For the Romans, Mars was the God of war and killing. He did not really start out to be such a bad guy. The Romans were mostly farmers, who had all kinds of threats to their crops, including insects, critters, large animals, and storms. In order to keep their crops from harm, and insure a good yield each year, they prayed to their protector of animals and produce, the God Mars. He was the one, they believed, who kept their crops from harm, kept them from harm and gave them their livelihood. As the Romans became more aggressive, however, pushing their boundaries in all directions, these same farmers became soldiers. They still turned to their protector God, Mars, to keep them from harm in battle, and give them victories. The God that started out as an agricultural benefactor became the overseer of war. The God of a peaceful farm life became the God of war and killing. Those pacific origins of this mythical God have been long forgotten. Mars lives on as a war monger, in our culture and our language. The blood red planet Mars is named after him, as is the month of March, martial music, martial art, martial law, and martes (Tuesday en espanol). It is sad to see a nice guy become a bad guy, even in mythology.
His Greek counterpart, Ares, had no such original pretense as to nicety. He began as a bloodthirsty beast and stayed that way. He presided over slaughter, massacres, torture, human and animal sacrifice, rebellion, disobedience, disorder, banditry and weapons of destruction. When wounded in battle, he went back to Zeus, who healed him with bitter words, and then immediately returned to battle in order to kill some more. He was revered mostly in Sparta, where a normal part of the culture was to offer human sacrifices before battle, and where children sacrificed puppies before going to fight in the coliseum. He was accompanied in battle with two of his children, conceived from a long lasting affair with Aphrodite, those being Demos (terror, demons) and Phobos (fear). He loved vicious dogs and vultures, who fed on the flesh of dead humans after battle. The Greeks believed that Ares presided over all human conflict. Our month of April is named after him, the month when armies awaken from their winter slumber and return to the process of killing. Ares may have also stood for manly courage, but everything else he represented can accurately be portrayed as the evils of killing.
It would be naïve, to say the least, if not greatly hypocritical, to rail against this imaginary deity just because he was a killer. That’s not the point. Whether we like it or not, killing is a necessary part of life. There are microbes and basic organisms which survive on organic compounds, such as hydrogen sulfide, or protein molecules, but all additional life which is more complex than these simplest forms of self-replicating existence, dines on other life, or the products of that other life, in order to exist. None of us is alive today without millions of other forms of life being sacrificed in order to keep us alive. We usually look at this necessity euphemistically, calling this killing such things as the circle of life, or the food chain, but it is what it is. Humans are the most proficient killers on the face of the planet Earth. Whether that killing is done in the kindest way possible, and the most resourceful way possible, rather than for reasons of greed, anger and domination, is an entirely different matter.
Ares had a sister, Athena, for which our cities of Athens are named, who was the goddess of battle in Greek mythology. Ares and Athena were known as enemies. Ares stood for and reveled in uncontrolled violence. Athena was a plotter and planner, whose only concern was the strategy of that war, how to get the battle won in the most efficient manner. It seems terribly clear that our current nations and nebulous genetic societies prefer to follow the bloodthirsty examples of Ares more than those of Athena. Genocide is practiced with abandon in certain parts of our world. Various religious groups bomb and torture other humans just because they hold different beliefs. “Collateral damage”, in other words, killing defenseless women and children, is considered quite all right, if it helps certain groups to win an economic advantage. Mining companies devour the resources of our planet in any way that will put the most money in their pockets, regardless of how terribly polluting and wasteful their methods are, and regardless of the cost in human lives that will follow. Human groups vying for power destroy any of the earth’s confined resources they can reach in order to obtain their own selfish cause. Sportsmen and sportswomen kill, not because they need food, but because of the egotistic power surge it gives them to kill another animal.
For us to survive a long time as a species, our killing must be done with as much kindness and resourcefulness as possible. That means developing tolerance for all other humans, all other beliefs, all other forms of life. That means seeking negotiated resolution of conflicts, rather than going to war, often justified on the basis of misguided religious mythology. That means we should all become vegetarians in any way we can. That means never killing any other life just for sport. That means using all the resources of our planet in the least destructive way that is possible. It seems rather clear that we are not far removed from the primitive savagery of the Greek God, Ares, for whom our month of April is named.