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Message:: [QUOTE="Jochen1, post: 3635012, member: 103829"]Dear Friends of ancient mythology! I think it is important to remind that Ares nothing has to deal with Mars. Generally the popular identification of Greek gods with Roman gods (e.g. Aphrodite = Venus, and so on) is mythological and cultural-historical not correct at all! As coin I have chosen an AE26 of Macrinus from Nikopolis ad Istrum. Surely there are more beautiful pics of Ares on reverses of Greek coins. But the subject of my collection are ancient Roman coins. The Coin:Moesia inferior, Nikopolis ad Istrum, Macrinus, AD 217-218 AE 26, 9.57g, 25.51mm, 225°struck under governor Statius Longinus obv.: [AVT K M] OΠEΛΛ - CEV MA[KPEINOC]Bust, cuirassed, laureate, r.rev.: VΠ CTA ΛON[ΓINOV NIKOΠOΛITΩN ΠPOC] / ICTPONAres, in military cloak, helmeted and wearing boots, stg. frontal, head l., resting with l. hand on inverted spear and holding in r. hand shield set on ground.ref.: a) AMNG I/1, 1742b) Varbanov 3507c) Hristova/Hoeft/Jekov (2018) No. 8.23.11.2 (plate coin)about VF (portrait!), dark green Patina[ATTACH=full]975284[/ATTACH] Note: The cuirass of Macrinus looks like a chain mail. Ares was the Greek war god, the embodiment of bloody slaughter killing and furious battle turmoil. His name has got various different interpretations due to wild-elementary character of his acting: The 'shouter', the 'impetuous'. More convincing Kretschmer puts him to Greek 'are, aros = the damager, the punisher, the avenger'. With that resulted an appelative description of a personally at first indefinite daemonic damaging power. As evidence count the formulas of oath gods in the synoikism treaty between Erchomens and Euaimon, where Ares respectively Areia is used as regular appelative of Zeus, Athena and Enyalios. The etymology of Kretschmer Nilsson takes for his thesis, Ares actually would be only the personification of the murderous fight. Approved is his thesis because Ares by Homer should be synonymic to 'slaughter, killing' and occurs together with personificated ideas like Eris, Deimos and Phobos. But it should mentioned that the Homeric Ares absolutely bears characteristics like a living person: Wounded by Diomedes he cries like 10000 men; fallen he covers an area of 7 plethres and while he was rolling in the dust his weapons clanked around him. He is stormy, the fastest of the gods and insatiable in fight. To this sharp picture as a person apply the Knossos plates which know of a god Ares (Linear B = A-re). On the other hand the antipathy of the Homeric poet against Ares is unmistakable: He calls him frantic, pernicious and double-minded, lawless and perfidious, the man slaughter, who like no other god debased himself to kill the mortals by his own hands. In the burlesque episode with Aphrodite in the net of Hephaistos and as captive of the Aloades in the iron cauldron he doesn't make a good figure, and in the battle scenes of the Iliade he was assigned always to abhorrent and inglorious roles. In these constant defeats of the raging berserk against the always with superior intellect acting Athena the aversion is mirrored which the Greek had against the senseless war fury of barbaric-crude foreign People. The odium of the daemonic-weird foreign god is adherent on Ares as son of Zeus and Hera and member of the Olympic family too. His origin from the barbaric Thrace is proofed; that even was named after him Areia, and so Detschew has supposed a derivation of his name from the Thracian language. Furthermore the Karic slaughter daemon Enyeus-Enyalios, the companion of the warlike Potnia Ma-Enyo and traceable already for Mycenic times, is melted with him in the Iliade and can be used synonymously. The Ares-Enyalios represents thus well the fusion of a Bronze Age mediterranean lance god with a war daemon of the Thracian influenced Mycenic chariot culture in the 17th/16th century BC. The original connection with a superposed battlesome female deity (Enyo) was transferred in Ares partially into the son relation to the battlesome Hera, partially into the weapon, love and cultural community of the Minor Asian Aphrodite. The notorious cultural poverty of the God in the Greek motherland is countered by the large number of Hellenophobic tribes and individual figures who trace their origins back to Ares. Thus from the Athenian Ares Hill (Areopagos), with which the Thracian had to be content below the rival Athena enthroned on the castle, the Amazons undertook their attack on the Acropolis in Theseus' times. The genealogical bond between Ares, the father of Penthesilea, and the Amazons of Asia Minor, fighting on the Trojan side, has its counterpart in the Ares cult of the warlike Argivers under Telesilla and the Tegeatic women under Mapessa. The quality of a 'theos gynaikon' and the contact with female beings of the underworld sphere and the dragon-like 'peloria', particularly noticeable in Boeotia, have given rise to the assumption that an earthly-chthonic function of Ares is primary. Based on this, van Windekens recently put the name to Greek arsenic, Latin ros etc. and interpreted it as "fertiliser". In this context the undoubtedly chthonic dog sacrifices in Macedonia and Caria remain noteworthy for the God, whose Thracian epiclesis 'Kandaon' is at any rate to be grasped as a "dog-citizen" and to be placed at the side of the Maeonic Kandaules. I have added the picture of an Attic red figure Kylix, signed with Aristophanes, ca. 410-400 B.C. It is now in the Antikenmuseum in Berlin. It shows Ares in battle with the giant Mimon in the Giganomachia. The bearded Ares penetrates with his spear the already fallen Mimon.[ATTACH=full]975285[/ATTACH] Literature:(1) The Kleiner Pauly Online sources:(1) <a href="https://www.cointalk.com/www.theoi,com" class="internalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.cointalk.com/www.theoi,com">www.theoi,com</a> Notes:(1) Epiclesis = invocation of a God, important part of a prayer.(2) Synoikismos = merging of several places into one city Best regards[/QUOTE]

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