Ares

Halirrhothius, son of Poseidon, attacked Alcippe, the daughter of Ares. Pausanias states that Halirrhothius had already violated her when Ares discovered what had happened. Ares killed him. Pausanias then describes the hearing held after the killing. Poseidon summoned Ares to answer for the death, and the Olympic gods sat as the tribunal on a hill in Athens. Pausanias identifies this hill with the Areiopagos, the court later associated with trials for blood-guilt. Ares was acquitted. The tribunal accepted his defence because Halirrhothius had been caught while attempting to violate a close relative of the accused.

Pausanias presents the story as the explanation for the name Areiopagos, meaning the Hill of Ares. He also connects the place with the judgement of killings. Other accounts place the trial at the Areiopagos as an established Athenian court rather than simply on a hill later given that name. They also alter the offence. In these versions, Halirrhothius insulted Alcippe instead of violating her. The story appears among accounts of Ares’ resistance to legal proceedings, although the killing forced him to appear before a tribunal despite his contempt for litigation.

Cadmus slew the dragon that guarded the spring sacred to Ares. The god was enraged and would have killed him, but Zeus intervened. Ares reduced the punishment to eight years of bondage. When that period ended, Ares was reconciled to Cadmus and accepted his marriage to Harmonia, his daughter by Aphrodite. Some accounts say that Athene gave Harmonia to Cadmus when he visited Samothrace.

Cadmus had received Boeotia through Athene and built the Theban Acropolis with the Sown Men, naming it the Cadmea. After he had completed his service and been initiated into the mysteries taught by Zeus to Iasion, he married Harmonia. The Olympians attended the wedding, which was said to be the first mortal marriage honoured by the gods. Twelve golden thrones were placed in Cadmus's house, on the site of the later Theban market-place.

The gods brought gifts. Aphrodite gave Harmonia a golden necklace made by Hephaestus. It had first been a love-gift from Zeus to Cadmus's sister Europa, and it gave irresistible beauty to its wearer. Athene gave Harmonia a golden robe that bestowed divine dignity, together with a set of flutes. Hermes gave Cadmus a lyre. Another account names a splendid robe and the necklace as Cadmus's gifts to his bride. At the feast, the Muses sang and Apollo played the lyre.

Cadmus and Harmonia had one son, Polydorus, and four daughters, Autonoe, Ino, Semele, and Agave. The necklace later brought trouble to their family. One account says that after Harmonia's death it proved fatal to every person who possessed it. Another says that it became a source of woe for Cadmus's descendants.

Aphrodite found Ares in Eos’s bed and, angered by the affair, cursed Eos with a constant longing for young mortals. Eos then began to seduce them one after another, secretly and with shame. Her first mortal lover was Orion. Cephalus followed, then Cleitus, the grandson of Melampus.

Eos was married to Astraeus, who came from Titan stock. By him she had the North, West, and South Winds, Phosphorus, and, some say, all the other stars of heaven. Her longing for mortals continued despite this marriage. She carried off Ganymedes and Tithonus, who are called sons of Tros or Ilus.

Zeus took Ganymedes away from Eos. Tithonus remained among her lovers. Another account calls him a son of Laomedon, king of Troy, and the brother of Priam. Eos also abducted Cephalus after he had married Procris. He prayed to be released and returned to his young wife. In anger, Eos set in motion the events that ended with Procris’s death at Cephalus’s hands. The curse had therefore driven Eos to pursue a succession of mortal lovers, even while she remained joined to Astraeus.

Thanatos was chained by Sisyphus, and no mortal could die. Men continued living even after they had been beheaded or cut into pieces. This threatened Ares, whose interests depended on the proper order of war and mortality. He hurried to Sisyphus, released Thanatos, and delivered Sisyphus into Death’s power. Sisyphus died and was sent towards Tartarus.

Before descending, Sisyphus told his wife, Merope, not to bury him. When he reached the palace of Hades, he went directly to Persephone. He said that, because his body had been left unburied, he had no right to be among the dead. He should have remained on the far side of the river Styx, he claimed. He asked to return to the upper world, arrange his burial, and punish the neglect shown to him. He promised to come back within three days.

Persephone believed him and granted his request. Once Sisyphus stood again beneath the sunlight, he broke his promise and refused to return. Hermes was eventually summoned and brought him back by force. In the Underworld, Sisyphus received his lasting punishment. He had to roll a great stone up a hill. Whenever he reached the summit, the stone slipped back down to the bottom, and he had to retrieve it and begin again.

One ancient explanation for this punishment is Sisyphus’s capture of Thanatos, which stopped people from dying until Ares intervened. Apollodorus gives another explanation. He says that Sisyphus was punished for revealing Zeus’s secret abduction of Aegina, the daughter of the river god Asopus.

Typhon attacked Olympus, hurling kindled rocks and sending fire from his mouth. He was a vast monster with serpent legs, wings, and countless serpent heads. The gods were terrified and fled to Egypt, changing their forms as they went. Zeus and Athena alone remained behind in one account, while another says that every god except Zeus and Athena took an animal form for the journey.

Ares became a fish. Nicander lists the other transformations as Apollo into a hawk, Hermes into an ibis, Artemis into a cat, Dionysus into a goat, Heracles into a fawn, Hephaestus into an ox, and Leto into a mouse. Pindar gives the same general account of the gods’ flight. A different version says that Ares became a boar. In another account, Aphrodite and Eros changed into fishes in the river Euphrates when Typhon appeared in Syria.

Zeus then attacked Typhon with thunderbolts. At close quarters, he struck the monster with an adamantine sickle. Some accounts say that Typhon had first cut the sinews from Zeus’s limbs and hidden them in a cave, where they were guarded by the dragon Delphyne. Aegipan, Cadmus, or Pan, together with Hermes in the account that names him, recovered the sinews and restored Zeus’s strength. Zeus pursued Typhon after the monster was wounded. The sources place Typhon’s final confinement under Mount Etna in Sicily, under the island of Pithecussae, in Tartarus, or beneath Lake Serbonis in Egypt.