Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/543

Rh A E E A E E 485 Greece, were afterwards found the oldest traditions of the worship of Ares, and that not altogether in the character of a war god. The fountain of Ares guarded by a dragon, and the legend of the Spartae, who sprang from a field sown with dragon s teeth, seem rather to symbolise some destructive influence in nature, such as that of the sun in summer scorching the fields. That influence of this kind was ascribed to the Thracian god follows from the identifi cation of him with the Sabine and Roman Mars, to the latter of whom the Arval brethren in Rome made annual sacrifice of a red dog to avert the calamity of the ripe grain taking fire. Apollo is the god who in Greek mythology, as we know it, discharged such functions. But it is argued that in this matter he may have superseded Ares, who on assuming the Thracian character of war god may have gradually resigned his original office. In one of the Homeric hymns Ares is described as a sun god who makes courage and valour stream into the hearts of men, and again, ^Eetes, king of Colchis, though a son of Helios, was yet the guardian of the grove of Ares, where was the golden fleece. Meleager, whose valour was displayed against the Calydonian boar, a pest to the fields of ^tolia, was a son of Ares and the fostering nymph Althaea. (Enomaus was a son of Ares and a daughter of the river god Asopus. The dog, which had originally referred to the dog star, remained his symbol, but could only be accounted for by the constant presence of that animal on battle-fields. From the destruction of crops by summer heat to similar destruction by war-like invasion seems a natural step. The next step was to take the point of view of the invader, and to magnify the exploits of war. By the time of Homer this had been done effectually, though traces of an older form of belief remain both in the Iliad and Odyssey. Besides those already mentioned, there is the remarkable incident in the Odyssey (viii. 266, ff.) where Hephaastos, informed by Helios of the infidelity of his wife Aphrodite with Ares, captures them together in a net, and there holds them for the ridicule of the gods. In what appears to be a very early development of her char acter, Aphrodite was a war goddess, and was styled Areia. But it is scarcely possible that a phase of character shared also, for example, by Athena, could have suggested such a relation between Ares and Aphrodite, though Hesiod s state ment (Tlieogony, 934) that Deimos and Phobos were their offspring points in that direction. Again, though Ares and Aphrodite were worshipped together at Thebes, it is not known that they were worshipped there as deities of war. Harmonia, the wife of Cadmus, the founder of that town, was regarded as their daughter. Possibly the connection originated in some other approximation between Ares and Aphrodite in an earlier form of their worship. Women were excluded from the festivals of Ares except at Tegea, in Arcadia, where he was called ywat/fo0o&amp;lt;Ws. But that exception appears to have been based only on an instance in which that town was successfully defended by its women. While honoured here and there with festivals and sacrifice, as at Sparta, where young dogs, and apparently once men, were offered to him under his title of Enyalios and Theritas, there were yet wanting in his case those local beliefs and traditions which gave vitality to the worship of a god. Next to Thebes, already mentioned, it was at Athens that this vitality obtained most, through the legend attaching to the Areopagus (&quot;Apeios Trayos). The nymph Agraulos had born him a daughter Alcippe, whom Halirrhotius, a son of Neptune, had seized with violence, and for this was slain by Ares, who was tried by a council of the gods sitting on the Areopagus and acquitted. At the foot of the Areopagus was a temple of Ares, with a statue of the god from the hands of Alcamenes. To judge now of the fluctuation in the conception of Ares from works of art, it is found that previous to the 5th century B.C., he was figured bearded, grim, and heavily armed. From that time, apparently under the influence of Athenian sculptors, who had to render his form in some harmony with their local war goddess Athena, he was conceived as the ideal of a youthful warrior, and for a time associated with Aphrodite and Eros, as in the group of the villa Borghese at Rome, where Eros plays with his weapons, and in many other groups of Ares and Aphrodite in marble and on engraved gems of Roman times. But before this grouping had recommended itself to the Romans, with their legend of Mars and Rhea Silvia, the Greek Ares had again become under Macedonian influence a bearded, armed, and power ful god. The Romans, however, though they readily adopted the Greek Mars and Venus, yet retained the former deity in his native character as a god representing the influence of the sun on cultivated fields, resembling the Mamers of the Mamertines in Sicily, with a wolf as his symbol (Conze, Heroen und Goiter Gestalten, p. 22, Vienna, 1874; Preller, Griechische Mythologie, i. pp. 251-259; Welcker, Griechische Gotterlehre, i. pp. 413-424). (A. s. M.) ARESON, JON (or HANS), a poet, and the last Roman Catholic bishop in Iceland, was born in 1484. He endured many privations in his youth, and at the age of twenty took holy orders, and was attached as priest to the parish of Helgastad. Here he was taken under the protection of Gottskalk, bishop of Holum, who twice sent him on missions to Norway. He acquitted himself so well that in 1522 he was appointed successor to Gottskalk. To many his election was displeasing, chiefly on account of his ignorance of Latin ; and Ogmund, bishop of Skalholt, the other diocese, drove Areson with violence from his bishopric. He was reinstated in 1524, and spent some rather stormy years till 1540, when Frederic III., king of Denmark, wrote to the bishops of Iceland desiring them to take measures for the introduction of Lutheranism. This Areson declined to do, and he even denied the king s power as head of the church. The greater part of the island, however, became Protestant. In 1548 the Lutheran bishop of Skalholt died, and Areson made an armed excursion into his suc cessor s territoiy. For this he was in 1549 declared an outlaw. He again sent an expedition against Skalholt, and captured the bishop, whom he treated with indignity. In 1550 his forces were defeated ; he was taken, and executed along with two of his sons. Areson is celebrated as a poet, and as having been the first to introduce print ing into Iceland. Several of his poems are collected by Harboe in his History of the Reformation in Iceland. ARET^EUS, a Greek physician of Cappadocia, who lived, according to some, in the reign of Augustus ; accord ing to others, under Trajan or Hadrian. He was one of the class of Pneumatic physicians, who made the heart the seat of life and of the soul. He wrote, in the Ionic dialect, several treatises on acute diseases and other medical subjects, some of which are still extant. The best editions of his works are that of Boerhaave, in Greek and Latin, with notes, 1731 ; that printed at Oxford in 1723, in folio; and that by C. G. Kiihn, Leipsic, 1828. ARETHUSA, a fountain at Syracuse, in Sicily, famed among the ancients for the abundance of its waters and the number of its fishes, but still more so for the connec tion which was fabled to exist between it and Alpheus, the river of the Peloponnesus, &quot; who stole under seas to meet his Arethuse.&quot; According to the anthropomorphic legend, Arethusa was a daughter of Nereus and Doris, who was changed into the fountain by her mistress Diana (Artemis), to deliver her from the pursuit of her lover Alpheus. There is still a copious supply of water in the modern fountain, but the taste is brackish, and it can