“I—I can’t decide,” Adonis said. “You’re both amazing.”
So the two goddesses took Adonis up to Mount Olympus and asked Zeus to solve the problem.
Zeus’s eyes twinkled. “You’re a lucky guy, Adonis.”
Adonis wasn’t feeling very lucky. He was feeling like the last piece of cake at a birthday party with a dozen hungry kids, but he nodded nervously. “Yes, sir.”
“The solution is simple,” Zeus said. “A time-share!”
Aphrodite frowned. “Can you do that with a boyfriend?”
“Of course!” Zeus said. “Adonis will spend one third of the year with you, one third of the year with Persephone, and one third of the year on his own, to do as he pleases.” Zeus clapped Adonis on the shoulder. “A guy has to have some time to relax, away from the ladies. Am I right, bro?”
“I—I guess…bro.”
Zeus’s expression darkened. “Don’t call the lord of the universe bro. Otherwise, I think we’re all settled!”
The plan worked for a while, but Persephone’s share of each year happened to fall during the winter, so she got the worst end of the bargain; and Adonis didn’t like the Underworld. He had to spent most of his time hiding in closets or jumping under Persephone’s bed whenever the Hades knocked on her door, since Hades didn’t know about Persephone’s secret boyfriend.
Eventually Aphrodite won Adonis over with her sweet talk and her charm. She convinced him to spend his free portion of the year with her as well, so that she got two thirds and could look at Persephone smugly and know who was the better goddess. For a while, Aphrodite and Adonis made a happy couple. They even had a daughter together—a girl named Beroe.
How did the relationship end? Badly, of course.
One day Adonis was hunting out in the woods, which he liked to do when he wasn’t with Aphrodite. His dogs caught the scent of an animal and went racing ahead. Adonis followed with his spear. By the time he caught up, he was tired and winded.
Unfortunately, his dogs had cornered a wild boar, which was just about the nastiest, most vicious animal you could meet. Some stories say the boar was put there by the god of war, Ares. That makes sense, since the boar was his sacred animal, and Ares was Aphrodite’s godly boyfriend. Other versions say Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, put the boar in Adonis’s path. Or maybe it was Persephone, since she was feeling jealous and jilted. It could’ve been almost any god, because like I said, when you’re dating Aphrodite, everybody else is going to hate you.
Whatever the case, the boar rushed at Adonis and stabbed its tusks right in the most painful place you can imagine, which might have been funny, except that Adonis bled out and died.
A little while later, Aphrodite came flying by in her dove-powered chariot. She saw Adonis’s lifeless body and rushed to his side.
“No!” she wailed. “Oh, my poor beautiful man! Even in death, you are amazing.”
She laid his body in a big patch of lettuce, which is why lettuce became her sacred plant. The Greeks called it “dead man’s food.” They thought if you ate too much of it, you would become listless and unable to experience love, just like dead Adonis.
Anyway, Aphrodite sprinkled godly nectar over Adonis’s body, and he dissolved into bloodred flowers. They were called anemones, after the Greek word anemoi, which means the winds. Whenever the breeze caught them, the red petals fluttered away with a sweet smell that reminded Aphrodite of Adonis’s fragrance.
Aphrodite was sad about his death for almost a whole day. Then she went back to her godly boyfriend Ares—the very one who might have been responsible.
Was Aphrodite mad at him? Nope. That’s just the way Ares was.
If you want to meet the dude, he’s in the next chapter. But bring your flak jacket and your assault rifle. Ares takes no prisoners.
ARES, THE MANLY MAN’S MANLY MAN
A RES IS THAT GUY.
The one who stole your lunch money, teased you on the bus, and gave you a wedgie in the locker room. The one who breaks other kids’ bones in varsity football and makes a D- in every class, but is still popular because it’s so funny when he gives the scrawny kids swirlies in the toilet.
If bullies, gangsters, and thugs prayed to a god, they’d pray to Ares.
As soon as he was born, his parents knew he was bad news. Hera and Zeus wanted to love him, because he was their first child. But instead of being cute or saying goo-goo or even crying for mama, the baby came out raging and shaking his little fists.
Hera could hardly keep hold of him as she held him up for Zeus to see. “My lord,” she said, “your newborn son.”
Zeus reached down to tickle the baby’s chin. Ares grabbed his dad’s finger with both hands and twisted it. SNAP! The baby pounded his tiny chest and yelled, “RARR!”
Zeus examined his immortal finger, which was now dangling at a funny angle. “You know…perhaps we should get the boy a nanny.”
“Good idea,” Hera said.
“A large, strong nanny. With lots of patience…and good medical insurance.”
They hired a lady named Thero. She must’ve been like a mountain nymph, or something, because she was tough and strong and nothing bothered her. She took Ares into the land of Thrace, a harsh, rocky place just north of Greece, full of snow and jagged mountains and warlike tribes—the perfect spot for a baby combat god.
As Ares grew, he never cried for his bottle or his binky. He roared for blood. Early on, he learned to chuck rocks at birds and knock them out of the sky. He pulled the wings off insects to practice his fine motor skills. He would laugh and laugh as he learned to walk by stepping on flowers and crushing small animals. Meanwhile Thero sat on a rock nearby, reading her Olympian gossip magazines and yelling, “Keep it down, ya little delinquent!”
Yes, those were happy days.
Eventually Ares grew up and returned to Mount Olympus to take his rightful place on the Olympian council. Of course, he became the god of war (and just a friendly warning: if you ask him whether he’s that dude from the video game God of War, he will rip your arm off and beat you over the head with it). He also became the god of violence, bloodlust, weapons, bandits, pillaging, leveling cities, and good old-fashioned family fun.
He was the god of strength and manly courage too, which was kind of funny, since the few times he actually got into one-on-one combat with another god, he ran away like a coward. I guess that’s typical of bullies. Ares was the first one to flee when the storm giant Typhoeus came knocking. Another time, during the Trojan War, he got stabbed in the gut by a Greek mortal’s spear. He roared so loud, it sounded like ten thousand men. Then he fled back to Mount Olympus, crying and moaning to Zeus, “It’s not fair! It’s not fair!”
Zeus told him to shut up.
“If you weren’t my son,” the sky god grumbled, “I’d have stripped away your godliness and kicked you to the curb years ago. You’re nothing but trouble!”
Heartwarming, how the Olympian family got along.
Despite his occasional cowardice, Ares was a bad dude to make angry. When he went into battle, he wore golden armor that burned with harsh light. His eyes were full of flames, and with his war helmet on, he was too scary for most mortals to look at, much less fight. His favorite weapon was his bronze spear. His shield always dripped with blood and gore, because that’s just the kind of friendly guy he was.
When he didn’t feel like walking, Ares rode a war chariot pulled by four fire-breathing horses. His twin sons, Phobos and Deimos (Fear and Panic), were his usual charioteers, holding the reins and amusing themselves by seeing how many people they could run over: Fifty points if you can smash that line of archers! A hundred points if you can hit that old dude!
You can see why Ares’s sacred animal was the wild boar, which will charge anything, is almost impossible to kill, and has major attitude.
One of his sacred birds
was the vulture, since it feasted on corpses after a battle. His favorite reptile was the poisonous snake. In a lot of pictures, you’ll see Ares holding one, or he’ll have one painted on his shield.
Ares didn’t have a sacred flower. Go figure.
In addition to his apartment on Olympus, where he liked to hang out with his girlfriend Aphrodite, Ares had his own fortress in the mountains of Thrace. It was the first and ultimate man cave.
The castle was made entirely of iron—black metal walls, metal gates, dark towers, spiked turrets, and a central keep with bars on all the windows. The sunlight barely made it inside, as if it was afraid to enter.
The halls and rooms were piled high with loot from various wars—some trophies that Ares had claimed himself, some that had been sacrificed to him by mortal warriors. He had about ten million swords and shields, enough armor to outfit the entire population of India, heaps of broken chariots and siege equipment, old banners, spears, and quivers of arrows. If you made a crossover TV show about hoarders who were also doomsday survivalists, the camera crew would totally want to film Ares’s fortress.
He had a lot of valuables in there. His gun collection alone must’ve been worth millions. But the fortress was guarded by dozens of minor warlike gods like Mischief, Anger, Threat, Road Rage, and Rude Gestures. Ares also had one of those signs on the front door that read: FORGET THE GUARD DOG! BEWARE OF OWNER!
The Greeks didn’t worship Ares much. They felt the same way about him as Zeus did. Ares was part of the Olympian family. They had to tolerate him. Sometimes they feared him. But he was whiny and annoying and always got people killed.
Sure, there were exceptions. The city of Sparta? They loved Ares. Of course, they were the manly men of Greece who ate nails and steroids for breakfast, so I guess that made sense.
In the center of town they had a statue of Ares all chained down, the theory being that if they kept Ares in shackles he couldn’t desert them, so the Spartans would always have courage and victory.
Still. Chaining down the god of war? That’s hard-core.
The Spartans also made human sacrifices in honor of Ares, so you can see why they got along with him so well, though the sacrifices did cut down on Spartan tourism.
Up in Thrace, in the northern lands where Ares was raised, the mortals worshipped him in the form of a sword. Maybe they painted a smiley face on the blade and called it Mr. Ares. I’m not sure. But when it was time to sacrifice the sheep or cows or people, they sharpened the sacred sword and made a big mess.
Another one of Ares’s fan clubs? The queendom of the Amazons. In their culture, the women were in charge, and those ladies knew how to fight. The first of them were demigod daughters of Ares. He gave the original Amazon queen a magical belt that bestowed super-awesome combat skills. The Amazon queens passed it down from generation to generation.
Ares always looked out for the Amazons when they went to war. Those female warriors liked Daddy War God so much, they built him a temple on a nearby island, which was guarded by some of Ares’s sacred birds. Imagine a flock of six million ravens, each one with feathers like razor-sharp darts that could be fired with enough force to pierce the hull of a ship. Yeah…the island was well guarded.
If that wasn’t enough war god love, Ares also had two sacred groves: one in central Greece and one in a land called Colchis, far to the east on the shores of the Black Sea. Each grove was a dark forest of oak trees where you could go to pray for victory in battle; but you had to be brave, because each grove was guarded by a dragon.
These two big monsters were both sons of Ares. Who was the mom? How did a god have dragons for sons? I don’t know, but the dragons definitely shared their dad’s winning personality. They would attack anything that moved, and they loved feasting on human flesh. If you managed to collect the dragons’ teeth—which fell out all the time, kind of like sharks’ teeth—you could plant the teeth in the ground and grow yourself some spartoi, or skeleton warriors.
Good luck getting the teeth, though. The dragons never slept. They spit poison. They had excellent hearing. And they hated it when mortals came around, looking for souvenirs and not even spending any money in the Sacred Grove gift shop.
Eventually, both of the dragons got killed, which was sad for…well, pretty much no one except Ares.
The beastie in central Greece got taken out first. This guy named Cadmus was wandering around, leading a bunch of settlers to found a new city. The Oracle at Delphi had told him to follow this certain cow, and when the cow fell down from exhaustion, that was the best place to build his city.
I dunno. Would you follow a dude who was following a cow? Apparently Cadmus’s peeps didn’t mind. They hung with Cadmus until his special cow fell down, and everybody cheered.
“This is the spot!” Cadmus said. “Let’s start building! Oh, and how about we kill the cow and sacrifice it to the gods?”
At that point, the cow probably wished it had kept walking, but too late!
The settlers went to work. After a few hours, Cadmus and his builders got hot and thirsty.
“I need a drink!” one of the guys said. “Did you bring an ice chest or anything?”
Cadmus frowned. He knew he should’ve brought an ice chest. And they hadn’t seen a convenience store in miles. He scanned the horizon until he spotted a thick grove of oak trees in the distance.
“Trees need lots of water,” he said. “There has to be a river or a spring over there.” He pointed to some of his guys. “You five go into those woods with some buckets and bring us back some water. And if you see, like, a KFC or something, that would be good too.”
As you can guess, the woods were the sacred grove of Ares.
There was a spring, all right. It bubbled up inside a cave right in the middle of the grove, feeding a nice pool of fresh water that also happened to be the dragon’s drinking source.
The five guys went into the grove with their buckets.
They found the cave.
“What are all these pointy white things on the ground?” one of them asked.
“Arrowheads?” another guessed.
“Nah, they look like dragon teeth,” said a third.
They all laughed nervously. No such thing as dragons, right?
Then the dragon burst out of the cave and ate them.
Only, one of guys escaped, probably because the dragon was too full to chase after him.
The guy stumbled back to the worksite, screaming in horror: “DRAGON! BIG! EATS PEOPLE!”
As the settlers gathered ’round, Cadmus calmed the survivor down enough to get the full story. Then Cadmus grabbed his trusty spear. “No dragon is going to eat my workers.”
At the back of the crowd, a priest cleared his throat. “Um, sir? This grove sounds very much like a sacred place of Ares. If you kill the war god’s dragon—”
“I have to kill it!” Cadmus said. “The cow told me to build a city here, and I can’t have a dragon living next door! Would you deny the wisdom of the dead cow, old man?”
“Oh…no. No, sir.” The priest decided to shut up.
Cadmus marched into the grove with his spear, and because he was such a boss, he walked straight up to the dragon (who was really too full to put up a good fight) and drove his spear straight through its head.
Instantly, a bright light shimmered next to Cadmus, and the goddess Athena appeared.
“Well done, Cadmus!” said the goddess. “You have killed the dragon of Ares!”
Cadmus blinked. “So…I’m not in trouble?”
“Oh, you’re in terrible trouble!” Athena said cheerfully. “Some day, Ares will have his revenge. But for now you’re under my protection. I need you to found a great city called Thebes.”
“At the place where the cow fell down? Because the Oracle was pretty specific.”
“Yes, yes, that’s fine. But first things fir
st. You’ll need some good fighters to defend your new city. Take the teeth of this dragon and sow them into the ground like seeds. Water them with a little blood and watch what happens!”
Athena disappeared.
Cadmus wasn’t sure he should be stealing the dragon’s dental work, especially if he was already on Ares’s naughty list, but he did as Athena commanded. When he was done with his tooth farming, a bunch of super-elite skeleton warriors sprang from the ground, and these became the first soldiers in the new Theban army.
Cadmus built his city. For a while, everything was copacetic. The gods even granted him a minor goddess for his wife—Harmonia, who was a daughter of Aphrodite and Ares. Harmonia became mortal to share her life with Cadmus, which was a pretty big honor.
Ares was not pleased. First, this guy Cadmus kills his dragon. Then, the other gods are like, Oh, no, you can’t kill him! Cadmus is destined to found an important city!
Like Thebes was important. Please! What kind of name is Thebes? It’s not as cool as Sparta. Besides, there was already a city called Thebes in Egypt, so having one in Greece too was going to confuse people!
Then, on top of everything else, the other gods decreed that the dragon-killing jerk got to marry Ares’s daughter. Not funny.
For his daughter’s sake, Ares tried to keep his cool; but he hated his son-in-law. Finally one day he saw Cadmus out by the sacred grove, gazing at the spot where he’d killed the dragon years before.
For some reason, this completely torqued off Ares.
The war god appeared in front of him. “What are you looking at, punk? The place where you killed my dragon? You hate reptiles, huh? Well, guess what? You are one!”
WHAM! Ares turned Cadmus into a snake.
Unfortunately, Queen Harmonia had just been walking up to check on her husband. She saw what happened and shrieked, “Dad! What did you do?”
“He deserved it!” Ares snarled.
“I love him! Change him back!”
“Oh, you choose him over me? Is that how it is? Maybe you’d like to join him!” BLAM! He turned his own daughter into a snake, and the king and queen of Thebes slithered away.