Deimos

Also Known As: Greek Δεῖμος, “dread” or “terror”, from the verb for being afraid; Latin poets render him as Formido or Metus
Region/Culture: Southern Europe
Mythos: Greek Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: Deimos is dread itself given a name, the fear that breaks the nerve of fighting men, and he travels in the company of his father Ares and his brother Phobos.
Role in Mythos: He is a son of Ares and Aphrodite who serves as his father’s groom, charioteer and outrider, and who is set on the shields of kings to frighten the enemy.
Relation to Humans: Soldiers met him as the cold terror that scatters a packed line, and Agamemnon carried his figure on a shield so that the other side would meet him first. No temple, altar or sacrifice to him is recorded, although his brother Phobos had a shrine at Sparta.

Before the war god goes anywhere, somebody has to bring the horses round. In the fifteenth book of the Iliad, Ares has just been told that his son Ascalaphus lies dead on the plain in front of Troy. He slaps his thighs, swears he will have revenge even if Zeus strikes him down among the corpses for it, and shouts for his chariot. The two he shouts for are Deimos and Phobos. They go to the yoke. Leather creaks, bronze rings on bronze, and the team stamps on the floor of heaven while their master buckles on his armour.

That is the whole of the working life of Deimos, shown in a few lines: he is the hand that gets terror ready to travel. His name is the ordinary Greek word for dread, built on the verb for being afraid, and his brother’s name is the word for panic and for running away. Later readers have tried to give each of them a separate job, with Deimos as the sick fear before the fighting and Phobos as the rout once it starts. It is a neat division. The old poets never draw it, and they almost never let either brother out alone.

Hesiod gives the family. In the Theogony, Aphrodite bore to Ares, the piercer of shields, two fearful sons and one daughter. The sons are Phobos and Deimos, who drive the close-packed ranks of men into confusion in chilling war, with their father the sacker of cities beside them. The daughter is Harmonia, who married Cadmus of Thebes. So love and war together produced dread, panic and concord, in that order, and the Greeks seem to have found nothing odd in it. Homer never names the mother. He treats the pair simply as part of the household of Ares, along with Eris, strife, whom he calls the war god’s sister and companion.

On the field they come as a group. When the two armies first close in the fourth book of the Iliad, Ares urges on the Trojans and grey-eyed Athena the Greeks, and with them go Deimos, Phobos and Eris, who starts small and ends with her head against the sky. Nothing is said about what Deimos does there. He does not throw a spear or take a wound. He is in the air over the front rank, like dust and noise, and men on both sides feel their stomachs turn.

He is also something a man can carry. When Agamemnon arms for his great day in the eleventh book, the poet lingers on the shield: ten circles of bronze, twenty bosses of pale tin, one boss of dark enamel in the middle. Crowning it is the Gorgon, glaring, and around her are Deimos and Phobos. The king of Mycenae walks out behind a picture of dread in the hope that the Trojans will feel the real thing. The same idea turns up on the shield described in the poem called the Shield of Heracles, where a golden Ares stands in his chariot with a spear in his hand and Deimos and Phobos wait beside him, eager to plunge in among the fighters.

That poem also holds the one story in which Deimos does something that looks like kindness. Heracles has killed Cycnus, a son of Ares who robbed travellers on the road to Delphi. Ares comes at the hero in a rage and takes a spear through the thigh for his trouble. The god goes down in the dirt. Then Phobos and Deimos bring the chariot up at speed, lift their father off the ground and into the car, and lash the horses until they reach Olympus. Dread and panic, the two powers that send other people running, are the ones who carry the wounded war god home. It is the most honest thing ever said about them. They are very good at retreat.

What Deimos looked like is a question the sources decline to answer. Pausanias, touring Olympia in the second century, saw an old carved chest on which Agamemnon’s shield bore Phobos with the head of a lion. Nobody describes Deimos at all. Painters and sculptors must have shown him, since the poets put him on shields, but no surviving figure can be given his name with confidence. One early reader, the poet Antimachus, took the Homeric lines another way entirely and decided that Deimos and Phobos were the names of the horses, not the grooms. He was wrong. It is easy to see how he got there.

The later poets kept him busy. In the long epic of Nonnus, written near the end of antiquity, Zeus prepares to fight the monster Typhon and hands out his own weapons to the brothers, lightning to Phobos and thunder to Deimos, like a general arming his aides. Elsewhere in the same poem Deimos fastens the bits on the horses while Phobos takes the reins. One isolated genealogy even names a Deimos as the father of the sea monster Scylla. None of this changes the picture much. He is always near the chariot.

His power is simple and it is not small. He can break a formation without touching it. An army of spearmen is strong only while every man stays in his place, and Deimos is the moment the man in the second rank looks over his shoulder. He works on gods as well as mortals, at least by association, since he is trusted with the thunder of Zeus. And he can be borrowed: a king who puts him on a shield is trying to aim him.

His limits are just as clear. He has no will of his own in any story. He comes when Ares calls and stops when Ares is stopped, and in the fifteenth book that happens almost at once: Athena runs out after the war god, pulls the helmet from his head and the shield from his shoulders, stands his spear in the corner and tells him to sit down. The horses stay yoked and go nowhere. Deimos has no myth without his father and none without his brother. He also had no worshippers that anyone wrote down. Phobos received sacrifice, and the Spartans kept a shrine to him near the hall of their magistrates. For Deimos there is nothing of the kind.

He did get a world of his own, long afterwards. In August 1877 the American astronomer Asaph Hall, working at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, found two small moons circling Mars. Henry Madan, a science master at Eton, pointed him to the lines of the Iliad where Ares calls for his horses, and Hall named the moons for the grooms. Deimos is the outer and smaller one, a dark, lumpy rock about twelve kilometres across. It still goes round the war god, a little behind its brother.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Deimos in Greek mythology?

Deimos is the Greek god or personified spirit of dread and terror in war. He is a son of Ares, the god of war, and Aphrodite, and he goes into battle with his father and his brother Phobos. His name is the ordinary Greek word for dread.

Who are the parents and siblings of Deimos?

Hesiod’s Theogony names Ares and Aphrodite as the parents of Deimos. His brother is Phobos, the spirit of panic and flight, and his sister is Harmonia, who married Cadmus of Thebes. Homer mentions Deimos as part of the household of Ares but never names his mother.

What is the difference between Deimos and Phobos?

Deimos means dread or terror and Phobos means panic or flight. Modern writers often say Deimos is the fear felt before a battle and Phobos is the rout during it, but the ancient poets never make that distinction. In Homer and Hesiod the two brothers almost always appear together and do the same work for Ares.

What does Deimos do in the Iliad?

In the Iliad, Deimos goes into battle beside Ares, Phobos and Eris when the Greek and Trojan armies first clash. He is pictured on the shield of Agamemnon around the head of the Gorgon. In Book 15 Ares orders Deimos and Phobos to yoke his horses so he can avenge his dead son Ascalaphus, but Athena stops Ares before he can leave.

Why is a moon of Mars named Deimos?

The astronomer Asaph Hall discovered the two moons of Mars in August 1877 at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington. Henry Madan of Eton suggested naming them after the two attendants of Ares in the Iliad, since Mars is the Roman name for the war god. Deimos is the smaller, outer moon, about twelve kilometres across.