APHRODITE, GODDESS OF LOVE,
BEAUTY, FERTILITY & DESIRE

APHRODITE

(Latin - Venus)

Aphrodite was the ancient Greek goddess of Beauty, Love, Fertility and Desire. She was one of the Olympians.

• Her parentage is uncertain. The poet Homer, in the book called the 'Iliad', claimed that she was the daughter of Zeus and the Titaness Dione. She may also have been a daughter of Amphitrite by Triton or perhaps Cronus, father of many Olympians.
• But later myths and poems say that the goddess of Love had risen from the sea foam on a seashell after Cronus tossed his father Uranus' severed genitals there. Depending on the source, any of these versions may be considered accurate.
• Her name was thus explained as "foam-risen" coming from the Greek word 'Aphros', which means 'foam'.
• The actual "sea-birth" is said to have taken place near the island of Cythera, but supposedly she first walked ashore on Paphos in Cyprus. The South Wind claimed to have seen her floating in a scallop shell off the island of Cythera, and steered her gently ashore.
• That's why she was called 'Cytherea' or 'The Cyprian' as often as by her proper name.
• The Horae (Hours, Seasons) welcomed her joyously and clothed and attended to her, hanging golden ornaments in her ears and adorning her with golden necklaces. They put on her head a crown of gold and then the Horae brought Aphrodite to Mount Olympus, to be introduced to the Olympian gods.

• HOMERIC HYMN TO APHRODITE
  The breath of the west wind bore her
  Over the sounding sea,
  Up from the delicate foam,
  To wave-ringed Cyprus, her isle.
  And the Hours golden-wreathed
  Welcomed her joyously.
  They clad her in rainment immortal,
  And brought her to the gods.
  Wonder seized them all as they saw
  Violet-crowned Cytherea.
• Aphrodite each year would return to Paphos, in Cyprus, and swim in the sea for good luck and to rejuvenate herself.
• Robert Graves, in his book "Greek Gods and Heroes", tells us that "Aphrodite's throne was silver, inlaid with beryls and aquamarines, the back shaped like a scallop shell, the seat made of swan's down, and under her feet lay a golden mat -- an embroidery of golden bees, apples, and sparrows."
• The poets liked to paint an idealistic picture of Aphrodite, filled with beauty and happiness - The winds flee before her and the storm clouds; sweet flowers embroider the earth; the waves of the sea laugh; she moves in radiant light. Without her there is no joy nor loveliness anywhere.
• However, in the Iliad, the story of the Trojan War which praised brutal strength and power as heroism, she was shown as a soft and weak creature, whom even mortals could attack, and even wound in battle.
• Aphrodite wasn't always sweet. When it suited her, she could be rather malicious and treacherous, and her influence over men was often deadly. She could turn the heart of any man to longing and passion, and it was said that when she spoke, even Zeus listened...after all, the King of the Olympians was notorious for succumbing to Love's temptations.
• The lame god of the forge and metalworking, Hephaestus, was her husband, although he was the only god to be physically ugly. It was an arranged marriage - Some say that when Aphrodite first arrived on Mount Olympus, Zeus was struck by her beauty and radiance and he was certain that the other gods would fight for her affections. So he awarded Aphrodite to the most dependable and steady deity, Hephaestus.
• Needless to say, Hephaestus considered himself the luckiest god on Olympus and he did his utmost to please his gorgeous bride, continuously creating and designing new golden jewelry and furniture to please her. In addition to her irresistible looks Aphrodite had a magical golden girdle, made by Hephaestus, that when worn compelled anyone she wished to desire her.
• As if she weren't irresistible enough already!
• But Aphrodite considered it shameful and a disgrace to be the wife of such a "blue collar", manual-labor kind of god. Hephaestus was unattractive, sooty-faced, hard-working, crippled and not quite the "party animal" that his wife was, and she insisted on having a bedroom of her own, separate from his.
• The Three Fates assigned to Aphrodite one divine duty only - to make love. Tough work, but someone's got to do it! According to the writer Hesiod, however, one day Athena caught Aphrodite secretly at work on a loom, weaving some colorful cloth. Athena complained that Aphrodite had infringed on her own duties and threatened to abandon them altogether. Aphrodite proceeded to apologize profusely to Athena and has never done any work since.
• Opposite Aphrodite high on Mount Olympus sat the god of War, Ares, and the two had an ongoing notorious love affair that scandalized all of Olympus. Ares and Aphrodite were always holding hands and giggling in the corners of the palace, which made her husband Hephaestus very jealous.
• One night the two lovers stayed a little longer in bed and when Helios, the Sun God rose and saw them, he proceeded to tell Hephaestus. The jealous husband then fashioned an invisible bronze hunting net and captured the two lovebirds, but when he assembled the Olympians to render judgment, they wanted nothing to do with punishing them. Zeus even told Hephaestus that he was stupid to make such a golden girdle for his wife, and that he shouldn't be surprised that men could not resist her.
• Aphrodite had three children by Ares - Phobus, Deimus and Harmonia. She pretended these were her husband's and presented them as such to Hephaestus.
• Aphrodite wasn't very faithful to her husband, to say the least. Some of her other lovers included Dionysus, god of wine, the messenger god Hermes, and the King of the Sea, Poseidon. Two of her more famous mortal lovers were Adonis and Anchises (see below).
• Aphrodite "thanked" Hermes for not taking her husband's side when she was caught with Ares by spending the night with him. The result was Hermaphroditus, a double-sexed being.
• Equally grateful to Poseidon for siding with her, Aphrodite bore him two sons, Rhodus and Herophilus. But Hephaestus was so in love with his wife that he chose to overlook her numerous indiscretions. She was the goddess of Love, after all!
• Aphrodite's union with Dionysus produced Priapus, a horribly ugly child with enormous genitals. This revolting and obscene appearance was a punishment from Hera, wife to Zeus, who disapproved of Aphrodite's promiscuous ways.

•         Both Aphrodite and the Queen of the Underworld, Persephone, loved a handsome young mortal named Adonis. The two goddesses created such a stir that Zeus was asked to decide Adonis' fate. Zeus ruled that Adonis could spend one-third of the year with Aphrodite, one-third with Persephone, and the other third was his to do as he wished. Needless to say, Adonis chose to spend his own time with Aphrodite, until he was gored to death by a wild boar (some say it was Ares, the jilted lover, who killed Adonis in the form of a boar).

• A crimson flower sprang up where each drop of his blood had stained the earth. Every year the Greek maidens mourned for him and each spring they rejoiced when his flower, the blood-red anemone, the windflower, was seen blooming again.
• Anchises, King of the Dardanians, another one of her mortal lovers, bragged about his conquest of Aphrodite in a tavern while buzzed on cheap wine, causing Zeus to strike him with a thunderbolt for his impudence. Aphrodite intervened and deflected the bolt with her magic girdle into the feet of Anchises. He lived, but was so weakened by the shock that he never stood upright again. They had a famous son named Aeneas, who fought in the Trojan War and later moved on to Italy. The Romans believed many of their eminent families descended from Aeneas.
• Aphrodite set in motion the Trojan War. She promised the shepherd called Paris that Helen, the most beautiful mortal woman in the world, would be his if Paris chose Aphrodite over Athena and Hera in a beauty contest. Paris took the bait, picked Aphrodite, and when Helen ran away to Troy with Paris, the enraged Greeks gathered a mighty fleet and army and attacked the great city. Thus began the Trojan War.
• Aphrodite would often help young people in love: Atalanta, a virgin huntress, and swift as a deer, used to force her wooers to race before her, but if she caught them she would put them to death. If anybody survived she would marry him.
• A man named Melanion (also known as Hippomenes) had a crush on beautiful Atalanta, but was astute enough to know he had no chance to beat her in the race. After the young man beseeched the Goddess of Love for her help, Aphrodite gave Melanion three golden apples, which he scattered on the ground as he ran. Atalanta could not help but stop to pick up the exquisite and magical fruit, and was thus beaten in the race.
• But Aphrodite wasn't all lovey-dovey. She could be harsh to those who defied her. Because the Lemnian women did not honor her, she inflicted a foul smell on them and caused their husbands to consort with Thracian women. The Lemnian women, abandoned by their husbands, killed all the men on the island and established a society of women.
• When Aphrodite caught her lover Ares in bed with Eos (Dawn), she cursed his lover with a constant longing for young mortals. When the Sirens refused to yield their virginity to either mortals or gods, Aphrodite turned them into birds.
• Her power was immense, and her victims included Helen, Medea, Ariadne, Phaedra and Hippodameia, to name but a few.
• It's been written that Aphrodite's son was Eros (Love, Cupid), a very wicked and mischievous boy some say, lacking all manners. The brat spent his time in running all night from building to building, and with his love arrows breaking up respectable homes. Nobody was immune to his capricious nature, not even Zeus, in whom Eros often inspired sexual desires.
• Her attendants were the Horae (Hours, Seasons, who are worshipped as the wardens of the sky and of Olympus and are also said to attend to the Sun god, Helios) and the Three Graces (Aglaia, Euphrosyne and Thalia, known in Greek as the Charites); Flora and Zephyrus were ready to do her bidding as well.
• She was the patroness of gardens and gardeners as well as lovers. The myrtle was her tree; the rose, lily, hyacinth, crocus and narcissus were also sacred to her.
• Her animals were the swan, the dove, the sparrow and the dolphin.
• The principal place of her worship in Greece were the islands of Cythera and Cyprus.
• The presence of sanctuaries dedicated to Aphrodite on many islands suggests that she was a West Asian goddess who was brought to Greece by sea-traders.
• Aphrodite appears to have been originally identical with Astarte, the Phoenician goddess of fertility and reproduction, whom the Hebrews called Ashtoreth.
• The Romans called her Venus.