Ares
The god of war nobody on Olympus wanted around.
Son of Zeus and Hera, Ares loves the thick of the fight, the noise of weapons, the moment a battle stops having a plan. Running beside him are his sons, Deimos and Phobos, Terror and Fear.
The other gods can barely stand him. In the Iliad it's his own father who tells him he is the most hateful of everyone on Olympus. Under the walls of Troy Diomedes wounds him, with Athena guiding the spear, and Ares screams like ten thousand men before running back to the sky to be healed.
And yet Aphrodite chooses him. Married to Hephaestus, the lame smith, she is caught with Ares in an invisible net her husband forged for the purpose. The gods come to look and laugh. When the net opens, she goes back to Cyprus as if nothing had happened.
In Athens they said he was the first to stand trial for murder, on the hill that took his name, the Areopagus. He had killed the man who assaulted his daughter. He was acquitted.
The Greeks feared him. The Romans called him Mars and made him the father of Romulus and Remus, and so of Rome itself. The same god, seen by two peoples in opposite ways.
Today Ares would be the boxer who steps into the ring without lowering his eyes, the one in the stands who sings for ninety minutes and has no voice left the next day.
His colour is the red of heated iron. In astrology he rules Aries, together with the planet that carries his Roman name: impulse, and anger that turns into energy.
This story is for those who can't stay still.
For those who fight for what they love, even when everyone says they're wrong.
