Arnold Zwicky's Blog

In writing yesterday’s posting on MLB Pride logos, I intended to type the name Aric Olnes, but anticipated the S at the end of Olnes in typing Aric, and so typed

Aris Olnes

A very common sort of typo, in this case creating the name of a hermaphoditic deity of war,

Aris = Ares (Greek god of war) + Eris (Greek goddess of discord)

Let me say here that Aric Olnes is not at all warlike, though he’s fierce in defense of his principles; instead, he’s generally irenic and thoughtful (in several senses). The Olympian deity he most resembles is Athena. From Wikipedia:

Athena or Athene, often given the epithet Pallas, is the goddess of wisdom, craft, and war in ancient Greek religion and mythology. In later times, Athena was syncretized with the Roman goddess Minerva. Athena was portrayed as having a calm temperament, and moving slowly to anger. She was believed to only fight for just causes and never fight without a purpose.

In ancient Greek literature, Athena is portrayed as the astute companion of heroes and as the patron goddess of heroic endeavour.

Aric is neither female (like Athena and Eris) nor hermaphroditic (like Aris), but he is gay and sometimes does drag — in case you’re inclined to think that those facts bring him closer to Athena or Aris.

Enough of Aric. Now into myth, via two modern uses of classical mythology for pop cultural purposes: in comics, animations of those comics, and live-action realizations of the comics in film or video; and in direct tv and movie adaptations of the myths.

In the comics. Ares as an action figure from his DC Comics incarnation:

(#1)

From Wikipedia:

Ares (also known as Mars or War) is a fictional supervillain appearing in comic books published by DC Comics. Based on the Greek mythological figure of the same name, he is the Greek god of war and serves as an archenemy of the superhero Wonder Woman within the DC Universe.

The character has appeared in various forms of media. Alfred Molina voiced him in the 2009 direct-to-video animated movie Wonder Woman. Ares later made his live-action debut in the 2017 film Wonder Woman, where he is portrayed by English actor David Thewlis.

Meanwhile, There’s Eris (as Bellona) in the Marvel comics:

(#2)

with a brief account from the Marvel wiki:

Bellona is the daughter of Hera and Zeus, she was often referred to as Eris or Discord, Goddess of strife and discord by the ancient Romans. Bellona was the usual accomplice of her brother Ares in his schemes to sow dissension among the Olympians. These schemes usually led to violent confrontations, including the Trojan War [Eris was the source of the golden Apple of Discord]. At some point Bellona and Ares became husband and wife.

Ares and Eris: brother and sister, husband and wife, whatever.

The number of cartoon realizations of Ares and Eris, together and separately, is just enormous.

Direct to movies or tv. Classical mythology, of course, can serve directly as an inspiration for fictions of all kinds other than comics. For instance, in the tv series Hercules (The Lengendary Journeys) and its spinoff series Xena (Warrior Princess). Kevin Smith as the studly Ares:

(#3)

and Morgan Reese Fairhead as Eris:

(#4)

Now we need tales about and depictions of Aris. And Aris’s mirror-image twin Eres (Gk. eres ‘couch, bedstead’).

I’ll just leave Iris and Eros out of it.

This entry was posted on June 23, 2017 at 9:51 am and is filed under Errors, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Pop culture, Typos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.