hi! i see you're very knowledgeable about greek mythos. I'm requesting a thread on Ares - seen people call him a proto feminist icon - while other people deny this because of the shepherd myth and tricky consent. im also aware ancient greece wasn't the kindest to him as he represented the worst of war, and they were “civilized” and rejected such, is why some retellings differ with others as they were made to fit an agenda. I guess what I'm asking is your analysis on this and tell me which myths are more reliable? to have a more stable idea of him. if you can link sources even better!
I'm going to quote myself here:
You see, Ares is called "Feminist" not because there's a lot of evidence pointing at it, but because "lack of the contrary".
He is the only male god that has no myths that could frame him for sexual assault directly. At best the case of the sheperd is dubious consent and at worse it is rape, it depends on how you want to read it. And even then, that's soft compared to the other gods of the Pantheon.
Compare to Apollo that has myths like Daphne, Zeus and the abduction of Europa, Poseidon abusing Demeter, some accounts have Dionysus drugging girls to sleep with them even! And etc.
Ares looks really tame in comparison. But this is a case of "The tallest dwarf".
Yeah he doesn't have a lot of mythos that say explicitly that he abused women DIRECTLY. But people forget the Indirect ways in which he harms women just by pure virtue of being the god of war.
He is not a protector of women, nor a god that woman specifically worshiped. He does have the epithet: Feasted by Women, which is one that was gained after a group of women won in battle:
From Wikipedia and Theoi
This is the strongest argument for "Feminist Icon Ares". Even going to the point it was this epithet that got missinterpreted, calling it "Protector of Women".
Artemis and Hera were the protectors of women, not Ares.
But then, there are the Amazons too, right? It means Ares cares for women?
Not exactly. Ares still let the Amazons die constantly against greek heroes. The Greeks didn't see the Amazons as worthy of being called heroes, due to conventions of the time. They were, usually, put as enemies for heroes like Heracles, Theseus and Bellepheronte to kill
In the great scheme of things, Ares wasn't exactly the best god for the Amazons. Even then, the Amazons actually worshiped Artemis more than Ares himself.
This is not to say Ares didn't cared, of course. He specially shows grief at the death of Penthesilea
But i think Ares association with the Amazons was more of a thing of... Well, if you notice, he tends to be thrown as the god that favours some of the "obstacles" or "villians" of greek mythology. Some examples are Diomedes (The thracian) and Oenamous, both crazy kings that got magical horses from Ares himself.
Again, the greeks deemed the Amazons as enemies, not allies.
I think, we need to go to the meta meaning to truly understand why Ares ended up with so much mythology that seema to benefit women.
What is Ares the god of? War.
Do women battle in war? They weren't supposed to, according to the men of the era. They were deemed to weak for the offices of war. You even have characters in the Iliad screaming "Woman" as an insult to their enemies.
Did this stopped women from fighting in wars? Absolutly no. Women still fought.
Did women won wars? YES.
You put two and two together: This women won a battle! But women aren't supposed to be able to do that! How did this happen? That's right! *Ares* had to help them!!
Not Athena, ARES. Because Athena was the helper of heroes and therefore, helper of men, which were (according to the ancient greek standards) the ones meant to win wars. When women won battles, that was "unnatural" and therefore, Ares had to be the cause of it.
Amazons (which were inspired in the lives of true warrior women) were unnatural to the greeks, and their battle spirit make them to be quickly related with Ares.
This is my personal theory thought. I haven't seen scholars discuss this so take it with a grain of salt.
