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Ares was the son of Zeus and Hera and regarded as one of the Twelve Olympians and was seen as one of the most powerful gods. The name Ares is believed to have derived from the word for curse or ruin. He was the representative of destruction caused by war and he was the personification of war in its most destructive form. Like so many other Greek deities it is believed that he was first worshipped by the Mycenaean Greeks. They were the Greeks who are recorded in the Iliad and whose vast palaces have been unearthed by archaeologists. References to Ares was found on tablets written in the Archaic Greek known as Linear-B <ref>Burkert, Walter. Greek Religion (Harvard, Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 134</ref>. Once the Greeks had another war God, known as Enyalius, but in later myths, he became a byname for Ares. According to some, he Ares originated in Thrace, which was traditionally inhabited by fearsome warriors. Many experts have observed that Ares had many of the characteristics of the Indo-European war-god and is similar to deities such as the Germanic God Wotan. Ares was never popular and there were very few temples and shrines to him in the Hellenic World. There was a shrine to the god on a hill near Athens and this was later the site of the courts, which dealt with capital cases. Ares was mainly worshipped by soldiers and by armies on campaigns<ref> Graves, Robert. The Greeks Myths (London, Pelican, 1990), p. 45</ref>.

Ares had a sister named Eris, who was the divine personification of discord and disorder. The character of Ares was not an attractive one. Another sister was Artemis the virgin Goddess who was also the deity of strategy and generalship. Ares was arrogant and vengeful and loved violence and war. In the myths , he is often shown as angry and his roars was were likened to ‘ten thousand men shouting’ <ref>Homer, The Iliad, vi</ref>He had many other half-siblings because of Zeus many adulterous affairs with demi-gods and humans. During war, Ares always favored those who displayed the greatest courage on the field of battle. Ares usually favored the strongest and was often portrayed as merciless. In one version of the Sisyphus myth, he frees death, because battles were no longer enjoyable if men did not die. Ares support did not always ensure victory, however, as is shown in the surviving corpus of myths<ref>Graves, p 116</ref>. This was because he liked like the other Gods had to accept the commands of Zeus, who in turn was acting in accordance with fate. Zeus and Hera, the parents of Ares did not like him and the Father of the Gods, told him that he was detestable, because he was so blood-thirsty. This was because he enjoyed battle and bloodshed. The god of war never married but his consort was Aphrodite the Goddess of Love. Aphrodite was married to Hephaestus, the god of smiths, metalworkers, and craft persons. They carried out their affair in public, much to the anger of Hephaestus. Ares and Aphrodite had a number of children, one was Eros the God of Sex and erotic love, who embodied the characteristics of both his parents. Another son was Phobos who was the embodiment of fear and terror. Ares was not faithful to Aphrodite and he had relationships with a long litany of lovers. They included some of the Muses, a Titan, and even one of the Furies. He had countless children and in some myths’ he was the father of the first Amazon. The Amazons were the race of warrior-women who were probably based on Scythian female warriors and they later took part in the Trojan War.

[[File:Ares threeThree.jpg|200px|thumb|left| Ares in a chariot from a 5th century BC vase]]