Aphrodite

(Venus)
Greek Goddess of Love, Beauty & Eternal Youth
Aphrodite is the Ancient Greek goddess of love, beauty. Aphrodite is one of
the Twelve Olympians. The most beautiful and refined of the goddesses,
Aphrodite was married to Hephaestus, god of fire and metalworking. Aphrodite
had numerous affairs with other beings, the most notable of these being Ares, the
god of war.
In Homer's Iliad, one of the Oceanids. In Hesiod's Theogony, however, Aphrodite
is stated to have risen from sea foam, formed at the spot where Uranos' genitals
landed, after Kronos castrated him and tossed them into the sea. Aphrodite's cult
was centered on the islands of Cythera and Cyprus, both of which were claimed to
be her birthplace. Her main festival was the Aphrodisia, which was celebrated
annually every midsummer. The Charites (minor goddesses of grace and splendor)
attended to Aphrodite and served as her handmaidens. Aphrodite's symbols
include the dolphin, myrtle, rose, dove, sparrow, swan and pearl, and the dove,
sparrow and swan were her sacred animals. The goddess Venus is her Roman
equivalent. Aphrodite was quite often described as very beautiful, and was used
as a point of comparison for female beauty-- but just as she was beautiful, she
just as smart and wise.
Aphrodite was very beautiful, which made Zeus afraid that she would be the
cause of fights between the other gods. He therefore gave Aphrodite
to Hephaestus. Hephaestus was happy to be married to Aphrodite and gave her
many pieces of jewelry which were gifts of love, like a belt that when ever she
wore it, it would make men be attracted to her. Aphrodite, however, was not
attracted to him. So she spent most of her time with Ares, but she also spent time
with Adonis and Anchises

Name
Aphrodite’s name is usually linked to the Ancient Greek word for “sea-
foam,” aphros, which fits nicely with the story of her birth. However, modern
scholars think that both Aphrodite and her name predate Ancient Greece and
that the story actually came because of the goddess’ name.
Portrayal and Symbolism · Phryne
If Apollo represented the ideal of the perfect male body to the
Greeks, Aphrodite was certainly his most appropriate female counterpart.
Beautiful and enchanting, she was frequently depicted nude, as a symmetrically
perfect maiden, infinitely desirable and as infinitely out of reach. She was
sometimes represented alongside Eros and with some of her major attributes and
symbols: a magical girdle and a shell, a dove or a sparrow, roses, and myrtles.
Once, during an important religious festival, the hetaera Phryne decided to swim
naked in the sea. The famous painter Apelles was so overwhelmed by the
exquisite sight that he drew the most famous (now lost) painting of the Ancient
World: “Aphrodite Rising from the Sea.” Many artists have tried recreating it
during the centuries past. The sculptor Praxiteles had a bit more luck than
Apelles: he also modeled his most celebrated sculpture of Aphrodite after Phryne,
but a copy of that sculpture has survived to this day. It is one of the first life-sized
female nudes in history. Plato says that when Aphrodite saw the sculpture,
"Alas!" said she, "where did Praxiteles see me naked?"

Epithets
Worshipped by basically everybody, Aphrodite, “the One who rises from the sea”
was appropriately called Pandemos, “of all the people.” However, she was also
called Ourania or “heavenly,” so some Greek moralists tried to make a distinction
between these two Aphrodites, claiming that Aphrodite Pandemos is the goddess
of sexual desire and Aphrodite Ourania, the one of “platonic love.” Now we know
that this was the same goddess, called by numerous other contradictory epithets
as well, which often describe the complex nature of love: “smile-loving,”
“merciful,” and the “One who postpones old age,” but also “unholy,” “the dark
one,” “the killer of men.”
Aphrodite’s Birth
Homer and Hesiod tell two different stories about the origin of Aphrodite.
According to the former, Aphrodite was the daughter of Zeus and the Titaness
Diona, thus making her a second-generation goddess, much like the
most Olympians.
However, Hesiod retells the much more famous myth. According to
him, Aphrodite was born when Uranus’ genitals fell into the sea after he was
castrated by his son Cronus. The goddess of love emerged from the waters on a
scallop shell, fully-grown, nude, and more beautiful than anything anyone had
ever seen before or since.
The Almighty Aphrodite: The Goddess Even Gods Can’t Resist
Aphrodite Married to Hephaestus
Aphrodite was so lovely that only the three virgin goddesses – Artemis, Athena,
and Hestia – were immune to her charms and power. Unsurprisingly, the second
she got on Olympus, she inadvertently wreaked havoc amongst the other gods,
each of whom instantly wanted to have her for himself. So as to prevent
this, Zeus hurriedly married her to Hephaestus, the ugliest among the Olympians.
Of course, this merely alleviated the problem: Aphrodite didn’t plan to remain
faithful.
Aphrodite and Ares
So, she started an affair with someone as destructive and as violent as
herself: Ares. Helios, however, saw them and informed Hephaestus, after which
the cuckolded god made sure to devise a fine bronze net, which ensnared the
couple the next time they lay together in bed. To add insult to
injury, Hephaestus called upon all the other gods to laugh at the adulterers and
freed them only after Poseidon agreed to pay for their release.
Aphrodite and Poseidon
Poor Hephaestus! He couldn’t have known that
when Poseidon saw Aphrodite naked, he fell in love with her all over again. He
must have found out later, since Aphrodite gave Poseidon at least one
daughter, Rhode. And she didn’t give up on Ares either! In fact, after the bronze
net scandal, she bore the god of war as many as eight
children: Deimos, Phobos, Harmonia, Adrestia and the four Erotes (Eros, Anteros,
Pothos, and Himeros).
Aphrodite and Hermes
Hermes didn’t have many consorts, but he did have Aphrodite at least once, as
the very name of their offspring, Hermaphrodites, suggests. And if we take into
account that Priapus is usually considered a son of Dionysus and Aphrodite, it
seems that only Zeus and Hades managed to never fall for the goddess of love.
But the second one didn’t even live on Olympus, and the former may have been
her father.
Aphrodite Among the Mortals
When she wasn’t busy making other people fall in love, Aphrodite had some time
to fall in love herself.
Adonis
Once, she took a baby boy she had found beside a myrrh tree to the Underworld
and asked Persephone to take good care of him. However, when she went to visit
him after many years, she instantly fell in love with the now unusually handsome
mortal. So, he asked to have Adonis – for that was the boy’s name –
back. Persephone wouldn’t allow this. Zeus settled the quarrel by dividing Adonis’
time between the two goddesses. However, Adonis preferred Aphrodite and,
when the time came, he didn’t want to go back to the
Underworld. Persephone sent a wild boar to kill him, and Adonis bled to death
in Aphrodite’s arms. Anemones sprang out of the tears of Aphrodite while she
was mourning the death of her lover. The couple had two children: Beroe and
Golgos.
Anchises
Another time, Aphrodite fell for a Trojan prince called Anchises. Pretending to be
a princess herself, she seduced him and slept with him. Only afterward she
revealed herself, promising him a noble son and warning him to keep the affair to
himself. Anchises wasn’t able to, so he was struck by Zeus’ thunderbolt which
blinded him. And he wasn’t able to see his son, Aeneas, found the
mighty Roman Empire.
Paris
Paris was the third and final mortal who was blessed with
seeing Aphrodite naked. This happened when he was tasked with judging who of
the three goddesses – Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena – was the
fairest. Aphrodite promised Paris the most beautiful girl in the world if he chose
her, so, naturally, he did. Aphrodite made sure that he gets Helen, the Spartan
queen, an event which triggered the bloody decade-long Trojan War.
Aphrodite, the Unforgiving: Hippolytus, Eos, Diomedes, Psyche
Few dared to resist the power of Aphrodite, and she had mercy for none of
them. Hippolytus preferred Artemis to her and vowed to eternal
innocence. Aphrodite made his stepmother Phaedra fall in love with him, which
resulted in the death of both her and Hippolytus.
After Aphrodite found out that Eos had slept with Ares, she cursed her to be
perpetually – and unhappily – in love. Diomedes wounded the goddess during
the Trojan War, and suddenly his wife Aegiale started sleeping around with his
enemies.
Psyche would have gone through an even worse ordeal, but, fortunately for
her, Eros – Aphrodite’s avenger – shot himself instead of her and fell in love
with Psyche instead.