God of War, God of Making Money

In fact, Aeschylus puts it in even more dire terms.

God of War is into a barter business. He takes young bodies and trades them for burial urns and gold. Can’t help but think of Cheney, Rumsfeld and their new darling, Kamala, in that respect.

Here is amazing quotation from Oresteia:

These are the pains that fill the chambers of the palace. These and worse. Pains that fill the house of every man who climbed those ships bound for Troy. Insufferable grief! And so, pain upon pain slice the heart. Pain upon pain knows whom it sent there and who returned inside those urns that carry the ashes of the dead.

Chorus: (As if seeing a ghost) Look there! See Ares the god of war, the god of money changers? He stands between the hosts with his scales and measures the heavy gold against the heroes’ ashes. There the spears clash and glitter before the walls of Troy. There the fire and there the bloodied corpses. And he, the god of war barters with his scales. Bodies for urns full of ash. And to the grieving folk he praises with hollow words: "He was a practiced soldier!" or to another’s wife, “He fell most bravely in the slaughter!"

Such is the stuff of whispers but the pain snakes along side by side with hatred — for the vengeful sons of Atreas [Greek Leaders who took the Greeks to the ten year butchery] But there! There all round the high walls of Troy are the dead Argives — all those “well-praised” Argives, gracing the Trojan soil, the enemy soil with their Greek tombs."

Indeed, our leaders love to count their gold while praising “brave soldiers destined for the slaughter.“