Ares, Sparta, and the Relationship that Never Was

In the late 90s, Disney released their animated “classic” Hercules to less than thunderous applause. I’m not going to go into what went wrong with this movie (someone on YouTube already did a thorough job of that), but I am going to say that the follow-up TV series Disney made for the movie was actually a lot of fun. The various gods play a much more prominent role, Cassandra exists, and the show manages to present a number of fun Greek myths and historical figures in a way that executes them much better than the film did.

However, that doesn’t mean the show was perfect. There are a few problems I had with the show:

1. Apollo, as the sun god, should’ve had yellow glowing skin, not that purple color scheme they were going for.

2. Poseidon isn’t nearly as chill as the show makes him out to be. If anything, he should be more of an antagonist like he was in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess.

3. Hades shouldn’t be evil, but this is hard to skirt around in modern pop culture in general. That’s for another article.

4. Ares isn’t the patron god of Sparta.

Today I’m talking about that last one because it extends far beyond Disney’s cheap show, similar to how Hades is almost always portrayed as a kind of demon in modern pop culture.

Disney’s Hercules presents Ares and Athena as rivals (kind of true), with Athena being a war goddess who presides over the capital city Athens and Ares being a war god who has the worship of Sparta. We even get a neat little song about these two polar opposite deities! The song even comes at the start of an episode where Athena sends Hercules on a mission to retrieve a secret weapon from Ares to prevent him from destroying Athens, only to realize at the end of it that Athena had planned all along to use the same weapon to destroy Sparta.

But did the Spartans actually worship Ares? Was he their patron god?

Let’s Do Some History

Ancient Greece was kind of like a collection of city-states instead of a single nation. When we think of it, usually Athens pops into our heads, but there were many cities other than Athens, all of them with their own patron gods, cultures, and even linguistic differences. This lack of unity is partially responsible for the Peloponnesian War, as each city had previously been part of an alliance, Athens having abused their trust. Why were they aligned and paying tributes to Athens? Because if a foreign power invaded, like Persia tried to, each city was so separated from the other that they had their own military. They needed to combine their forces to present an effective front against invaders.

They all considered themselves Greek, but they were certainly different flavors of Greek, and most of them had their own patron god or goddess.

Athens is named after its patron goddess, Athena, the goddess of war, wisdom, crafts, city defense, etc. Is it any wonder that the Athenians produced so many thinkers and philosophers?

The Ephesians had Artemis, Apollo’s twin sister and goddess of the moon, hunting, disease, and childbirth. They built in her honor a wondrous temple that was unfortunately destroyed by an individual who wanted to make his mark on history and have his name remembered forever, but we don’t know what it was because it was outlawed in response to his crime.

On the flip side, there’s an apocryphal story that the Temple of Artemis was actually destroyed by one of Jesus’ apostles and that it was the destruction of her temple through divine means that the people of Ephesus converted to Christianity.

Corinth had as their patron Aphrodite, the goddess of love, beauty, and sexuality. Her priestesses doubled as expensive prostitutes, and combined with Corinthian economic power, the city-state was a sort of ancient Los Vegas. What happened in Corinth, stayed in Corinth. Well, except for the STDs you picked up along the way.

But what about Sparta? The idea that Ares is the patron of Sparta makes perfect sense. Sparta, like the brazen god of war himself, was all brawn and no brain. Obsessed with physical perfection, the Spartans raised their boys to be the ultimate warrior, shunning modern warfare and its advancements completely (which actually rendered them rather useless in actual battle most of the time, and in the end they became little more than tourist attractions). To do the work in the city, more power than average was allocated to Spartan women, but the bulk of the workforce came from their vast slave class.

You didn’t want to be a Spartan slave. The Helots, as they were called, were largely foreign-born, and they were treated terribly. Unhappy with their lot, they would often try to escape, but the Spartans used escaping Helots as sport to desensitize young boys, who set out to murder them.

All of these things, one would think, would point to Ares as being their patron.

Ares in Ancient Greece

Unlike the Romans and their general respect for the god Mars, the Greeks didn’t like Ares very much. Unlike the defensive, logical tactician Athena, Ares’ brand of war was violent, indiscriminate, full of bloodlust, and left a trail of carnage in its wake. His warfare was dishonorable, and Greeks universally despised it. Heck, even the Greek gods didn’t seem to like Ares very much, with the exception of Aphrodite who had an affair with him, cheating on her own husband, Hephaestus.

Ares exists as a god to remind the people of what you don’t want to be doing in war. Whenever Ares is references, it’s almost always in a negative light. The only character associated with Ares in a positive way at all is Menelaus, the king of Sparta and husband of Helen. Yes, the Helen of Troy.

Doesn’t that Prove It?

Oh, you think that Menelaus being associated with Ares means that Spartans in general felt a kinship with him? I hate to burst your bubble, but Menelaus doesn’t speak for all Spartans. There are no major temples to Ares in Sparta, for example. Most cities had a minor shrine to him, but he never had a major temple that could compete with those of Zeus, Artemis, or Athena.

You see, the Greeks had a relationship of bargaining with the gods. You offered up prayers and sacrifices in hopes of winning the gods’ favor. With Ares, however, you mostly just bargained with him to keep him at bay. You really didn’t want to get caught up in his wars.

So much for the Ares of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess, in which he’s portrayed as being popular with warlords and an on-again, off-again lover to Xena. At least the shows preserve the other gods’ general disdain for him.

The Only Historical Evidence for Spartan Worship of Ares

Writing in the late second century BCE, the philosopher Porphyrios of Tyre summarized an earlier history written by Apollodoros of Athens, claiming that the Spartans made human sacrifices to Ares. This is the one reference to such a thing, but its credibility is easily called into question.

First of all, Apollodoros was an Athenian. Even if Disney got it wrong that Ares was the patron god of Sparta, they did get it right that the Athenians and the Spartans were no friends. The two cities couldn’t have been more opposite of one another, and it would fit only too well into Athenian propaganda to claim that the Spartans had “sacrificed a man” to Ares.

However, the greatest refutation of Apollodoros’ writing is the simple fact that human sacrifice came to be great taboo in Ancient Greece. According to their version of the flood myth, Zeus would flood the world a second time if humans were sacrificed to the gods. As such, any incident of human sacrifice was usually recorded, not mentioned centuries after the fact.

I say after the fact because at the time of his writing, Sparta was no longer the independent polis that once was. It was kind of a has-been on the Greek stage, and stories about it were running rampant.

So, Who Did the Spartans Worship?

Spartans actually seemed to hold Apollo and Artemis in special regard., and the most prominent temple was dedicated to a goddess whose epithet was Orthia, an aspect of Apollo and Artemis, much like Nike is an aspect of Athena.

They held a grand festival for Orthia, in which boys would show off how manly they are by allowing themselves to be whipped, sometimes to the death, without groaning or crying.

And, while she's not nearly as prominent as in Athens, Athena also seemed to have a proper temple in Sparta.