NationStates Jolt Archive

"Instead of calling Athena the goddess of war, wisdom, and macrame, then, we should say war and technology. And here again we have the problem of an overlap with the jurisdiction of Ares, who's supposed to be the god of war. And let's just say that Ares is a complete asshole. His personal aides are Fear and Terror and sometimes Strife. He is constantly at odds with Athena even though--maybe because--they are nominally the god and goddess of the same thing--war.

Heracles, who is one of Athena's human proteges, physically wounds Ares on two occasions, and even strips him of his weapons at one point! You see the fascinating thing about Ares is that he's completely incompetent. He's chained up by a couple of giants and imprisoned in a bronze vessel for thirteen months. He's wounded by one of Odysseus's drinking buddies during the Iliad. Athena knocks him out with a rock at one point. When he's not making a complete idiot of himself in battle, he's screwing every human female he can get his hands on, and--get this--his sons are all what we would today call serial killers. And so it seems very clear to me that Ares really was a god of war as such an entity would be recognized by people who were involved in wars all the time, and had a really clear idea of just how stupid and ugly wars are.

Whereas Athena is famous for being the backer of Odysseus, who, let's not forget, is the guy who comes up with the idea for the Trojan Horse. Athena guides both Odysseus and Heracles through their struggles, and although both of these guys are excellent fighters, they win most of their battles through cunning or (less pejoratively) metis. And although both of them engage in violence pretty freely (Odysseus likes to call himself 'sacker of cities') it's clear that they are being held up in opposition to the kind of mindless, raging violence associated with Ares and his offspring--Heracles even personally rids the world of a few of Ares's psychopathic sons. I mean, the records aren't totally clear--it's not like you can go to the Thebes County Courthouse and look up the death certificates on these guys--but it appears that Heracles, backed up by Athena all the way, personally murders at least half of the Hannibal Lecterish offspring of Ares.

So insofar as Athena is a goddess of war, what really do we mean by that? Note that her most famous weapon is not her sword but her shield Aegis, and Aegis has a gorgon's head on it, so that anyone who attacks her is in serious danger of being turned to stone. She's always described as being calm and majestic, neither of which adjectives anyone ever applied to Ares....

Let's face it, Randy, we've all known guys like Ares. The pattern of human behavior that caused the internal mental representation known as Ares to appear in the minds of the ancient Greeks is very much with us today, in the form of terrorists, serial killers, riots, pogroms, and agressive tinhorn dictators who turn out to be military incompetents. And yet for all their stupidity and incompetence, people like that can conquer and control large chunks of the world if they are not resisted....

Who is going to fight them off, Randy?

Sometimes it might be other Ares-worshippers, as when Iran and Iraq went to war and no one cared who won. But if Ares-worshippers aren't going to end up running the whole world, someone needs to do violence to them. This isn't very nice, but it's a fact: civilization requires an Aegis. And the only way to fight the bastards off in the end is through intelligence. Cunning. Metis."

-This is excerpted from pages 804 through 807 of Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. All text is Enoch Root's dialogue--Randy Waterhouse's few lines here are omitted.
http://markpasc.org/blog/gems/athena.html

I find a lot of truth in these words. In short, I like them and I think of the passage often. So, whether you read the book or not really isn't important. I'm wondering what the rest of you think about the words in quotations. Agree? Disagree? Think it's a good way of looking at the world? Why and why not?

A second part that I beleive is important with full dialogue:

"Both that, and technological cunning. From time to time there is a battle that is out-and-out won by a new technology—like longbows at Crecy. For most of history those battles happen only every few centuries—you have the chariot, the compound bow, gunpowder, ironclad ships, and so on. But something happens around, say, the time that the Monitor, which the Northerners believe to be the only ironclad warship on earth, just happens to run into the Merrimack, of which the Southerners believe exactly the same thing, and they pound the hell out of each other for hours and hours. That’s as good a point as any to identify as the moment when a spectacular rise in military technology takes off—it’s the elbow in the exponential curve. Now it takes the world’s essentially conservative military establishments a few decades to really comprehend what has happened, but by the time we’re in the thick of the Second World War, it’s accepted by everyone who doesn’t have his head completely up his ass that the war’s going to be won by whichever side has the best technology. So on the German side alone we’ve got rockets, jet aircraft, nerve gas, wire-guided missiles. And on the Allied side we’ve got three vast efforts that put basically every top-level hacker, nerd, and geek to work: the codebreaking thing, which as you know gave rise to the digital computer; the Manhattan Project, which gave us nuclear weapons; and the Radiation Lab, which gave us the modern electronics industry. Do you know why we won the Second World War, Randy?"

"I think you just told me."

"Because we built better stuff than the Germans?"

"Isn’t that what you said?"

"But why did we build better stuff, Randy?"

"I guess I’m not competent to answer, Enoch, I haven’t studied that period well enough."

"Well the short answer is that we won because the Germans worshipped Ares and we worshipped Athena."

"Well the short answer is that we won because the Germans worshipped Ares and we worshipped Athena."
We did? :confused: Or rather, they did?

I like the anaolgy though.

We did? :confused: Or rather, they did?

I like the anaolgy though.
It really made me look at the world differently. I'm glad I read the book before Bush was elected. I get to see what an Ares Worshipper looks like.

I always took it to be Ares is the God of War while Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom, was the Diety for Warriors.

Ares was always portrayed as a brawler. one who revels in the fight while Athena chooses her battles and her battlefeilds.

Ares is a cooler name.

I always took it to be Ares is the God of War while Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom, was the Diety for Warriors.

Ares was always portrayed as a brawler. one who revels in the fight while Athena chooses her battles and her battlefeilds.
Basicly. In the book, Athena is also compared to the Virgin Mary.

Athena wasn't about war, but strategy.

Athena had 2 sides - she could play nice and wise - or she could freaknasty you out of existence. It all depended on yur level of submissiveness.
Ares OTOH was strictly a one-note-theos.

Athena had 2 sides - she could play nice and wise - or she could freaknasty you out of existence. It all depended on yur level of submissiveness.
Ares OTOH was strictly a one-note-theos.
ummm... all Gods were like that. they favored those who showed greater submissiveness.

of course for some of those Gods, favoring them meant leaving them (Humans) alone... :D

But Ares gives me po...uh..music:)

wasn't Athena just a cheap rip-off of Ares made by Athenians who wanted a God who could take on every else’s? (though Ares is still better because he’s far more interesting than some boring nerd who appears to help widows sowing tapestries)

I myself think that the two powers are both vital for war Athena is the strategist whilst Ares is the guy who actually has to do all the fighting

Ares is associated with battle, bloodlust, and brutality. Athena is associated more with strategy and tactics. Personally, I'm a fan of Ares, he had an affair with Aphrodite.

wasn't Athena just a cheap rip-off of Ares made by Athenians who wanted a God who could take on every else’s? (though Ares is still better because he’s far more interesting than some boring nerd who appears to help widows sowing tapestries)

Nope, Athena existed before Athens. Her name and the name of the city are intertwined, but Athena's roots stretch much farther back with definite evidence in the Minoan era and the general Aegean region.

Athena was chosen by the citizens of Athens as their city's patron God; a myth details how they originally were debating whether to choose Athena or Poseidon as their patron and so each God provided a sign of their powers to motivate them one way or another. Poseidon struck the ground with his trident and created a fountain of water, and Athena gave the city an olive tree and the means to cultivate olives, which the citizens saw as the better gift.

As a result, the people chose Athena and so the city became Athens; another motivating factor was that Poseidon had a habit of bringing down his wrath on his worshippers when he was angry, so the citizens were further motivated to choose the far gentler and more benevolent Athena to avert such catastrophes in their city.

Ares is associated with battle, bloodlust, and brutality. Athena is associated more with strategy and tactics. Personally, I'm a fan of Ares, he had an affair with Aphrodite.
Athena always beat Ares in battle and Ares even lost a few times to mortals.

Athena always beat Ares in battle and Ares even lost a few times to mortals.

but still Athena is one of the crappest Gods ever the highlight of her life was turning a woman into a spider and vanishing on a bridal bed (I have no idea what this is)whereas Ares stole a powerful Gods hot wife before killing Poseidon’s son for trying to rape his daughter

but still Athena is one of the crappest Gods ever the highlight of her life was turning a woman into a spider and vanishing on a bridal bed (I have no idea what this is)whereas Ares stole a powerful Gods hot wife before killing Poseidon’s son for trying to rape his daughter
I'm not going to get into arguments over favorites. I don't really care about that aspect so much.

How about the ideas of what Athena and Ares represent and the meaning of the excerpts?

Essentially, Ares was a washed-up soldier. He was a drunk, incompetant guy witha big ego that would get really, really pissed off at you for no reason, but he could hardly hold the sword at the right end. Which, really, is what any soldier of the time was like when they weren't running at the enemy in giant straight lines.

Athena was basically the Greek bull-dyke, always in full battle gear and shouting that she was the mightiest warrior of all time. As much as you might call her the god of wisdom, she didn't display too much, relying more on intimidation and encouragement. A god of wisdom who is raring for a fight is a bad god of wisdom, but a god of war who prefers not to fight is a bad god of war. It's hard to be both.

If a god can be a god of war just by making people fight, then Eris was one of the best. She nearly made three Olympians destroy each other just because she wasn't invited to a party.

I think most people missed the point of this thread...

I think most people missed the point of this thread...

Yeah, that's pretty evident.:p

(Of course, I find it ironic that the thread concerns Athena, a goddess whose powers included trickery...seeing as how everyone was tricked in to discussing the gods themselves rather than the OP_

Yeah, that's pretty evident.:p

(Of course, I find it ironic that the thread concerns Athena, a goddess whose powers included trickery...seeing as how everyone was tricked in to discussing the gods themselves rather than the OP_
She can be a bitch...

She can be a bitch...

Yeah, that's usually what you get called for blinding someone because they accidentally saw you bathing naked.

Ares is a cooler name.
I agree.

Hm. Would we say that the Mongols worshipped Ares or Athena? They were brutal at times, but also cunning.

Hm. Would we say that the Mongols worshipped Ares or Athena? They were brutal at times, but also cunning.

Weren't they predomiantly Buddhist during the period of the Khanate? Yeah, sure we could typify them as being a society of Ares, rather than Athena, or vice-versa, but such would be a distortion.

Hm. Would we say that the Mongols worshipped Ares or Athena? They were brutal at times, but also cunning.
I'd say Ares. They were mostly instigators of war, weren't they?

Weren't they predomiantly Buddhist during the period of the Khanate? Yeah, sure we could typify them as being a society of Ares, rather than Athena, or vice-versa, but such would be a distortion.
This is a thread for broad brush painting. Knock yourself out.

This is a thread for broad brush painting. Knock yourself out.

Meh. I guess having the introductory text spoken by an immortal medieval alchemist is a bit of a giveaway to the fact that we aren't sticking too close to the actual facts.

Meh. I guess having the introductory text spoken by an immortal medieval alchemist is a bit of a giveaway to the fact that we aren't sticking too close to the actual facts.
I don't really see why you can't use the idea given most situations involving warfare, though. You could say the Mongols leaned towards Ares in such and such event but then leaned toward Athena in another given event.

I don't really see why you can't use the idea given most situations involving warfare, though. You could say the Mongols leaned towards Ares in such and such event but then leaned toward Athena in another given event.

Ah, yes, but there is a difference between 'worshipped' and 'had a society typified by the qualities of...', no?

Ah, yes, but there is a difference between 'worshipped' and 'had a society typified by the qualities of...', no?
I'm missing your point. I'm a bit slow today. Had to stay home from work.

Edit: OH wait... now I get it. Yes, you're right. I think I we were on different wavelengths... though I'm not sure if it was possible for anyone to be on my particular wavelength.