Phobos

Fear and Terror moved beside Ares as he entered battle. Phobos represented fear, while Deimos represented terror. They were two of the four children born to Ares and Aphrodite. Aphrodite was the goddess of love and was already married to Hephaestus when she became the mother of Ares’s children.

Ares brought the violence of war in its most fearsome form. He was the son of Zeus and Hera, though Hesiod describes him as the only son born from Zeus’s second marriage. Hesiod also calls him city-destroying Ares. The Greeks had little love for him because of the suffering caused by war. His father, mother, and the other gods were said to dislike him as well. His worship was rarely observed with enthusiasm.

Ares was surrounded by dreadful forces connected with battle. Alongside Phobos and Deimos came Enyo, goddess of the war-cry, Keidomos, demon of the noise of battles, and Eris, his twin-sister and companion. A Homeric hymn asks Ares to drive away cowardice and restrain the fury that leads to bloodshed. It instead asks for the courage to keep the laws of peace and avoid hatred.

On one occasion, Ares killed Halirrhothios, son of Poseidon, after Halirrhothios insulted Alcippe, the daughter of Ares. Poseidon brought him before a tribunal of the Olympian gods on a hill in Athens. Ares was acquitted, and the hill became known as the Areopagus, or Hill of Ares. In the Gigantomachia, the Aloidae defeated him and held him in chains for thirteen months. He was represented as a youthful, muscular man carrying a sword or spear and a round shield.