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Aphrodite
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Aphrodite
Aphrodite (Greek: Ἀφροδίτη; Latin: Venus) (IPA: English: /ˌęfɹəˈdaɪti/,
Ancient Greek: /apʰɾo'di:tɛ:/, Modern Greek: /afɾo'šiti/) is the classical
Greek goddess of love, lust, and beauty. She was also called Kypris and
Cytherea after the two places which claimed her birth. Her Roman equivalent
is the goddess Venus. Myrtle, dove, sparrow, and swan are sacred to her.
Origins
The Greek Goddess Aphrodite has numerous equivalents: Inanna (Sumerian
counterpart), Ishtar (Babylon), Astarte (Syro-Palestinian), Turan
(Etruscan), Nepthys (Egyptian) and Venus (Roman). She has parallels to
Indo-European dawn goddesses such as Ushas or Aurora.
The name Άφροδίτη was connected by popular etymology with Άφρός (Aphros)
"foam", interpreting it as "risen from the foam" and embodying it in an
etiological myth that was already known to Hesiod[1]. It has reflexes in
Messapic and Etruscan (whence April), which were probably borrowed from
Greek. Though Herodotus was aware of the Phoenician origins of Aphrodite,[2]
linguistic attempts to derive the name Aphrodite from Semitic Atoret, via
undocumented Hittite transmission, remain inconclusive. A suggestion by
Hammarström[3], rejected by Hjalmar Frisk, connects the name with πρύτανις,
a loan into Greek from a cognate of Etruscan (e)pruni, "lord" or similar. An
etymology from Indo-European abhor "very" + dhei "to shine" is offered by
Mallory and Adams.[4].
Worship
The epithet Aphrodite Acidalia was occasionally added to her name, after the
spring she used to bathe in, located in Boeotia (Virgil I, 720). She was
also called Kypris or Cytherea after her alleged birth-places in Cyprus and
Cythera, respectively. The island of Cythera was a center of her cult. She
was associated with Hesperia and frequently accompanied by the Oreads,
nymphs of the mountains.
Aphrodite had a festival of her own, the Aphrodisiac (also referred to as
Aphrodisia), which was celebrated all over Greece but particularly in Athens
and Corinth. In Corinth, intercourse with her priestesses was considered a
method of worshiping Aphrodite.
Aphrodite was associated with, and often depicted with the sea, dolphins,
doves, swans, pomegranates, apples, myrtle, rose and lime trees, clams, and
pearls
Aphrodite Ourania and Aphrodite Pandemos
By the late 5th century BCE, philosophers might separate Aphrodite into two
separate goddesses, not individuated in cult: Aphrodite Urania, born from
the foam after Cronus castrated Uranus, and Aphrodite Pandemos, the common
Aphrodite "of all the folk", born from Zeus and Dione.[5] Among the
neo-Platonists and eventually their Christian interpreters, Aphrodite Urania
figures as the celestial Aphrodite, representing the love of body and soul,
while Aphrodite Pandemos is associated with mere physical love.
Thus, according to Plato[6] Aphrodite is two goddesses, one older the other
younger. The older, Urania, is the daugher of Uranus; the younger is named
Pandemos, and is the daughter of Zeus and Dione. Pandemos is the common
Aphrodite. The speech of Pausanias distinguishes two manifestations of
Aphrodite, represented by the two stories: Aphrodite Ourania ("heavenly"
Aphrodite), and Aphrodite Pandemos ("Common" Aphrodite).
Ritual prostitution
A universal aspect of the cult of Aphrodite and her precedents that Thomas
Bulfinch's much-reprinted The Age of Fable; or Stories of Gods and Heroes
(1855 etc.) elided[7] is the practice of ritual prostitution in her shrines
and temples. The euphemism in Greek is hierodule, "sacred servant". The
practice was an inherent part of the rituals owed to Aphrodite's Near
Eastern forebears, Sumerian Inanna and Akkadian Ishtar, whose temple harlots
were the "women of Ishtar", ishtaritum.[8] The practice has been documented
in Babylon, Syria and Palestine, in Phoenician cities and the Tyrian colony
Carthage, and for Hellenic Aphrodite in Cyprus, the center of her cult,
Cythera, Corinth and in Sicily (Marcovich 1996:49). Aphrodite is everywhere
the patroness of the hetaira and courtesan. In Ionia on the coast of Asia
Minor, hierodules served in the temple of Artemis.
Birth, rising from the sea
"Foam-arisen" Aphrodite was born of the sea foam near Paphos, Cyprus after
Cronus cut off Uranus' testicles and threw them behind him into the sea.
Hesiod's Theogony described that the genitals "were carried over the sea a
long time, and white foam arose from the immortal flesh; with it a girl
grew" to become Aphrodite. This fully grown up myth of Venus (the Roman name
for Aphrodite), Venus Anadyomene[9] ("Venus Rising From the Sea") was one of
the iconic representations of Aphrodite, made famous in a much-admired
painting by Apelles, now lost, but described in Pliny the Elder Natural
History.
Thus Aphrodite is of an older generation than Zeus. Iliad (Book V) expresses
another version of her origin, by which she was considered a daughter of
Dione, who was the original oracular goddess ("Dione" being simply "the
goddess, the feminine form of Δķος, "Dios", the genitive of Zeus) at Dodona.
In Homer, Aphrodite, venturing into battle to protect her son, Aeneas, is
wounded by Diomedes and returns to her mother, to sink down at her knee and
be comforted. "Dione" seems to be an equivalent of Rhea, the Earth Mother,
whom Homer has relocated to Olympus, and refers back to a hypothesized
original Proto-Indo-European pantheon, with the chief male god (Di-)
represented by the sky and thunder, and the chief female god (feminine form
of Di-) represented as the earth or fertile soil. Aphrodite herself was
sometimes referred to as "Dione". Once the worship of Zeus had usurped the
oak-grove oracle at Dodona, some poets made him out to be the father of
Aphrodite.
Aphrodite's chief center of worship remained at Paphos, on the south-western
coast of Cyprus, where the goddess of desire had long been worshipped as
Ishtar and Ashtaroth. It is said that she first tentatively came ashore at
Cytherea, a stopping place for trade and culture between Crete and the
Peloponesus. Thus perhaps we have hints of the track of Aphrodite's original
cult from the Levant to mainland Greece.
Alternatively, Aphrodite was a daughter of Thalassa (for she was born of the
Sea) and Zeus.
Adulthood
Aphrodite had no childhood: in every image and each reference she is born
adult, nubile, and infinitely desirable. Aphrodite, in many of the late
anecdotal myths involving her, is characterized as vain, ill-tempered and
easily offended. Though she is one of the few gods of the Greek Pantheon to
be actually married, she is frequently unfaithful to her husband. Hephaestus
is one of the most even-tempered of the Hellenic deities; in the narrative
embedded in the Odyssey Aphrodite seems to prefer Ares, the volatile god of
war. In Homer's Iliad she surges into battle to save her son, Aeneas, but
abandons Ares (in fact, drops him as she flies through the air) when she
herself is hurt (Ares does much the same thing). And she is the original
cause of the Trojan War itself: not only did she start the whole affair by
offering Helen of Sparta to Paris, but the abduction was accomplished when
Paris, seeing Helen for the first time, was inflamed with desire to have
herwhich is Aphrodite's realm. Her domain may involve love, but it does not
involve romance; rather, it tends more towards lust, the human irrational
longing.
Marriage with Hephaestus
Due to her immense beauty Zeus was frightened that she would be the cause of
violence between the other gods. He married her off to Hephaestus, the dour,
humorless god of smithing. In another version of this story, Hera,
Hephaestus' mother, had cast him off Olympus; deeming him ugly and deformed.
His revenge was to trap her in a magic throne, and then to demand
Aphrodite's hand in return for Hera's realease. Hephaestus was overjoyed at
being married to the goddess of beauty and forged her beautiful jewelry,
including the cestus, a girdle that made her even more irresistible to men.
Her unhappiness with her marriage caused Aphrodite to seek out companionship
from others, most frequently Ares, but also Adonis, Anchises and more.
Hephaestus once cleverly caught Ares and Aphrodite in bed with finely
wrought chains, and brought all the other Olympian gods together to mock the
pair (however, the "goddesses stayed at home, all of them for shame.")
Hephaestus would not free them until Poseidon promised Hephaestus that Ares
would pay reparations, but both escaped as soon as the chains were lifted
and their promise was not kept.
Aphrodite and Psyche
Aphrodite was jealous of the beauty of a mortal woman named Psyche. She
asked Eros to use his golden arrows to cause Psyche to fall in love with the
ugliest man on earth. Eros agreed but then fell in love with Psyche on his
own, or by accidentally pricking himself with a golden arrow. Meanwhile,
Psyche's parents were anxious that their daughter remained unmarried. They
consulted an oracle who told them she was destined for no mortal lover, but
a monster that lived on top of a particular mountain. Psyche was resigned to
her fate and climbed to the top of the mountain. There, Zephyrus, the west
wind, gently floated her downwards. She entered a cave on the appointed
mountain, surprised to find it full of jewelry and finery. Eros visited her
every night in the cave and they made passionate love; he demanded only that
she never light any lamps because he did not want her to know who he was
(having wings made him distinctive). Her two sisters, jealous of Psyche,
convinced her to do so one night and she lit a lamp, recognizing him
instantly. A drop of hot lamp oil fell on Eros' chest and he awoke, then
fled.
When Psyche told her two jealous elder sisters what had happened, they
rejoiced secretly and each separately walked to the top of the mountain and
did as Psyche described her entry to the cave, hoping Eros would pick them
instead. Zephyrus did not pick them and they fell to their deaths at the
base of the mountain.
Psyche searched for her lover across much of Greece, finally stumbling into
a temple to Demeter, where the floor was covered with piles of mixed grains.
She started sorting the grains into organized piles and, when she finished,
Demeter spoke to her, telling her that the best way to find Eros was to find
his mother, Aphrodite, and earn her blessing. Psyche found a temple to
Aphrodite and entered it. Aphrodite assigned her a similar task to Demeter's
temple, but gave her an impossible deadline to finish it by. Eros
intervened, for he still loved her, and caused some ants to organize the
grains for her. Aphrodite was outraged at her success and told her to go to
a field where golden sheep grazed and get some golden wool. Psyche went to
the field and saw the sheep but was stopped by a river-god, whose river she
had to cross to enter the field. He told her the sheep were mean and vicious
and would kill her, but if she waited until noontime, the sheep would go the
shade on the other side of the field and sleep; she could pick the wool that
stuck to the branches and bark of the trees. Psyche did so and Aphrodite was
even more outraged at her survival and success. Finally, Aphrodite claimed
that the stress of caring for her son, depressed and ill as a result of
Psyche's unfaithfulness, had caused her to lose some of her beauty. Psyche
was to go to Hades and ask Persephone, the queen of the underworld, for a
bit of her beauty in a black box that Aphrodite gave to Psyche. Psyche
walked to a tower, deciding that the quickest way to the underworld would be
to die. A voice stopped her at the last moment and told her a route that
would allow her to enter and return still living, as well as telling her how
to pass Cerberus, Charon and the other dangers of the route. She pacified
Cerberus, the three-headed dog, with a sweet honey-cake and paid Charon an
obolus to take her into Hades. On the way there, she saw hands reaching out
of the water. A voice told her to toss a honey cake to them. Once there,
Persephone said she would be glad to do Aphrodite a favor. She once more
paid Charon, threw the cake out to the hands, and gave one to Cerberus.
Psyche left the underworld and decided to open the box and take a little bit
of the beauty for herself, thinking that if she did so Eros would surely
love her. Inside was a "Stygian sleep" which overtook her. Eros, who had
forgiven her, flew to her body and wiped the sleep from her eyes, then
begged Zeus and Aphrodite for their consent to his wedding of Psyche. They
agreed and Zeus made her immortal. Aphrodite danced at the wedding of Eros
and Psyche and their subsequent child was named Pleasure, or (in the Roman
mythology) Volupta.
Adonis
Aphrodite was Adonis' lover and had a part in his birth. She urged Myrrha or
Smyrna to commit incest with her father, Theias, the King of Assyria.
Another version says Myrrha's father was Cinyras of Cyprus. Myrrha's nurse
helped with the scheme. When Theias discovered this, he flew into a rage,
chasing his daughter with a knife. The gods turned her into a myrrh tree and
Adonis eventually sprang from this tree. Alternatively, Aphrodite turned her
into a tree and Adonis was born when Theias shot the tree with an arrow or
when a boar used its tusks to tear the tree's bark off.
Once Adonis was born, Aphrodite took him under her wing, seducing him with
the help of Helene, her friend, and was entranced by his unearthly beauty.
She gave him to Persephone to watch over, but Persephone was also amazed at
his beauty and refused to give him back. The argument between the two
goddesses was settled either by Zeus or Calliope, with Adonis spending four
months with Aphrodite, four months with Persephone and four months of the
years on his own.
Adonis was eventually killed by a jealous Ares. Aphrodite was warned of this
jealousy and was told that Adonis would be killed by a boar that Ares
transformed into. She tried to persuade Adonis to stay with her at all
times, but his love of hunting was his downfall. While Adonis was hunting,
Ares found him and gored him to death. Aphrodite arrived just in time to
hear his last breath. She sprinkled nectar on his wounds, from which
blood-red anemones sprang forth. It is also said that Aphrodite bore a
daughter to Adonis, Beroe.
The Judgement of Paris
The gods and goddesses as well as various mortals were invited to the
marriage of Peleus and Thetis (the eventual parents of Achilles). Only the
goddess Eris (Discord) was not invited, but she arrived with a golden apple
inscribed with the words "to the fairest," which she threw among the
goddesses. Aphrodite, Hera and Athena all claimed to be the fairest, and
thus the rightful owner of the apple. The goddesses chose to place the
matter before Zeus, who later put the choice into the hands of Paris. Hera
tried to bribe Paris with Asia Minor, while Athena offered wisdom, fame and
glory in battle, but Aphrodite whispered to Paris that if he were to choose
her as the fairest he would have the most beautiful mortal woman in the
world as a wife, and he accordingly chose her. This woman was Helen. The
other goddesses were enraged by this and through Helen's abduction by Paris
they brought about the Trojan War.
Pygmalion and Galatea
Pygmalion was a sculptor who had never found a woman worthy of his love.
Aphrodite took pity on him and decided to show him the wonders of love. One
day, Pygmalion was inspired by a dream of Aphrodite to make a woman out of
ivory resembling her image, and he called her Galatea. He fell in love with
the statue and decided he could not live without her. He prayed to
Aphrodite, who carried out the final phase of her plan and brought the
exquisite sculpture to life. Pygmalion loved Galatea and they were soon
married.
Another version of this myth tells that the women of the village in which
Pygmalion lived grew angry that he had not married. They all asked Aphrodite
to force him to marry. Aphrodite accepted and went that very night to
Pygmalion, and asked him to pick a woman to marry. She told him that if he
did not pick one, she would do so for him. Not wanting to be married, he
begged her for more time, asking that he be allowed to make a sculpture of
Aphrodite before he had to choose his bride. Flattered, she accepted.
Pygmalion spent a lot of time making small clay sculptures of the Goddess,
claiming it was needed so he could pick the right pose. As he started making
the actual sculpture he was shocked to discover he actually wanted to
finish, even though he knew he would have to marry someone when he finished.
The reason he wanted to finish it was that he had fallen in love with the
sculpture. The more he worked on it, the more it changed, until it no longer
resembled Aphrodite at all.
At the very moment Pygmalion stepped away from the finished sculpture
Aphrodite appeared and told him to choose his bride. Pygmalion chose the
statue. Aphrodite told him that could not be, and asked him again to pick a
bride. Pygmalion put his arms around the statue, and asked Aphrodite to turn
him into a statue so he could be with her. Aphrodite took pity on him and
brought the statue to life instead.
Other stories
In one version of the story of Hippolytus, Aphrodite was the catalyst for
his death. He scorned the worship of Aphrodite for Artemis and, in revenge,
Aphrodite caused his step-mother, Phaedra, to fall in love with him, knowing
Hippolytus would reject her. In the most popular version of the story, the
play Hippolytus by Euripides, Phaedra seeks revenge against Hippolytus by
killing herself and, in her suicide note, telling Theseus, her husband and
Hippolytus' father, that Hippolytus had raped her. Hippolytus was oath-bound
not to mention Phaedra's love for him and nobly refused to defend himself
despite the consequences. Theseus then cursed his son, a curse that Poseidon
was bound to fulfil and so Hipploytus was laid low by a bull from the sea
that caused his chariot-team to panic and wreck his vehicle. This is,
intersestingly enough not quite how Aphrodite envisaged his death in the
play, as in the prologue she says she expects Hippolytus to submit to lust
and other with Phaedra and for Theseus to catch the pair in the act.
Hippolytus forgives his father before he dies and Artemis reveals the truth
to Theseus before vowing to kill one Aphrodite loves (Adonis) for revenge.
Glaucus of Corinth angered Aphrodite and she made her horses angry during
the funeral games of King Pelias. They tore him apart. His ghost supposedly
frightened horses during the Isthmian Games.
Aphrodite was often accompanied by the Charites.
Aphrodite was one of the goddesses to be mocked by Momus, which resulted in
his expulsion from Olympus.
In book III of Homer's Iliad, Aphrodite saves Paris, when he is about to be
killed by Menelaos.
Aphrodite was very protective of her son, Aeneas, who fought in the Trojan
War. Diomedes almost killed Aeneas in battle but Aphrodite saved him.
Diomedes wounded Aphrodite and she dropped her son, fleeing to Mt. Olympus.
Aeneas was then enveloped in a cloud by Apollo, who took him to Pergamos, a
sacred spot in Troy. Artemis healed Aeneas there.
She turned Abas to stone for his pride.
She turned Anaxarete to stone for reacting so dispassionately to Iphis'
pleas to love him, even after his suicide.
Aphrodite helps Hippomenes to win a footrace against Atalanta to win
Atalanta's hand in marriage, giving him three golden apples to distract her
with. However, when the couple fails to thank Aphrodite, she has them turned
into bears.
Consorts and children
* Deities
o Ares
+ Anteros (requited love)
+ Eros (Love)
+ Harmonia (Harmony)
+ Himeros(Lust)
+ Deimos (Dread)
+ Phobos (Fright)
o Dionysus
+ Charites
# Aglaea
# Euphrosyne
+ Hymenaios
+ Priapus
*
o Hephaestus
o Hermes
+ Eros (in one tradition)
+ Eunomia
+ Hermaphroditus
+ Peitho
+ Priapus (in some traditions)
+ Rhodos
+ Tyche
* Mortals
o Adonis
o Anchises
+ Aeneas
o Butes
+ Eryx
Surnames and titles
* Acidalia, of the Acidalia spring
* Anadyomene (Ἀναδυομένη), the emerging as in Aphrodite Anadyomene, a
painting by Apelles
* Cytherea (Κυθήρεια), of Cythera
* Despina (Δέσποινα), the mistress
* Kypris (Κύπρις), of Cyprus
* Hetaira (Ἑταίρα), the courtesan
* Aphrodite Porne (Πόρνη), the prostitute, Goddess of lust[10]
* Kalligloutos (Καλλίγλουτος), of the beautiful thighs
* Morpho (Μορφώ), the shapely, she of the various shapes
* Ambologera, she who postpones old age
* Aphrodite en kepois (Ἀφροδίτη ἐν Κήποις), of the gardens
* Genetyllis, of motherhood
* Epitragidia, she upon the buck (young male goat)
* Enoplios (Ἐνόπλιος), the armed one
* Melaina (Μέλαινα), the black one (similar to Epitymbidia and Melainis)
* Melainis (Μελαινίς), the young black one (similar to Epitymbidia and
Melaina)
* Skotia (Σκοτία), the dark
* Anosia (Ἀνόσια), the unholy
* Androphonos (Ἀνδροφόνος), the killer of men
* Tymborychos (Τυμβωρύχος), the gravedigger
* Epitymbidia, she upon the graves (similar to Melaina and Melainis)
* Basilis (Βασιλίς), the queen
* Persephaessa (Περσεφάεσσα), the queen of the underworld
* Praxis (Πράξις), of (sexual) action
* Kallipygos (Καλλίπυγος), of the beautiful buttocks
* Pandemos (Πάνδημος), common to all, a form worshipped near the agora in
Athens
* Urania (Οὐράνια), the heavenly one
Aphrodite in popular culture
* Aphrodite was used as an archetype for the character Santa by contemporary
artist Tori Amos in her 2007 album American Doll Posse. Amos created five
personalities for the album, each representing a different Greek god or
goddess.
* Tori Amos makes references to women such as Marilyn Monroe who have "channeled
Venus" in their very being.
* Aphrodite appeared as a recurring character in the television series Xena:
Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. She was played by
actress Alexandra Tydings.
* In the computer game Zeus: Master of Olympus, Aphrodite is one of the gods
to whom the player can build a temple. When applied to for help, she makes
the city too appealing for anyone to wish to leave, thus preventing
shortages of labor force. Her presence in the city will protect it from
attacks by Dionysus, Hephaestus, Hermes, or Ares.
* C.S. Lewis wrote a novel called 'Til We Have Faces: A Myth Retold which
tells an adapted version of the Aphrodite and Psyche myth, told from
Aphrodite's (who is renamed in the book) perspective.
Notes
1. ^ Hesiod, Theogony, 176ff.
2. ^ Herodotus, Histories, I.105 and .131. The traditional resistance of
nineteenth-century Hellenists to Eastern sources of Greek culture is
expressed by A. Enmann, Kypros und der Ursprung des Aphroditekultes (1881),
among others; the series of waves of resistance in favour of a "pure,
classical Greece in splendid isolation" (Burkert) is discussed by Walter
Burkert in his introduction to The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern
Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age (1992), especially in pp
1-6.
3. ^ Glotta 11, 21 5f.
4. ^ Mallory, J.P. and D.Q. Adams. Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture.
London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishing, 1997.
5. ^ E.g. Plato, Symposium 181a-d.
6. ^ Plato, Symposium 180e.
7. ^ "Our work is not for the learned, nor for the theologian, nor for the
philosopher, but for the reader of English literature, of either sex, who
wishes to comprehend the allusions so frequently made by public speakers,
lecturers, essayists, and poets, and those which occur in polite
conversation." Bulfinch's obituary in the Boston Evening Standard noted that
the contents were "expurgated of all that would be offensive".
8. ^ Miroslav Marcovich, "From Ishtar to Aphrodite" Journal of Aesthetic
Education 30.2, Special Issue: Distinguished Humanities Lectures II (Summer
1996) p 49.
9. ^ Αναδυόμενη (Anadyómenē), "rising up".
10. ^ David R. Kinsley, The Goddesses' Mirror: Visions of the Divine from
East and West p.207, 1989, SUNY Press, ISBN 0887068359
References
* C. Kerényi (1951). The Gods of the Greeks.
* Walter Burkert (1985). Greek Religion (Harvard University Press),
especially sectionIII.2.7 "Aphrodite"
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