[1][2] It has been suggested that the name of Enyalius ultimately represents an Anatolian loanword, although alternative hypotheses treat it as an inherited Indo-European compound or a borrowing from an indigenous language of Crete.
[3] Enyalios is mentioned nine times in Homer's Iliad and in four of them it is in the same formula describing Meriones who is one of the leaders of warriors from Crete.
In the Anabasis, Xenophon mentions that the Greek mercenaries raise a war cry to Enyalios as they charge at the Persian Army.
In Argonautica book III, lines 363–367, Jason sets the chthonic earthborn warriors fighting among themselves by hurling a boulder in their midst: But Jason called to mind the counsels of Medea full of craft, and seized from the plain a huge round boulder, a terrible quoit of Ares Enyalius; four stalwart youths could not have raised it from the ground even a little.The urbane Alexandrian author gives his old tale a touch of appropriate Homeric antiquity by using such an ancient epithet.
[citation needed]According to Pausanias (3.15.7), the Lacedaemonians believed that by chaining up Enyalius, they would prevent the god from deserting Sparta.