#techne

athena vs ares

i’ve seen this common mistake everywhere where when athena is referred to as a war goddess, people will say “no she’s the wisdom goddess, ares is the god of war,” and you’re not wrong. she is the goddess of wisdom but she is also a war goddess. so here’s the difference between athena’s “war” and ares’ “war.”

ATHENA

athena is a strategist, the tactician: she represented the ‘higher’ arts of warfare, and was also known as a patron of the ‘hero.’ she guided and supported those who did heroic deeds and was instrumental in demi-gods beating their monsters. (perseus’ and medusa), while aiding heracles during his twelve labours, and enabling achilles to defeat hector. she thinks along the lines of cunningness and not just pure violence without thought.

ARES

now ares is a much bigger difference. he represents the brutality and violence of war. it doesn’t matter who is at the end of the brutality. he enjoys it, i mean his chariot is pulled by horses that are red (the color of blood). he isn’t smart or cunning (often he is alongside another deity that will aid him in this aspect or help along with his victory like nike), he uses cruel violence. this displays who worshipped him (which surprise, wasn’t many; he didn’t have many temples either)

also so it’s clarified; greek mythology has many gods, goddesses, or deities that share aspects of the same thing. hekate and artemis share the moon aspect as goddesses, athena, hephaestus, and techne (all deities of arts)

edit: this isn’t supposed to be rude towards ares, im just explaining how he was in battle. of course, they’re both extremely important, but ares is most certainly pure violence, he does not think and represents more the mad rage on the battlefield that soldiers will have, while athena is viewed more like a commander-like figure that won’t fight but will do little things to ensure her side with being successful. war is such a difficult aspect of human civilization that needs two different deities to accurately represent it. another thing i want to explain is im not english, so when i explain something, it might come off extremely blunt. what i mean by ares not having temples was because not everyone actively worshipped war (there was a few cultures that did worship ares though (spartans)).

I apologize to anyone that thought i was disrespecting ares (thank you to @cyanide-latte for pointing out that i did use extreme unflattering words towards ares, it wasn’t intentional, english just looks weird to me.