Ares Enyalius was sometimes used as an epithet for Ares, though the name probably referred to a separate, Spartan god of war originally.
Homer calls Ares 'Enyalios' in Iliad book xx, and Aristophanes (in Peace), envisages Ares and Enyalios as separate gods of war.
In Argonautica book II, part xiv, Jason sets the chthonic earthborn warriors fighting among themselves by hurling a boulder in their midst:
- 'But Jason called to mind the counsels of Medea full of craft, and seized from the plain a huge round boulder, a terrible quoit of Ares Enyalius; four stalwart youths could not have raised it from the ground even a little.'
The urbane Alexandrian author gives his old tale a touch of appropriate Homeric antiquity by using such an ancient epithet.
Plutarch, in Moralia (2nd century CE), tells of the bravery of the women of Argos, in the 5th century BCE, who repulsed the attacks of kings of Sparta. The survivors erected a temple to Ares Enyalius by the road where they fell:
- 'After the city was saved, they buried the women who had fallen in battle by the Argive road, and as a memorial to the achievements of the women who were spared they dedicated a temple to Ares Enyalius... Up to the present day they celebrate the Festival of Impudence (Hybristika) on the anniversary [of the battle], putting the women into men's tunics and cloaks and the men in women's dresses and head-coverings.' [1]
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