Ares in the Bible and the Ancient World: Greek God of War, Areopagus, and the Question of Violence
Ares (Ἄρης) is the Greek god of war—fierce, rushing, and ruinous in battle—whose footprint in Scripture is indirect yet notable through the Areopagus in Acts 17. While Homer casts him as the quintessential warrior, Greek religion frequently treated Ares as socially dangerous, ritually marginal, and in need of restraint. That double portrait—indispensable and yet unwanted—frames a rich contrast with biblical reflection on war, violence, idolatry, and the one true God proclaimed at the Areopagus.
1) Name, identity, and sphere: Ares and the “Areopagus”
Ares’ name appears already in Linear B (Are, KN Fp 14). In Greek usage, it sometimes alternates with Enyalios, another ancient war deity; in cult, however, the two are distinct. Greek worship often appended an areios/areia epithet to other gods to mark their warrior aspect (Zeus Areios; Athena Areia; Aphrodite Areia), showing how “Ares-like” war power could be claimed across the pantheon. Myth situates Ares’ birth and grave in Thrace—imagined by Greeks as the wild, outer margins of their world—underscoring his outsider, untamed persona. Genealogically, he is son of Zeus and Hera; companion of Eris (Strife); father of Phobos (Rout) and Deimos (Terror), of Amazons such as Penthesileia, and of violent figures like Phlegyas.
The Bible never names Ares directly, but Acts 17 locates Paul’s sermon at the Areopagus—literally “Ares’ Hill,” known in KJV as “Mars’ Hill” (Mars being the Roman identification of Ares). By Paul’s day the Areopagus was a civic council and a meeting place, not an active war-cult seat; the New Testament’s interest in the site is theological rather than mythic. Paul addresses Athenians amid altars and ideas (Acts 17:19, 22), not a shrine of Ares. In this way Scripture places the gospel’s confrontation not with a single war god’s cult, but with the whole religious imagination of the city.
2) Mythic profile and ritual margins: rage restrained, strife contained
Homer’s Ares is a massive, swift, young warrior—the fighter who most resembles mortal combatants. Yet Zeus calls him “most hateful,” because strife and battle are ever his delight (Il. 5.890–91). Ares embodies unreasoning violence—the “unthinking” side of war—often checked by Athena, patroness of strategy, courage with prudence, and ordered civic defense. Their opposition is a moral map: when Athena contends with Ares, she prevails. She empowers Diomedes against Ares (Il. 5), blocks the god from blind revenge when his son falls (Il. 15), and even fells him with a stone (Il. 21). In Greek thought, victory belongs to intelligence, justice, and restraint over raw fury.
Myth and ritual repeatedly “bind” Ares. The Aloeids (Otos and Ephialtes) immobilize him in a bronze jar for thirteen months until Hermes frees him—a memory many scholars see reflected in cult statues of Ares that were kept fettered and loosed only once a year. Dangerous gods are controlled gods; their power must be contained for the city’s good. The founding myth of Thebes makes the same point by narrative: Cadmus kills the dragon of Ares, sows its teeth (on Athena’s counsel), and the earth springs armed men who promptly kill one another—until mere handful remain to found the city. Cadmus then serves a year of atonement to Ares and afterward marries Harmonia, daughter of Ares and Aphrodite—a compact picture that “murderous war yields, finally, to civic harmony.”
Cult tells its own story of caution. Temples to Ares were relatively few; sacrifice could be unsettling (dogs instead of shared, edible offerings). Some locales barred women from his rites, hyper-marking a men-at-war identity—yet in Tegea, a counter-ritual commemorated a women-led defense of the city, where women enacted victory rites to Ares and excluded men from the sacrificial meal. Both patterns—exclusion and inversion—signal a god perceived as socially volatile: either ring-fenced to keep the peace, or ritually flipped to release tension safely.
Ares’ pairings reinforce that volatility. With Athena, he is the foil whose fury must be governed by prudence. With Aphrodite, he is both complement and contrast: warrior-Aphrodite (Areia) reflects the militarized city, but the comic tale of Ares and Aphrodite caught in a net (Od. 8.266–369) mocks the power of war with the entanglements of love. Thebes again crystallizes the pairing: from Ares + Aphrodite comes Harmonia—peace after ravage, order after chaos.
3) Biblical intersection: Areopagus, idols, and the meaning of war
At Areopagus, Paul meets Athenians in the court of ideas, not the theater of arms. His sermon neither baptizes Greek piety nor flatters its gods; it announces the true Maker and Judge, and confronts idolatry as ignorance (Acts 17:22–31). Some mocked; yet “Dionysius the Areopagite” and others believed (Acts 17:34). The setting is a reminder: the gospel’s collision with the city’s shrines is intellectual, moral, and worshipful—an alternative allegiance that re-sorts every power, whether civic, cultural, or cosmic.
Within Scripture, war language runs in two braided lines. First, the Lord can be called “a man of war” (Exod 15:3) when He judges oppressive might (e.g., the Exodus). Yet the same Lord makes wars cease, breaks bows, shatters spears, and burns chariots (Ps 46:9). The prophetic horizon imagines nations beating swords into plowshares (Isa 2:4; Mic 4:3). The tension is not contradiction; it is moral claim: God judges violent pride and promises a peace no war-god can deliver.
Second, the New Testament transposes warfare from the field to the heart and the heavenlies. “What causes wars?” James asks; “your passions at war within you” (Jas 4:1). Christians “wrestle not against flesh and blood,” but against spiritual powers (Eph 6:12), and the weapons fit that conflict—divine power that destroys arguments and pretension against the knowledge of God (2 Cor 10:3–5). Even at the moment of His arrest, Jesus rejects the sword (Matt 26:52).
Read against Ares, these threads are striking. The Greek god personifies unrestrained combat; biblical faith exposes the roots of violence and directs the fight elsewhere—against sin, lies, and the spiritual forces that deform human loves. Where Ares must be chained, circumscribed, or mocked to keep the city intact, Scripture reorders desire and allegiance at the altar itself: “though there be many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’… yet for us there is one God… and one Lord, Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 8:5–6). The Areopagus encounter shows that message confronting a city famous for its gods—including the hill that bore the war-god’s name.
Conclusion
Ares is the ancient imagination of war given a face—necessary on the field, perilous in the polis, and constantly in need of curb. Greek myth restrains him by Athena’s wisdom, civic ritual, and satire. Scripture goes deeper: it unmasks violence at its source, judges proud might, and holds out a peace that cannot be wrought by spear or stratagem. At the Areopagus, the living God is preached above every shrine and story; He alone remakes the warrior and the city alike.
Bible Verses on War, Idols, and the Areopagus
Acts 17:19 — “And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, ‘May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?’”
Acts 17:22 — “So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: ‘Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious.’”
Acts 17:34 — “But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.”
1 Corinthians 8:5–6 — “For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’—yet for us there is one God, the Father… and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.”
Exodus 15:3 — “The LORD is a man of war; the LORD is his name.”
Psalm 46:9 — “He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the chariots with fire.”
Isaiah 2:4 — “He shall judge between the nations… and they shall beat their swords into plowshares… neither shall they learn war anymore.”
James 4:1 — “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?”
Ephesians 6:12 — “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”
Matthew 26:52 — “Then Jesus said to him, ‘Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword.’”
