On a summer evening in August 1877, American astronomer Asaf Hall was observing Mars from the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington , searching for small moons that no one had ever seen before. After several nights of arduous attempts, he almost gave up, but his wife, Angelina, encouraged him to continue. The following night, he discovered the first moon, and six nights later, he found the second.
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Hall had no idea that his discovery would put an end to centuries of speculation and unlock a scientific mystery that would remain unsolved until the 21st century. The two moons, later named Phobos and Deimos by scientists, appear to be irregularly shaped rocks orbiting Mars in different orbits, but they hold secrets about the formation of planets and their moons.
Some 149 years after their discovery, on October 19, 2026, a Japanese spacecraft launched toward Mars on an unprecedented mission to collect samples from Phobos' surface and return them to Earth. Analyzing a few grams of its soil may be enough to tip the scales in favor of one of the competing theories about the origin of the two moons.
However, the story of Phobos and Deimos does not begin with telescopes or spacecraft, but extends to Greek myths and literary narratives that imagined the existence of two moons of Mars before scientists discovered them.
Sons of War in Greek Mythology
Ancient civilizations knew the planet Mars for its distinctive red color and associated it with war, bloodshed, and conflict. The Babylonians called it "Nergal," which in their beliefs was linked to war, plague, and the underworld, while the Greeks knew it as "Ares," the god of war. The Romans then named it "Mars," a name that has been adopted into modern European languages.
In Greek mythology, Ares had two sons with Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty: Phobos and Deimos. Phobos means "fear," while Deimos means "terror" or "dread." The two accompanied their father to the battlefields, where they instilled fear and panic among the warriors.
These figures appear in the Greek poetic tradition, particularly in Homer's Iliad and Hesiod's Genealogy of the Gods. In these narratives, Phobos and Deimos are not celestial moons, but rather two forces embodying the terror associated with war.
Herein lies a remarkable historical paradox: the names of the two moons were linked to a legend thousands of years old, but their selection to name two celestial bodies did not occur until the nineteenth century, after their discovery.
The two names were suggested by the British scholar Henry George Madan, who was inspired by a passage in the Iliad describing Ares's preparations for war, and the suggestion was then adopted by the explorer Asaph Hall.
Therefore, the claim that the Greeks knew about the moons of Mars before discovering them is not true. What they knew were the two mythical figures whose names were later borrowed to name the moons.
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