Enyo

Not to be confused with Enyo of the Graeae, a daughter of Phorcys and Ceto and one of the grey-haired sisters (Hesiod, Theogony 270–273).

Enyo was a goddess of war in Greek mythology, the companion of Ares in battle, whom Homer calls the “sacker of cities”. She appears in the Iliad as one of the powers who lead armies into the fighting, An image of her stood in the temple of Ares at Athens, and she had a great temple at Comana in Cappadocia. Her Roman counterpart is Bellona.

Enyo in Homer

In the Iliad, Enyo is named as a goddess who fights with armies and takes part in the sack of cities. When Diomedes pursues Aphrodite on the battlefield, he is said to know that she is a weak goddess, “no Athena, nor Enyo, sacker of cities” (Homer, Iliad 5.330–333). Later in the same book Ares and the lady Enyo lead the Trojans against Diomedes, she bringing Kydoimos, the din of battle (Homer, Iliad 5.592–593). Homer does not give her parents.

Enyo and Ares

Enyo is closely tied to Ares. Homer has her march at his side (Iliad 5.592), and Aeschylus has the seven chiefs at Thebes swear their oath “by Ares, by Enyo and by blood-loving Phobos” (Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes 45), where Phobos (Fear) is named as a third power of war. Homer also says that Eris, Strife, is the “sister and comrade of man-slaying Ares”, and that Deimos and Phobos drive on the armies with her (Iliad 4.439–445). Enyo, Eris, Deimos and Phobos are thus all powers of war, but Homer does not call Enyo the sister of Ares, and on the shield of Achilles he shows Eris, Kydoimos and the fatal Ker, not Enyo (Iliad 18.535–538).

Parentage

No early ancient source names the parents of the war goddess Enyo. Homer, who mentions her several times, gives her no father or mother, and neither Hesiod nor the tragedians make her a daughter of Zeus and Hera. She is not one of the Graeae: Hesiod lists a different Enyo, saffron-robed, as one of the grey-haired Graiae together with Pemphredo (Hesiod, Theogony 270–273).

Cult and Images

Pausanias saw an image of Enyo, made by the sons of Praxiteles, in the temple of Ares at Athens, among images of Aphrodite, Ares and Athena (Pausanias 1.8.4). Strabo reports that at Comana in the Antitaurus mountains of Cappadocia stood a temple of Enyo, called Ma by the people there; it was a large city with a great number of temple servants, and the priesthood of Enyo stood above that of Zeus Dacieus nearby (Strabo 12.2.3, 12.2.5). Callimachus, in his hymn to Delos, says that neither Enyo nor Hades nor the horses of Ares tread on the island, which was thus kept free from war (Callimachus, Hymn 4).

Enyo and Bellona

Bellona is the Roman goddess of war and is the counterpart of Enyo. In Virgil, Bellona appears in the scene of the battle of Actium with a bloody scourge, beside the rent-robed Discordia (Virgil, Aeneid 8.700–703). The consul Appius Claudius vowed a temple to her in the middle of a battle (Livy 10.19.16–17), and the Roman senate was summoned to meet in her temple (Livy 28.9.4).

See Also: Ares, Eris, Phobos, Deimos, Athena, Graeae, Zeus, Hera