View source for Enyalius

{{Short description|Character in Greek mythology}}
{{For|the lizard genus|Enyalius (genus)}}
{{Special characters}}
'''Enyalius''' or '''Enyalios''' ([[Greek language|Greek]]: {{lang|grc|Ἐνυάλιος}}) in [[Greek mythology]] is generally a son of [[Ares]] by [[Enyo]]{{citation needed|date=January 2021}} and also a byname of [[Ares]] the god of war. Though Enyalius as a by-name of Ares is the most accepted version, in Mycenaean times Ares and Enyalius were considered separate deities. Enyalius is often seen as the God of soldiers and warriors from Ares cult. On the [[Mycenaean Greek]] [[Linear B]] [[Knossos|KN]] V 52 tablet, the name {{lang|gmy|𐀁𐀝𐀷𐀪𐀍}}, ''e-nu-wa-ri-jo'', has been interpreted to refer to this same Enyalios.<ref>See text and figure 37 in {{cite book|last=Chadwick|first=John|author-link=John Chadwick|title=The Mycenaean World|location=Cambridge, UK|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1976|isbn=0-521-29037-6|url=https://archive.org/details/mycenaeanworld00chad|url-access=registration|page=[https://archive.org/details/mycenaeanworld00chad/page/88 88]}} At [[Google Books]].</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://minoan.deaditerranean.com/resources/linear-b-sign-groups/e/e-nu-wa-ri-jo/ |title=e-nu-wa-ri-jo |work=Minoan Linear A & Mycenaean Linear B |last=Raymoure |first=K.A. |publisher=Deaditerranean |access-date=2014-03-19 |archive-date=2021-06-23 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210623193902/http://minoan.deaditerranean.com/resources/linear-b-sign-groups/e/e-nu-wa-ri-jo/ |url-status=dead }} {{cite web |title=KN 52 V + 52 bis + 8285 (unknown) |website=DĀMOS: Database of Mycenaean at Oslo |url=https://www2.hf.uio.no/damos/Index/item/chosen_item_id/49 |publisher=[[University of Oslo]] |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140319204420/https://www2.hf.uio.no/damos/Index/item/chosen_item_id/49 |archive-date=2014-03-19 }}</ref> It has been suggested that the name of Enyalius ultimately represents an Anatolian loanword, although alternative hypotheses treat it as an inherited Indo-European compound or a borrowing from an indigenous language of Crete. <ref> {{cite book |last=Yakubovich|first=Ilya|title=Linguistic and Cultural Interactions between Greece and Anatolia|chapter=The Anatolian Connections of the Greek God Enyalius|publisher=Linguistic and Cultural Interactions between Greece and Anatolia: In Search of the Golden Fleece. M. Bianconi (ed.). Leiden: Brill. Pp. 233-45|date=2021|pages=233–245|doi=10.1163/9789004461598_012|isbn=9789004461598|s2cid=243740039}}</ref>
Enyalios is mentioned nine times in [[Homer]]'s ''[[Iliad]]'' and in four of them it is in the same formula describing [[Meriones (mythology)|Meriones]] who is one of the leaders of warriors from [[Crete]]. Homer calls [[Ares]] by the [[epithet]] ''Enyalios''  in ''[[Iliad]]'', book xx.
A scholiast on [[Homer]] declares that the poet [[Alcman]] sometimes identified Ares with Enyalius and sometimes differentiated him, and that Enyalius was sometimes made the son of Ares by [[Enyo]] and sometimes the son of [[Cronus]] and [[Rhea (mythology)|Rhea]].<ref>A. Bernabé ''Poetae Epici Graeci'', 44, Berlin, 1983- .</ref>
[[Aristophanes]] (in ''Peace'') envisages Ares and Enyalios as separate gods of war.
In the [[Anabasis (Xenophon)|Anabasis]], [[Xenophon]] mentions that the Greek mercenaries raise a war cry to Enyalios as they charge at the Persian Army.
In ''[[Argonautica]]'' book III, lines 363–367, [[Jason]] sets the chthonic earthborn warriors fighting among themselves by hurling a boulder in their midst:
<blockquote>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.</blockquote>
The urbane [[Alexandria]]n author gives his old tale a touch of appropriate Homeric antiquity by using such an ancient epithet.
[[Plutarch]], in ''[[Moralia]]'' (2nd century), tells of the bravery of the women of [[Argos, Peloponnese|Argos]], in the 5th century BC, who repulsed the attacks of kings of Sparta. The survivors erected a temple to Ares Enyalius by the road where they fell:
<blockquote>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.{{cn|date=August 2021}}</blockquote>
According to [[Pausanias (geographer)|Pausanias]] (3.15.7), the [[Lacedaemon]]ians believed that by chaining up Enyalius, they would prevent the god from deserting [[Sparta]]. Pausanias also mentions at 3.14.9 and 3.20.2 that puppies were sacrificed to Enyalius in Sparta.
[[Polybius]]' history renders the Roman god [[Mars (god)|Mars]] by Greek Ares but the Roman god [[Quirinus]] by Enyalius, and the same identifications are made by later writers such as [[Dionysius of Halicarnassus]], perhaps only because it made sense that a Roman god who was sometimes confounded with Mars and sometimes differentiated should be represented in Greek by a name that was similarly sometimes equated with Ares (who definitely corresponded with Mars) and was sometimes differentiated.
[[Josephus]] in his ''Antiquities'' 4, (3)[115] states after telling the story of the [[Tower of Babel]]:
<blockquote>But as to the plan of [[Shinar]], in the country of [[Babylonia]], Hestiaeus mentions it, when he says thus: "Such of the priests as were saved, took the sacred vessels of Zeus Enyalius, and came to Shinar of Babylonia."</blockquote>
== Notes ==
{{Reflist}}
{{Greek religion}}
{{Greek mythology (deities)}}
{{Authority control}}
[[Category:Epithets of Ares]]
[[Category:Children of Ares]]
[[Category:Greek gods]]
[[Category:War gods]]
[[Category:Greek war deities]]