Why The God Of War Is Reviled In Greek Mythology But Beloved In Rome

[Behind the Aegis]

Sometimes Greco-Roman myth can be a bit confusing. Why, for instance, do we lump Greece and Rome together? Why do many -- but not all -- gods have two names? And why are all the gods so awful and cruel? The answers to these questions shed light on the differences between ancient Greece and Rome.


First off, ancient Greece wasn't anything remotely resembling a unified country. It was a bunch of city-states -- Athens and Sparta prominent among them -- which lasted in power across the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas from about 700 to 323 B.C.E., per History. Athens represented the region's cultural highwater mark through the fifth century B.C.E., shortly after the Roman Republic was born in 509 B.C.E., per Live Science. Rome rose as Greece dwindled, and the Roman Republic adopted elements of Greek culture as it conquered its way up the Italic peninsula.

Rome didn't have too many of its own native gods, aside from the twin-faced Janus described on The Conversation. So, Rome straight-up copy-pasted Greek myth; hence the "Greco-Roman" moniker. Most of the gods' names got changed to suit the Latin language, like Zeus to Jupiter, except for certain linguistically-friendly names like Apollo. Greece was also an agrarian society where the gods represented the hardships of daily, human life, as The New York Times outlines. But to the hyper-militant Romans, the Greeks were a bit frilly, even effeminate, per "Jesus and Other Men: Ideal Masculinities in the Synoptic Gospels" (posted at Brill). Hence the shift of certain gods in prominence and role, like Ares, aka Mars.

Let's be clear: ancient Greece was not exactly a docile, antiwar place. Even Athens, wellspring of drama, art, philosophy, and democracy, wasn't full of blubber-faces traipsing about in togas. Athenians drank a lot, argued more, and were constantly at war with their neighbors, as The Atlantic describes. One of those neighbors was Sparta, whose soldiers you might remember from that very ab-laden, loud, 2007 film "300." Sparta's entire society was a state-controlled military monolith where boys were chucked into military service at age 7, required to live in barracks until 30, and stayed a soldier until 60, as History explains. They could do nothing else with their lives.

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I have always loved Greek mythology. I have the Greek Pantheon throughout my house. I have statues of Athena in almost every room. It was always interesting to see the similarities, but also, the massive differences in the Greek-Roman divide.