Areia

A Character Study in Aphrodite's voice.

Areia, of Ares Mars Olympia.

Of War.

Another translation for this suffix-name: warlike.

My true marriage name, given by no father. Not the King of the Olympian gods, who fretted and worried for my agency in his halls. Zeus Olympia doesn't tend to like it when others come roaring into his space and take over, or have the potential to shift his mind. 

Zeus, I barely know you. 

What you do, what you did, was not of me. It was not love. You are too perilous and too cold and to consumed with your own thunder to love and I would not poison my loins with you beyond what I did in younger, dangerous days.

For I am Ares' beloved. Your son's beloved. 

It's strange to me how many are surprised by this devotion to Ares and I wonder what they see in the god. One heck of a different promotional campaign if you look at him sideways, my Ares.

In Sparta I was Areia, the warlike goddess draped in full armour, consumed by the sound of spear and shield. Mother of Deimos and Phobos, of the fear and panic and clatter of the battlefield.

Of course Sparta would see me closer to who I am when I love myself. Much prefer the armour. Pretty good with a pilum or kopis, to boot. One does not love and fall in love with the god of war without inhabiting a few tricks. The amount of time I spent in war tents during one campaign or another? Pretty good knick with weapons and their uses. I know the jostle of the shield wall, the pressure of the phalanx. I know the roar and the bite and the slash and smell of bodies.

I was present to a man in Thermopylae.

In Ephesus and the battle of the Persian ranks I whispered in the coil and bell of their ears, gave ultimatums and uncanny fealty between brothers of blood and battle. I sat on the couch of generals in their war tents, spurring on one last offensive, one last campaign before the journey home.

All so there was a journey home, and that home was not sundered. A person battles most fiercely when they have solid reason pressed at their backs. 

What is a warrior without the promise of life after battle? What is a hero without the push to conquer and return, to consume the destined desire of warm bodies and warmer affections? What spurs a person on to commit acts of violence? Duty only gets you so far. Duty is another kind of love which can so easily become poisoned into hatred.

Areia, the warlike.

A woman with spear and shield and helm draped in armour plate over the long dress of flaxen linen or silk. Not that we had much silk in Sparta.

For all the yikes of looking backward, my favourite years were those with my consort and my sons within the rolling mountains of Sparta, with the training and the austerity and the congealed blood soup. We trained and battled and sought out one more conquest, one more battle. I learned how to run through fields, and punch and strike at soft targets. At joints and armour hinges. Wrestled with other women, and discovered those joys, too.

We threw spears at targets, wrestled in the pankrateon style, ate simple but filling meals.

I wore my armour made by proud smiths, and ventured to the war camps to stay by Ares' side not as a submissive woman, but a soldier in my right. A warrior who fought with every bit of conviction and would defend my charges. A mother of proud sons.

Mother of panic, mother of woe.

I dressed them in their armour, set the helms upon their heads and let them loose upon the world, encouraging my boys. And while I pursued the din and crack of battle, my belly quivered. Ares kept me to his side, wove his arm around me by the fires. Set his wolf-fur cloak about my shoulders to protect me from the cold. We laid together on low couches made for transport in battle, scanned through the reports from scouts and seers, to find the fulcrum of every battle to join to it. To attach our whiles.

He knew me, and I him.

We looked into each others' gaze. Ares and Areia.

Areia, goddess war-like, goddess of love, consort of Ares. Honeyed eyes met stiff blue, and together we raised mighty, roaring children.

It was this goddess, the war-like Love within which Harmonia Ourania-Areia settled, comfortable before birth. And it was in a battle tent where Harmonia was born, a hush to the throngs, for peace laid in the harmony of our first born daughter. Of a child born out of Ares and my cohesion.

I am Aphrodite Areia, goddess of love.

I am draped in armour. Carrying a cloak as red as the battle-blood issued forth from passing shades. I raised my sons and stood beside my Ares. Knew the calloused hands of the warrior, the power of the pilum and phalanx.

I am the mother of Harmonia goddess of harmony, born of Sparta.

Explain.