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120-518: The cult of the goddess Moneta was established largely under the influence of Greek religion , which featured the cult of Mnemosyne ("Μνημοσύνη"), the goddess of memory and the mother of the Muses . The goddess's name is derived from Latin monēre (which means to remind, warn, or instruct). She is mentioned in a fragment of Livius Andronicus ' Latin Odyssey: Nam diva Monetas filia docuit ("since

240-557: A rooster which now always announces the arrival of the sun in the morning, as a way of apologizing to Ares. The Chorus of Aeschylus ' Suppliants (written 463 BC) refers to Ares as Aphrodite's "mortal-destroying bedfellow". In the Illiad , Ares helps the Trojans because of his affection for their divine protector, Aphrodite; she thus redirects his innate destructive savagery to her own purposes. In one archaic myth, related only in

360-404: A symposium . One rite of passage was the amphidromia , celebrated on the fifth or seventh day after the birth of a child. Childbirth was extremely significant to Athenians, especially if the baby was a boy. One ceremony was pharmakos , a ritual involving expelling a symbolic scapegoat such as a slave or an animal, from a city or village in a time of hardship. It was hoped that by casting out

480-464: A Titaness daughter of Aether and Tellus , and as the mother by Jove of the nine Muses. Hyginus doesn't seem to identify Moneta with either Juno or Mnemosyne, as the latter is later called a daughter of Jove and Clymene . "Moneta" retained the meanings of "money" and "die" well into the Middle Ages and appeared often on minted coins. For example, the phrase moneta nova is regular on coins of

600-534: A bird of evil omen and Ares and Hermes fulfilled her wish by choosing the woodpecker for her, a good omen for hunters. Sometimes poets and dramatists recounted ancient traditions, which varied, and sometimes they invented new details; later scholiasts might draw on either or simply guess. Thus while Phobos and Deimos were regularly described as offspring of Ares, others listed here such as Meleager , Sinope and Solymus were sometimes said to be children of Ares and sometimes given other fathers. The following

720-486: A certain city. Athena was associated with Athens , Apollo with Delphi and Delos , Zeus with Olympia and Aphrodite with Corinth . But other gods were also worshipped in these cities. Other deities were associated with nations outside of Greece; Poseidon was associated with Ethiopia and Troy , and Ares with Thrace . Identity of names was not a guarantee of a similar cultus ; the Greeks themselves were well aware that

840-481: A coastal island in the Black Sea . Ares plays a central role in the founding myth of Thebes , as the progenitor of the water-dragon slain by Cadmus . The dragon's teeth were sown into the ground as if a crop and sprang up as the fully armored autochthonic Spartoi . Cadmus placed himself in the god's service for eight years to atone for killing the dragon. To further propitiate Ares, Cadmus married Harmonia ,

960-401: A daughter of Ares's union with Aphrodite. In this way, Cadmus harmonized all strife and founded the city of Thebes. In reality, Thebes came to dominate Boeotia 's great and fertile plain, which in both history and myth was a battleground for competing polities. According to Plutarch, the plain was anciently described as "The dancing-floor of Ares". In Homer's Odyssey , in the tale sung by

1080-552: A disembodied soul. Some Greeks, such as the philosophers Pythagoras and Plato , also embraced the idea of reincarnation , though this was only accepted by a few. Epicurus taught that the soul was simply atoms which were dissolved at death, so one ceased to exist on dying. Greek religion had an extensive mythology . It consisted largely of stories of the gods and how they interacted with humans. Myths often revolved around heroes and their actions, such as Heracles and his twelve labors , Odysseus and his voyage home, Jason and

1200-422: A few gods, and supported a statue of the particular deity. Votive deposits were left at the altar, such as food, drinks, as well as precious objects. Sometimes animal sacrifices were performed here, with most of the flesh taken for eating and the offal burnt as an offering to the gods. Libations , often of wine, would be offered to the gods as well, not only at shrines, but also in everyday life, such as during

1320-454: A form of Hestia ), Api and Papaios in Scythia's divine hierarchy. His cult object was an iron sword. The "Scythian Ares" was offered blood-sacrifices (or ritual killings) of cattle, horses and "one in every hundred human war-captives", whose blood was used to douse the sword. Statues, and complex platform-altars made of heaped brushwood were devoted to him. This sword-cult, or one very similar,

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1440-459: A good deal about cult but very little about creed, in no small measure because the Greeks in general considered what one believed to be much less importance than what one did. The Greeks believed in an underworld inhabited by the spirits of the dead. One of the most widespread areas of this underworld was ruled by Hades, a brother of Zeus, and was also known as Hades (originally called 'the place of Hades'). Other well-known realms are Tartarus ,

1560-520: A limited role in Greek mythology . When he does appear, he is often humiliated. In the Trojan War , Aphrodite , protector of Troy, persuades Ares to take the Trojans' side. The Trojans lose, while Ares' sister Athena helps the Greeks to victory. Most famously, when the craftsman-god Hephaestus discovers his wife Aphrodite is having an affair with Ares, he traps the lovers in a net and exposes them to

1680-588: A major role in forming the relationship between humans and the divine. It has been suggested that the Chthonic deities, distinguished from Olympic deities by typically being offered the holocaust mode of sacrifice, where the offering is wholly burnt, may be remnants of the native Pre-Hellenic religion, and that many of the Olympian deities may come from the Proto-Greeks who overran the southern part of

1800-423: A male-dominated Indo-European hierarchy, has been proposed for Greece as for Minoan Crete and other regions, but has not been in favor with specialists for some decades, though the question remains too poorly evidenced for a clear conclusion; at the least the evidence from Minoan art shows more goddesses than gods. The Twelve Olympians , with Zeus as sky father , certainly have a strong Indo-European flavor; by

1920-695: A map to the afterlife , a communal worship, and a band of spiritual fellowship. Some of these mysteries, like the mysteries of Eleusis and Samothrace , were ancient and local. Others were spread from place to place, like the mysteries of Dionysus . During the Hellenistic period and the Roman Empire , exotic mystery religions became widespread, not only in Greece, but all across the empire. Some of these were new creations, such as Mithras , while others had been practiced for hundreds of years before, like

2040-403: A much later interpolated detail, Ares put the young soldier Alectryon , who was Ares companion in drinking and even love-making, by his door to warn them of Helios's arrival as Helios would tell Hephaestus of Aphrodite's infidelity if the two were discovered, but Alectryon fell asleep on guard duty. Helios discovered the two and alerted Hephaestus. The furious Ares turned the sleepy Alectryon into

2160-550: A peaceful deity for you, once he has driven the enemy horde far from your country, and he will give rise to prosperity much prayed for." This Ares karpodotes ("giver of Fruits") is well attested in Lycia and Pisidia. Like most Greek deities, Ares was given animal sacrifice; in Sparta, after battle, he was given an ox for a victory by stratagem, or a rooster for victory through onslaught. The usual recipient of sacrifice before battle

2280-403: A perceived whim of the deity. In some places visitors were asked to show they spoke Greek; elsewhere Dorians were not allowed entry. Some temples could only be viewed from the threshold. Some temples are said never to be opened at all. But generally Greeks, including slaves, had a reasonable expectation of being allowed into the cella . Once inside the cella it was possible to pray to or before

2400-471: A place of torment for the damned, and Elysium , a place of pleasures for the virtuous. In the early Mycenaean religion all the dead went to Hades, but the rise of mystery cults in the Archaic age led to the development of places such as Tartarus and Elysium. A few Greeks, like Achilles , Alcmene , Amphiaraus , Ganymede , Ino , Melicertes , Menelaus , Peleus , and a great number of those who fought in

2520-627: A puppy to Enyalios before engaging in a hand-to-hand "fight without rules" at the Phoebaeum. The chthonic night-time sacrifice of a dog to Enyalios became assimilated to the cult of Ares. Porphyry claims, without detail, that Apollodorus of Athens (circa second century BC) says the Spartans made human sacrifices to Ares, but this may be a reference to mythic pre-history. A Thracian god identified by Herodotus ( c.  484 – c.  425 BC ) as Ares, through interpretatio Graeca ,

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2640-545: A reference to separate goddess - the literary (though not the religious) counterpart of the Greek Mnemosyne. Juno Moneta, an epithet of Juno , was the protectress of funds, and, accordingly, money in ancient Rome was coined in her temple. The word "moneta" (from which the words "money" and "monetize" are derived) was used by writers such as Ovid , Martial , Juvenal , and Cicero . In several modern languages, including Russian and Italian, moneta (Spanish moneda )

2760-459: A savage, dangerous, or militarized quality; but when Ares does appear in myths, he typically faces humiliation. In the Iliad, Zeus expresses a recurring Greek revulsion toward the god when Ares returns wounded and complaining from the battlefield at Troy : Then looking at him darkly Zeus who gathers the clouds spoke to him: "Do not sit beside me and whine, you double-faced liar. To me you are

2880-607: A single transcendent deity . The worship of these deities, and several others, was found across the Greek world, though they often have different epithets that distinguished aspects of the deity, and often reflect the absorption of other local deities into the pan-Hellenic scheme. The religious practices of the Greeks extended beyond mainland Greece, to the islands and coasts of Ionia in Asia Minor , to Magna Graecia ( Sicily and southern Italy), and to scattered Greek colonies in

3000-458: A temple was ever built there. The tenemos might include many subsidiary buildings, sacred groves or springs, animals dedicated to the deity, and sometimes people who had taken sanctuary from the law, which some temples offered, for example to runaway slaves. The earliest Greek sanctuaries probably lacked temple buildings, though our knowledge of these is limited, and the subject is controversial. A typical early sanctuary seems to have consisted of

3120-468: A tenemos, often around a sacred grove, cave, rock ( baetyl ) or spring, and perhaps defined only by marker stones at intervals, with an altar for offerings. Many rural sanctuaries probably stayed in this style, but the more popular were gradually able to afford a building to house a cult image, especially in cities. This process was certainly under way by the 9th century, and probably started earlier. The temple interiors did not serve as meeting places, since

3240-436: A term for lesser attendants. As priestesses, they gained social recognition and access to more luxuries than other Greek women who worked or stayed in the home. They were mostly from local elite families; some roles required virgins, who typically only served for a year or so before marriage, while other roles went to married women. Women who voluntarily chose to become priestesses received an increase in social and legal status to

3360-411: A thunderbolt. Ares had a romantic liaison with Eos , the goddess of the dawn . Aphrodite discovered them, and in anger she cursed Eos with insatiable lust for men. By a woman named Teirene he had a daughter named Thrassa , who in turn had a daughter named Polyphonte . Polyphonte was cursed by Aphrodite to love and mate with a bear, producing two sons, Agrius and Oreius , who were hubristic toward

3480-543: A type of museum. Some sanctuaries offered oracles , people who were believed to receive divine inspiration in answering questions put by pilgrims. The most famous of these by far was the female priestess called the Pythia at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi , and that of Zeus at Dodona , but there were many others. Some dealt only with medical, agricultural or other specialized matters, and not all represented gods, like that of

3600-577: A typical human. They interacted with humans, sometimes even spawning children—called demigods —with them. At times, certain gods would be opposed to others, and they would try to outdo each other. In the Iliad , Aphrodite , Ares , and Apollo support the Trojan side in the Trojan War, while Hera , Athena , and Poseidon support the Greeks (see theomachy ). Some gods were specifically associated with

3720-550: A warlike Aphrodite, on the Spartan acropolis. Gonzalez observes, in his 2005 survey of Ares' cults in Asia Minor, that cults to Ares on the Greek mainland may have been more common than some sources assert. Wars between Greek states were endemic; war and warriors provided Ares's tribute, and fed his insatiable appetite for battle. Ares' attributes are instruments of war: a helmet, shield, and sword or spear. Libanius "makes

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3840-473: Is a list of Ares' offspring, by various mothers. Beside each offspring, the earliest source to record the parentage is given, along with the century to which the source dates. The nearest counterpart of Ares among the Roman gods is Mars , a son of Jupiter and Juno , pre-eminent among the Roman army's military gods but originally an agricultural deity. As a father of Romulus , Rome's legendary founder, Mars

3960-608: Is said to have persisted among the Alans . Some have posited that the " Sword of Mars " in later European history alludes to the Huns having adopted Ares. In some parts of Asia Minor, Ares was a prominent oracular deity , something not found in any Hellennic cult to Ares or Roman cult to Mars. Ares was linked in some regions or polities with a local god or cultic hero, and recognised as a higher, more prestigious deity than in mainland Greece. His cults in southern Asia Minor are attested from

4080-522: Is served, in times of danger or before some important endeavor to gain the gods' favor. For example, in the Odyssey Eumaeus sacrifices a pig with prayer for his unrecognizable master Odysseus. But in the Iliad , which partly reflects very early Greek civilization, not every banquet of the princes begins with a sacrifice. These sacrificial practices share much with recorded forms of sacrificial rituals known from later. Furthermore, throughout

4200-516: Is the word for "coin". Juno Moneta's name (like the name of the goddess Moneta) is derived either from the Latin monēre (since, as the protectress of funds, she "warned" of economic instability) or, more likely, from the Greek "moneres", meaning "alone” or “unique". According to the Suda , a Byzantine encyclopedia (which uses the Greek names of the goddess), she was called Moneta (Μονήτα) because when

4320-511: Is unleashed in the thirteenth month." Ares was held screaming and howling in the urn until Hermes rescued him, and Artemis tricked the Aloadae into slaying each other. In Nonnus 's Dionysiaca , in the war between Cronus and Zeus, Ares killed an unnamed giant son of Echidna who was allied with Cronus, and described as spitting "horrible poison" and having "snaky" feet. In the 2nd century AD Metamorphoses of Antoninus Liberalis , when

4440-580: The Iliad , the word ares is used as a common noun synonymous with "battle." In the Classical period , Ares is given the epithet Enyalios , which seems to appear on the Mycenaean KN V 52 tablet as 𐀁𐀝𐀷𐀪𐀍 , e-nu-wa-ri-jo . Enyalios was sometimes identified with Ares and sometimes differentiated from him as another war god with separate cult, even in the same town; Burkert describes them as "doubles almost". In mainland Greece and

4560-561: The Achaeans but Aphrodite persuades him to side with the Trojans . During the war, Diomedes fights Hector and sees Ares fighting on the Trojans' side. Diomedes calls for his soldiers to withdraw. Zeus grants Athena permission to drive Ares from the battlefield. Encouraged by Hera and Athena, Diomedes thrusts with his spear at Ares. Athena drives the spear home, and all sides tremble at Ares's cries. Ares flees to Mount Olympus , forcing

4680-520: The Balkan Peninsula in the late third millennium BCE. Various religious festivals were held in ancient Greece. Many were specific only to a particular deity or city-state. For example, the festival of Lykaia was celebrated in Arcadia in Greece, which was dedicated to the pastoral god Pan . Like the other Panhellenic Games , the ancient Olympic Games were a religious festival, held at

4800-656: The Epic Cycle and supposedly ending up in Rome, was one of these. The sacred boulder or baetyl is another very primitive type, found around the Mediterranean and Ancient Near East . Many of the Greek statues well known from Roman marble copies were originally temple cult images, which in some cases, such as the Apollo Barberini , can be credibly identified. A very few actual originals survive, for example,

4920-589: The Gerarai or the venerable ones. There were segregated religious festivals in Ancient Greece; the Thesmophoria , Plerosia, Kalamaia, Adonia , and Skira were festivals that were only for women. The Thesmophoria festival and many others represented agricultural fertility, which was considered to be closely connected to women. It gave women a religious identity and purpose in Greek religion, in which

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5040-853: The Homeric hymns (regarded as later productions today), Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days , and Pindar 's Odes were regarded as authoritative and perhaps inspired; they usually begin with an invocation to the Muses for inspiration. Plato even wanted to exclude the myths from his ideal state described in the Republic because of their low moral tone. While some traditions, such as Mystery cults, upheld certain texts as canonic within their praxis, such texts were respected but not necessarily accepted as canonic outside their circle. In this field, of particular importance are certain texts referring to Orphic cults : multiple copies, ranging from between 450 BCE and 250 CE, have been found in various parts of

5160-578: The Iliad by the goddess Dione to her daughter Aphrodite, two chthonic giants, the Aloadae , named Otus and Ephialtes, bound Ares in chains and imprisoned him in a bronze urn, where he remained for thirteen months, a lunar year . "And that would have been the end of Ares and his appetite for war, if the beautiful Eriboea, the young giants' stepmother, had not told Hermes what they had done," she related. In this, [Burkert] suspects "a festival of licence which

5280-603: The Mycenaean civilization . Both the literary settings of some important myths and many important sanctuaries relate to locations that were important Helladic centers that had become otherwise unimportant by Greek times. The Mycenaeans perhaps treated Poseidon, to them a god of earthquakes as well as the sea, as their chief deity, and forms of his name along with several other Olympians are recognizable in records in Linear B , while Apollo and Aphrodite are absent. Only about half of

5400-666: The Peloponnese , only a few places are known to have had a formal temple and cult of Ares. Pausanias (2nd century AD) notes an altar to Ares at Olympia , and the moving of a Temple of Ares to the Athenian agora during the reign of Augustus , essentially rededicating it (2 AD) as a Roman temple to the Augustan Mars Ultor . The Areopagus ("mount of Ares"), a natural rock outcrop in Athens, some distance from

5520-503: The goddess or personification of the Greek war-cry, whose name Ares uses as his own war-cry. Ares's sister Hebe ("Youth") also draws baths for him. According to Pausanias , local inhabitants of Therapne , Sparta , recognized Thero , "feral, savage," as a nurse of Ares. Though Ares plays a relatively limited role in Greek mythology as represented in literary narratives, his numerous love affairs and abundant offspring are often alluded to. The union of Ares and Aphrodite created

5640-418: The hecatomb (meaning 100 bulls) might in practice only involve a dozen or so, at large festivals the number of cattle sacrificed could run into the hundreds, and the numbers feasting on them well into the thousands. The evidence of the existence of such practices is clear in some ancient Greek literature, especially Homer 's epics. Throughout the poems, the use of the ritual is apparent at banquets where meat

5760-462: The low countries and the rhineland in the fourteenth and fifteenth century, with the "nova", Latin for "new", not necessarily signifying a new type or variety of coin. Moneta is a central figure in John Keats ' poem " The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream ". Ancient Greek religion Religious practices in ancient Greece encompassed a collection of beliefs, rituals , and mythology , in

5880-412: The sacrifices and rituals dedicated to the respective deity took place outside them, at altars within the wider precinct of the sanctuary, which might be large. As the centuries passed both the inside of popular temples and the area surrounding them accumulated statues and small shrines or other buildings as gifts, and military trophies, paintings and items in precious metals, effectively turning them into

6000-409: The year in Athens included some 140 days that were religious festivals of some sort, though they varied greatly in importance. The main Greek temple building sat within a larger precinct or temenos , usually surrounded by a peribolos fence or wall; the whole is usually called a "sanctuary". The Acropolis of Athens is the most famous example, though this was apparently walled as a citadel before

6120-405: The "first fruits" were harvested. The libation , a ritual pouring of fluid, was part of everyday life, and libations with a prayer were often made at home whenever wine was drunk, with just a part of the cup's contents, the rest being drunk. More formal ones might be made onto altars at temples, and other fluids such as olive oil and honey might be used. Although the grand form of sacrifice called

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6240-466: The 5th century BC and well into the later Roman Imperial era, at 29 different sites, and on over 70 local coin issues. He is sometimes represented on coinage of the region by the "Helmet of Ares" or carrying a spear and a shield, or as a fully armed warrior, sometimes accompanied by a female deity. In what is now western Turkey, the Hellenistic city of Metropolis built a monumental temple to Ares as

6360-461: The 5th century BCE, traced many Greek religious practices to Egypt . Robert G. Boling argues that Greek and Ugaritic / Canaanite mythology share many parallel relationships and that historical trends in Canaanite religion can help date works such as Homer 's Iliad and Odyssey . The Great Goddess hypothesis , that a Stone Age religion dominated by a female Great Goddess was displaced by

6480-597: The Acropolis, was supposedly where Ares was tried and acquitted by the gods for his revenge-killing of Poseidon 's son, Halirrhothius , who had raped Ares' daughter Alcippe . Its name was used for the court that met there, mostly to investigate and try potential cases of treason. Numismatist M. Jessop Price states that Ares "typified the traditional Spartan character", but had no important cult in Sparta; and he never occurs on Spartan coins. Pausanias gives two examples of his cult, both of them conjointly with or "within"

6600-532: The Archaic and Classical eras connects Ares and Aphrodite as complementary companions and ideal though adulterous lovers, their cult pairing and Aphrodite as warrior-protector is localised to Crete. In Africa, Maḥrem , the principal god of the kings of Aksum prior to the 4th century AD, was invoked as Ares in Greek inscriptions. The anonymous king who commissioned the Monumentum Adulitanum in

6720-480: The Artemis worshipped at Sparta , the virgin huntress, was a very different deity from the Artemis who was a many-breasted fertility goddess at Ephesus . Though worship of the major deities spread from one locality to another, and though most larger cities had temples to several major gods, the identification of different gods with different places remained strong to the end. Ancient sources for Greek religion tell

6840-623: The Egyptian mysteries of Osiris . Mainstream Greek religion appears to have developed out of Proto-Indo-European religion and although very little is known about the earliest periods there are suggestive hints that some local elements go back even further than the Bronze Age or Helladic period to the farmers of Neolithic Greece . There was also clearly cultural evolution from the Late Helladic Mycenaean religion of

6960-458: The Geometric style (900–750 BCE), but are very rarely mentioned in literature; they were relatively late introductions to Greece, and it has been suggested that Greek preferences in this matter were established earlier. The Greeks liked to believe that the animal was glad to be sacrificed, and interpreted various behaviors as showing this. Divination by examining parts of the sacrificed animal

7080-543: The Greek world. Even the words of the oracles never became a sacred text. Other texts were specially composed for religious events, and some have survived within the lyric tradition; although they had a cult function, they were bound to performance and never developed into a common, standard prayer form comparable to the Christian Pater Noster . An exception to this rule were the already named Orphic and Mystery rituals, which, in this, set themselves aside from

7200-455: The Greeks' association of Ares with the Thracians , whom they regarded as a barbarous and warlike people. Thrace was considered to be Ares's birthplace and his refuge after the affair with Aphrodite was exposed to the general mockery of the other gods. A late-6th-century BC funerary inscription from Attica emphasizes the consequences of coming under Ares's sway: Stay and mourn at

7320-490: The Hellenes as having "common shrines of the gods and sacrifices, and the same kinds of customs." Most ancient Greeks recognized the twelve major Olympian gods and goddesses — Zeus , Hera , Poseidon , Demeter , Athena , Ares , Aphrodite , Apollo , Artemis , Hephaestus , Hermes , and either Hestia or Dionysus —although philosophies such as Stoicism and some forms of Platonism used language that seems to assume

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7440-603: The Mycenaean pantheon seems to survive the Greek Dark Ages . The archaeological evidence for continuity in religion is far clearer for Crete and Cyprus than the Greek mainland. Greek religious concepts may also have absorbed the beliefs and practices of earlier, nearby cultures, such as Minoan religion , and other influences came from the Near East, especially via Cyprus and Phoenicia . Herodotus , writing in

7560-508: The Romans needed money during the wars against Pyrrhus and Taranto , they prayed to Hera, and she replied to them that, if they would hold out against the enemies with justice, they would not go short of money. After the wars, the Romans honoured Hera Moneta (that is, advisor - invoking the Latin verb moneo, meaning to 'warn' or 'advise'), and, accordingly, decided to stamp the coinage in her temple. Hyginus in his Fabulae , writes of Moneta as

7680-492: The Thesmophorion, where women could perform their rites and worship. Those who were not satisfied by the public cult of the gods could turn to various mystery religions that operated as cults into which members had to be initiated in order to learn their secrets. Here, they could find religious consolations that traditional religion could not provide: a chance at mystical awakening, a systematic religious doctrine,

7800-735: The Titans, who then gave birth to the first Olympians. The mythology largely survived and was expanded to form the later Roman mythology . The Greeks and Romans were literate societies, and much mythology, although initially shared orally, was written down in the forms of epic poetry (such as the Iliad , the Odyssey and the Argonautica ) and plays (such as Euripides ' The Bacchae and Aristophanes ' The Frogs ). The mythology became popular in Christian post- Renaissance Europe, where it

7920-558: The Trojan and Theban wars, were considered to have been physically immortalized and brought to live forever in either Elysium, the Islands of the Blessed, heaven, the ocean, or beneath the ground. Such beliefs are found in the most ancient Greek sources, such as Homer and Hesiod . This belief remained strong even into the Christian era. For most people at the moment of death there was, however, no hope of anything but continued existence as

8040-618: The Trojans to fall back. Ares overhears that his son Ascalaphus has been killed and wants to change sides again, rejoining the Achaeans for vengeance, disregarding Zeus's order that no Olympian should join the battle. Athena stops him. Later, when Zeus allows the gods to fight in the war again, Ares attacks Athena to avenge his previous injury. Athena overpowers him by striking him with a boulder. Deimos ("Terror" or "Dread") and Phobos ("Fear") are Ares' companions in war, and according to Hesiod , are also his children by Aphrodite . Eris ,

8160-579: The Western Mediterranean, such as Massalia (Marseille). Early Italian religions such as the Etruscan religion were influenced by Greek religion and subsequently influenced much of the ancient Roman religion . "There was no centralization of authority over Greek religious practices and beliefs; change was regulated only at the civic level. Thus, the phenomenon we are studying is not in fact an organized "religion". Instead we might think of

8280-552: The age of puberty . Some priestly functions, like the care for a particular local festival, could be given by tradition to a certain family. To a large extent, in the absence of "scriptural" sacred texts, religious practices derived their authority from tradition, and "every omission or deviation arouses deep anxiety and calls forth sanctions". Greek ceremonies and rituals were mainly performed at altars , which were never inside temples, but often just outside, or standing by themselves somewhere. These were typically devoted to one or

8400-429: The apple sacred to Ares", but "offers no further comment", nor connections to any aetiological myth. Apples are one of Aphrodites' sacred or symbolic fruits. Littlewood follows Artemidorus claim that to dream of sour apples presages conflict, and lists Ares alongside Eris and the mythological "Apples of Discord". Gods were immortal but could be bound and restrained, both in mythic narrative and in cult practice. There

8520-513: The archaic tradition represented by the Iliad and Odyssey . In Greek literature , Ares often represents the physical or violent and untamed aspect of war and is the personification of sheer brutality and bloodlust ("overwhelming, insatiable in battle, destructive, and man-slaughtering", as Burkert puts it), in contrast to his sister, the armored Athena , whose functions as a goddess of intelligence include military strategy and generalship. An association with Ares endows places and objects with

8640-525: The bard in the hall of Alcinous , the Sun-god Helios once spied Ares and Aphrodite having sex secretly in the hall of Hephaestus , her husband. Helios reported the incident to Hephaestus. Contriving to catch the illicit couple in the act, Hephaestus fashioned a finely-knitted and nearly invisible net with which to snare them. At the appropriate time, this net was sprung, and trapped Ares and Aphrodite locked in very private embrace. But Hephaestus

8760-408: The beliefs and practices of Greeks in relation to the gods as a group of closely related "religious dialects" that resembled each other far more than they did those of non-Greeks." Ancient Greek theology was polytheistic , based on the assumption that there were many gods and goddesses, as well as a range of lesser supernatural beings of various types. There was a hierarchy of deities, with Zeus ,

8880-441: The bronze Piraeus Athena (2.35 m (7.7 ft) high, including a helmet). The image stood on a base, from the 5th century often carved with reliefs. It used to be thought that access to the cella of a Greek temple was limited to the priests, and it was entered only rarely by other visitors, except perhaps during important festivals or other special occasions. In recent decades this picture has changed, and scholars now stress

9000-531: The city's protector, not before the 3rd century BC. It is now lost, but the names of some of its priests and priestesses survive, along with the temple's likely depictions on coins of the province. A sanctuary of Aphrodite was established at Sta Lenika , on Crete , between the cities of Lato and Olus , possibly during the Geometric period . It was rebuilt in the late 2nd century BC as a double-sanctuary to Ares and Aphrodite. Inscriptions record disputes over

9120-401: The concealed knife led the way. After various rituals, the animal was slaughtered over the altar. As it fell, all the women present "[cried] out in high, shrill tones". Its blood was collected and poured over the altar. It was butchered on the spot and various internal organs, bones and other inedible parts burnt as the deity's portion of the offering, while the meat was removed to be prepared for

9240-503: The cult image, and sometimes to touch it; Cicero saw a bronze image of Heracles with its foot largely worn away by the touch of devotees. Famous cult images such as the Statue of Zeus at Olympia functioned as significant visitor attractions. In addition to the role that women performed in sacrifices, the only public roles that Greek women could perform were priestesses ; either hiereiai , meaning "sacred women", or amphipolis ,

9360-427: The divine daughter of Moneta has taught...", frg. 21 Büchner), which may be the equivalent of either Od. 8,480-1 or 488. The epithet Moneta that was given to Juno , in contrast, is more likely to have derived from the Greek word "moneres" ("μονήρης"), meaning "alone”, or “unique". By the time Andronicus was writing, the folk etymology of monēre was widely accepted, and so he could plausibly transmute this epithet into

9480-409: The form of both popular public religion and cult practices . The application of the modern concept of "religion" to ancient cultures has been questioned as anachronistic . The ancient Greeks did not have a word for 'religion' in the modern sense. Likewise, no Greek writer known to us classifies either the gods or the cult practices into separate 'religions'. Instead, for example, Herodotus speaks of

9600-565: The goddess Venus , gave birth to Aeneas , the Trojan prince and refugee who "founded" Rome several generations before Romulus. In the Hellenization of Latin literature , the myths of Ares were reinterpreted by Roman writers under the name of Mars. Greek writers under Roman rule also recorded cult practices and beliefs pertaining to Mars under the name of Ares. Thus in the classical tradition of later Western art and literature ,

9720-563: The goddess of discord, or Enyo , the goddess of war, bloodshed, and violence, was considered the sister and companion of the violent Ares. In at least one tradition, Enyalius, rather than another name for Ares, was his son by Enyo. Ares may also be accompanied by Kydoimos , the daemon of the din of battle; the Makhai ("Battles"); the "Hysminai" ("Acts of manslaughter"); Polemos , a minor spirit of war, or only an epithet of Ares, since it has no specific dominion; and Polemos's daughter, Alala ,

9840-406: The gods Eros , Anteros , Phobos , Deimos , and Harmonia . Other versions include Alcippe as one of his daughters. Cycnus (Κύκνος) of Macedonia was a son of Ares who tried to build a temple to his father with the skulls and bones of guests and travellers. Heracles fought him and, in one account, killed him. In another account, Ares fought his son's killer but Zeus parted the combatants with

9960-448: The gods and had a habit of eating their guests. Zeus sent Hermes to punish them, and he chose to chop off their hands and feet. Since Polyphonte was descended from him, Ares stopped Hermes, and the two brothers came into an agreement to turn Polyphonte's family into birds instead. Oreius became an eagle owl, Agrius a vulture, and Polyphonte a strix , possibly a small owl, certainly a portent of war; Polyphonte's servant prayed not to become

10080-503: The gods were certainly not all-good or even all-powerful . They had to obey fate , known to Greek mythology as the Moirai , which overrode any of their divine powers or wills. For instance, in mythology, it was Odysseus ' fate to return home to Ithaca after the Trojan War , and the gods could only lengthen his journey and make it harder for him, not stop him. The gods had human vices and many behaved with arguably less morality than

10200-409: The hero Trophonius at Livadeia . The temple was the house of the deity it was dedicated to, who in some sense resided in the cult image in the cella or main room inside, normally facing the only door. The cult image normally took the form of a statue of the deity, typically roughly life-size, but in some cases many times life-size. In early days these were in wood, marble or terracotta , or in

10320-552: The instructions given by an oracle of the late Hellenistic era to various cities of Pamphylia (in Anatolia) including Syedra , Lycia and Cilicia , places almost perpetually under threat from pirates. Each was told to set up a statue of "bloody, man-slaying Ares" and provide it with an annual festival in which it was ritually bound with iron fetters ("by Dike and Hermes") as if a supplicant for justice, put on trial and offered sacrifice. The oracle promises that "thus will he become

10440-707: The king of the gods, having a level of control over all the others, although he was not almighty. Some deities had dominion over certain aspects of nature . For instance, Zeus was the sky-god, sending thunder and lightning, Poseidon ruled over the sea and earthquakes , Hades projected his remarkable power throughout the realms of death and the Underworld , and Helios controlled the sun. Other deities ruled over abstract concepts; for instance Aphrodite controlled love. All significant deities were visualized as "human" in form, although often able to transform themselves into animals or natural phenomena. While being immortal,

10560-470: The late 2nd or early 3rd century refers to "my greatest god, Ares, who also begat me, through whom I brought under my sway [various peoples]". The monumental throne celebrating the king's conquests was itself dedicated to Ares. In the early 4th century, the last pagan king of Aksum, Ezana , referred to "the one who brought me forth, the invincible Ares". Ares was one of the Twelve Olympians in

10680-466: The monstrous Typhon attacked Olympus the gods transformed into animals and fled to Egypt; Ares changed into a fish, the Lepidotus (sacred to the Egyptian war-god Anhur ). Liberalis's koine Greek text is a "completely inartistic" epitome of Nicander 's now lost Heteroeumena (2nd century BC). In Homer 's Iliad , Ares has no fixed allegiance. He promises Athena and Hera that he will fight for

10800-417: The most hateful of all gods who hold Olympus. Forever quarrelling is dear to your heart, wars and battles. ... And yet I will not long endure to see you in pain, since you are my child, and it was to me that your mother bore you. But were you born of some other god and proved so ruinous long since you would have been dropped beneath the gods of the bright sky." This ambivalence is expressed also in

10920-677: The name is the Mycenaean Greek 𐀀𐀩 , a-re , written in the Linear B syllabic script. The adjectival epithet , Areios ("warlike") was frequently appended to the names of other gods when they took on a warrior aspect or became involved in warfare: Zeus Areios , Athena Areia , even Aphrodite Areia ("Aphrodite within Ares" or "feminine Ares"), who was warlike, fully armoured and armed, partnered with Athena in Sparta , and represented at Kythira 's temple to Aphrodite Urania . In

11040-570: The one-eyed giant Cyclopes , the sea beast Scylla , whirlpool Charybdis , Gorgons, and the half-man, half-bull Minotaur . There was no set Greek cosmogony , or creation myth. Different religious groups believed that the world had been created in different ways. One Greek creation myth was told in Hesiod's Theogony . It stated that at first there was only a primordial deity called Chaos , after which came various other primordial gods, such as Gaia, Tartarus and Eros, who then gave birth to more gods,

11160-490: The ownership of the sanctuary. The names of Ares and Aphrodite appear as witness to sworn oaths, and there is a Victory thanks-offering to Aphrodite, whom Millington believes had capacity as a "warrior-protector acting in the realm of Ares". There were cultic links between the Sta Lenika sanctuary, Knossos and other Cretan states, and perhaps with Argos on the mainland. While the Greek literary and artistic record from both

11280-511: The participants to eat; the leading figures tasted it on the spot. The temple usually kept the skin to sell to tanners. That humans got more use from the sacrifice than the deity did not escape the Greeks, and was often the subject of humor in Greek comedy . The animals used were, in order of preference, bulls or oxen, cows, sheep (the most common sacrifice), goats, pigs (with piglets being the cheapest mammal), and poultry (but rarely other birds or fish). Horses and asses are seen on some vases in

11400-405: The physical valor necessary for success in war but can also personify sheer brutality and bloodlust, in contrast to his sister Athena , whose martial functions include military strategy and generalship. An association with Ares endows places, objects, and other deities with a savage, dangerous, or militarized quality. Although Ares' name shows his origins as Mycenaean , his reputation for savagery

11520-473: The poem, special banquets are held whenever gods indicated their presence by some sign or success in war. Before setting out for Troy, this type of animal sacrifice is offered. Odysseus offers Zeus a sacrificial ram in vain. The occasions of sacrifice in Homer's epic poems may shed some light onto the view of gods as members of society, rather than external entities, indicating social ties. Sacrificial rituals played

11640-588: The public, and after death, they received a public burial site. Greek priestesses had to be healthy and of a sound mind, the reasoning being that the ones serving the gods had to be as high-quality as their offerings. This was also true of male Greek priests. It is contested whether there were gendered divisions when it came to serving a particular god or goddess, who was devoted to what god, gods and/or goddesses could have both priests and priestesses to serve them. Gender specifics did come into play when it came to who would perform certain acts of sacrifice or worship. Per

11760-710: The quest for the Golden Fleece and Theseus and the Minotaur . Many species existed in Greek mythology. Chief among these were the gods and humans, though the Titans (who predated the Olympian gods) also frequently appeared in Greek myths. Lesser species included the half-man-half-horse centaurs , the nature-based nymphs (tree nymphs were dryads , sea nymphs were Nereids ) and the half-man, half-goat satyrs . Some creatures in Greek mythology were monstrous, such as

11880-446: The rest of the Greek religious system. Finally, some texts called ieri logi ( Greek : ιεροί λόγοι ) (sacred texts) by the ancient sources, originated from outside the Greek world, or were supposedly adopted in remote times, representing yet more different traditions within the Greek belief system. The lack of a unified priestly class meant that a unified, canonic form of the religious texts or practices never existed; just as there

12000-463: The ridicule of the other gods. Ares' nearest counterpart in Roman religion is Mars , who was given a more important and dignified place in ancient Roman religion as ancestral protector of the Roman people and state. During the Hellenization of Latin literature , the myths of Ares were reinterpreted by Roman writers under the name of Mars, and in later Western art and literature , the mythology of

12120-427: The ritual scapegoat, the hardship would go with it. Worship in Greece typically consisted of sacrificing domestic animals at the altar with hymn and prayer. The altar was outside any temple building, and might not be associated with a temple at all. The animal, which should be perfect of its kind, was decorated with garlands and the like, and led in procession to the altar; a girl with a basket on her head containing

12240-460: The role of women in worshipping goddesses Demeter and her daughter Persephone reinforced traditional lifestyles. The festivals relating to agricultural fertility were valued by the polis because this is what they traditionally worked for; women-centered festivals that involved private matters were less important. In Athens the festivals honoring Demeter were included in the calendar and promoted by Athens. They constructed temples and shrines like

12360-477: The sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia . Other festivals centered on Greek theatre , of which the Dionysia in Athens was the most important. More typical festivals featured a procession, large sacrifices and a feast to eat the offerings, and many included entertainments and customs such as visiting friends, wearing fancy dress and unusual behavior in the streets, sometimes risky for bystanders in various ways. Altogether

12480-433: The significance of the male or female role to a particular god or goddess, a priest would lead the priestess or the reverse. In some Greek cults priestesses served both gods and goddesses; Pythia , or female Oracle of Apollo at Delphi , and that at Didyma were priestesses, but both were overseen by male priests. The festival of Dionosyus was practiced by both and the god was served by women and female priestesses known as

12600-729: The specially prestigious form of a chryselephantine statue using ivory plaques for the visible parts of the body and gold for the clothes, around a wooden framework. The most famous Greek cult images were of this type, including the Statue of Zeus at Olympia , and Phidias 's Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon in Athens, both colossal statues, now completely lost. Fragments of two chryselephantine statues from Delphi have been excavated. Bronze cult images were less frequent, at least until Hellenistic times. Early images seem often to have been dressed in real clothes, and at all periods images might wear real jewelry donated by devotees. The acrolith

12720-507: The time of the epic works of Homer all are well-established, except for Dionysus , but several of the Homeric Hymns , probably composed slightly later, are dedicated to him. Ares Ares ( / ˈ ɛər iː z / ; Ancient Greek : Ἄρης , Árēs [árɛːs] ) is the Greek god of war and courage. He is one of the Twelve Olympians , and the son of Zeus and Hera . The Greeks were ambivalent towards him. He embodies

12840-461: The tomb of dead Kroisos Whom raging Ares destroyed one day, fighting in the foremost ranks. He is one of the Twelve Olympians , and the son of Zeus and Hera . In the Argonautica , the Golden Fleece hangs in a grove sacred to Ares, until its theft by Jason . The Birds of Ares ( Ornithes Areioi ) drop feather darts in defense of the Amazons ' shrine to Ares, as father of their queen, on

12960-539: The two figures became virtually indistinguishable. The etymology of the name Ares is traditionally connected with the Greek word ἀρή ( arē ), the Ionic form of the Doric ἀρά ( ara ), "bane, ruin, curse, imprecation". Walter Burkert notes that "Ares is apparently an ancient abstract noun meaning throng of battle, war." R. S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin of the name. The earliest attested form of

13080-588: The variety of local access rules. Pausanias was a gentlemanly traveller of the 2nd-century CE who declares that the special intention of his travels around Greece was to see cult images, and usually managed to do so. It was typically necessary to make a sacrifice or gift, and some temples restricted access either to certain days of the year, or by class, race, gender (with either men or women forbidden), or even more tightly. Garlic-eaters were forbidden in one temple, in another women unless they were virgins; restrictions typically arose from local ideas of ritual purity or

13200-480: Was Athena. Reports of historic human sacrifice to Ares in an obscure rite known as the Hekatomphonia represent a very long-standing error, repeated through several centuries and well into the modern era. The hekatomphonia was an animal sacrifice to Zeus; it could be offered by any warrior who had personally slain one hundred of the enemy. Pausanias reports that in Sparta, each company of youths sacrificed

13320-512: Was an archaic Spartan statue of Ares in chains in the temple of Enyalios (sometimes regarded as the son of Ares, sometimes as Ares himself), which Pausanias claimed meant that the spirit of war and victory was to be kept in the city. The Spartans are known to have ritually bound the images of other deities, including Aphrodite and Artemis (cf Ares and Aphrodite bound by Hephaestus), and in other places there were chained statues of Artemis and Dionysos. Statues of Ares in chains are described in

13440-463: Was another composite form, this time a cost-saving one with a wooden body. A xoanon was a primitive and symbolic wooden image, perhaps comparable to the Hindu lingam ; many of these were retained and revered for their antiquity, even when a new statue was the main cult image. Xoana had the advantage that they were easy to carry in processions at festivals. The Trojan Palladium , famous from the myths of

13560-495: Was given an important and dignified place in ancient Roman religion , as a guardian deity of the entire Roman state and its people. Under the influence of Greek culture , Mars was identified with Ares, but the character and dignity of the two deities differed fundamentally. Mars was represented as a means to secure peace , and he was a father (pater) of the Roman people. In one tradition, he fathered Romulus and Remus through his rape of Rhea Silvia . In another, his lover,

13680-428: Was much less important than in Roman or Etruscan religion , or Near Eastern religions , but was practiced , especially of the liver, and as part of the cult of Apollo . Generally, the Greeks put more faith in observing the behavior of birds . For a smaller and simpler offering, a grain of incense could be thrown on the sacred fire, and outside the cities farmers made simple sacrificial gifts of plant produce as

13800-412: Was no unified, common sacred text for the Greek belief system, there was no standardization of practices. Instead, religious practices were organized on local levels, with priests normally being magistrates for the city or village, or gaining authority from one of the many sanctuaries. Pausanias notes that the priest of the temple of Athena Alea at Tegea was a boy, who held office only until reaching

13920-475: Was not satisfied with his revenge, so he invited the Olympian gods and goddesses to view the unfortunate pair. For the sake of modesty, the goddesses demurred, but the male gods went to witness the sight. Some commented on the beauty of Aphrodite, others remarked that they would eagerly trade places with Ares, but all who were present mocked the two. Once the couple was released, the embarrassed Ares returned to his homeland, Thrace, and Aphrodite went to Paphos. In

14040-457: Was often used as a basis for the works of artists like Botticelli , Michelangelo and Rubens . One of the most important moral concepts to the Greeks was aversion to hubris . Hubris constituted many things, from rape to desecration of a corpse, and was a crime in Athens. Although pride and vanity were not considered sins themselves, the Greeks emphasized moderation. Pride only became hubris when it went to extremes, like any other vice. The same

14160-514: Was one of three otherwise unnamed deities that Thracian commoners were said to worship. Herodotus recognises and names the other two as "Dionysus" and "Artemis", and claims that the Thracian aristocracy exclusively worshiped "Hermes". In Herodotus' Histories , the Scythians worship an indigenous form of Greek Ares, who is otherwise unnamed, but ranked beneath Tabiti (whom Herodotus claims as

14280-635: Was thought by some to reflect his likely origins as a Thracian deity. Some cities in Greece and several in Asia Minor held annual festivals to bind and detain him as their protector. In parts of Asia Minor, he was an oracular deity. Still further away from Greece, the Scythians were said to ritually kill one in a hundred prisoners of war as an offering to their equivalent of Ares. The later belief that ancient Spartans had offered human sacrifice to Ares may owe more to mythical prehistory, misunderstandings, and reputation than to reality. Though there are many literary allusions to Ares' love affairs and children, he has

14400-455: Was thought of eating and drinking. Anything done to excess was not considered proper. Ancient Greeks placed, for example, importance on athletics and intellect equally. In fact many of their competitions included both. Pride was not evil until it became all-consuming or hurtful to others. The Greeks had no religious texts they regarded as "revealed" scriptures of sacred origin, but very old texts including Homer 's Iliad and Odyssey , and

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