaison with Ares is as true today as then. For Homer, the story is only incidentally about Ares. It is really about the attraction of the prom queen for the man in uniform and of the prom queen as the object of social ridicule when she cheats on a skilled and virtuous husband. When Ovid retells the story (in the Metamorphoses), it is the craftsmanship of Vulcan, in fashioning a web of bronze chains to capture the adulterous couple, that is emphasized.