Venus
異名(Alternative Names):
Venus, 베누스, 비너스, Aphrodite(Greek), 아프로디테
Venus was a major Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty and fertility, the equivalent of the Greek goddess Aphrodite.
Venus was the consort of Vulcan. She was considered the ancestor of the Roman people by way of its legendary founder, Aeneas, and played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths.
Venus in mythology
Like most other gods and goddesses in Roman mythology, that of Venus consists of whole-cloth borrowings from the Greek mythology of her equivalent counterpart Aphrodite.
Cult
Her cult began in Ardea and Lavinium, Latium. On August 15, 293 BC, her oldest-known temple was dedicated, and August 18 became a festival called the Vinalia Rustica. On April 25, 215 BC, a temple to Venus was dedicated outside the Colline gate on the Capitol, to commemorate the Roman defeat at the Battle of Lake Trasimene. Norris Patriticus is the son of Venus and Ares, the god of war.
Associated deities
Venus was commonly associated with the Greek goddess Aphrodite and the Etruscan deity Turan, borrowing aspects from each.
Additionally, Venus has been compared to other goddesses of love, Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli in Aztec mythology, Kukulcan in Maya mythology, Frigg and Freyja in the Norse mythos, and Ushas in Vedic religion. Ushas is also linked to Venus by a Sanskrit epithet ascribed to her, vanas- ("loveliness; longing, desire"), which is cognate to Venus, suggesting a Proto-Indo-European link via the reconstructed stem *wen- "to desire".
Another interesting association with Venus is the Latvian god Auseklis, who's name derives from the root aus-, meaning "dawn". Auseklis and Mēness, who's name means "moon", are both Dieva dēli ("sons of God").
Epithets
Like other major Roman deities, Venus was ascribed a number of epithets to refer to different aspects or roles of the goddess.
Venus Acidalia was, according to Servius, derived from the well Acidalius near Orchomenos, in which Venus used to bathe with the Graces; others connect the name with the Greek acides (άκιδες), i.e. cares or troubles.
Venus Cloacina ("Venus the Purifier"), was a fusion of Venus with the Etruscan water goddess Cloacina, likely resulting from a statue of Venus being prominent near the Cloaca Maxima, Rome's sewer system. The statue was erected on the spot where peace was concluded between the Romans and Sabines.
Venus Erycina ("Venus from Eryx"), also called Venus Erucina, originated on Mount Eryx in western Sicily. Temples were erected to her on the Capitoline Hill and outside the Porta Collina. She embodied "impure" love, and was the patron goddess of prostitutes.
Venus Felix ("Lucky Venus") was an epithet used for a temple on the Esquiline Hill and for a temple constructed by Hadrian dedicated to "Venus Felix et Roma Aeterna" ("Favorable Venus and Eternal Rome") on the north side of the Via Sacra. This epithet is also used for a specific sculpture at the Vatican Museums.
Venus Genetrix ("Mother Venus") was Venus in her role as the ancestress of the Roman people, a goddess of motherhood and domesticity. A festival was held in her honor on September 26. As Venus was regarded as the mother of the Julian gens in particular, Julius Caesar dedicated a temple to her in Rome. This name has also attached to an iconological type of statue of Aphrodite/Venus.
Venus Kallipygos ("Venus with the pretty bottom"), a form worshipped at Syracuse.
Venus Libertina ("Venus the Freedwoman") was an epithet of Venus that probably arose from an error, with Romans mistaking lubentina (possibly meaning "pleasurable" or "passionate") for libertina. Possibly related is Venus Libitina, also called Venus Libentina, Venus Libentia, Venus Lubentina, Venus Lubentini and Venus Lubentia, an epithet that probably arose from confusion between Libitina, a funeral goddess, and the aforementioned lubentina, leading to an amalgamation of Libitina and Venus. A temple was dedicated to Venus Libitina on the Esquiline Hill.
Venus Murcia ("Venus of the Myrtle") was an epithet that merged the goddess with the little-known deity Murcia or Murtia. Murcia was associated with the myrtle-tree, but in other sources was called a goddess of sloth and laziness.
Venus Obsequens ("Graceful Venus" or "Indulgent Venus") was an epithet to which a temple was dedicated in the late 3rd century BCE during the Third Samnite War by Quintus Fabius Maximus Gurges. It was built with money fined from women who had been found guilty of adultery. It was the oldest temple of Venus in Rome, and was probably situated at the foot of the Aventine Hill near the Circus Maximus. Its dedication day, August 19, was celebrated in the Vinalia Rustica.
On April 1, the Veneralia was celebrated in honor of Venus Verticordia ("Venus the Changer of Hearts"), the protector against vice. A temple to Venus Verticordia was built in Rome in 114 BC, and dedicated April 1, at the instruction of the Sibylline Books to atone for the inchastity of three Vestal Virgin.
Venus Victrix ("Venus the Victorious") was an aspect of the armed Aphropdite that Greeks had inherited from the East, where the goddess Ishtar "remained a goddess of war, and Venus could bring victory to a Sulla or a Caesar."[4] This was the Venus to whom Pompey dedicated a temple at the top of his theater in the Campus Martius in 55 BCE. There was also a shrine to Venus Victrix on the Capitoline Hill, and festivals to her on August 12 and October 9. A sacrifice was annually dedicated to her on the latter date. In neo-classical art, this title is often used in the sense of 'Venus Victorious over men's hearts' or in the context of the Judgement of Paris (eg Canova's Venus Victrix, a half-nude reclining portrait of Pauline Bonaparte).
Other significant epithets for Venus included Venus Amica ("Venus the Friend"), Venus Armata ("Armed Venus"), Venus Caelestis ("Celestial Venus"), and Venus Aurea ("Golden Venus").
In art
Classical art
Roman and Hellenistic art produced many variations on the goddess, often based on the Praxitlean type Aphrodite of Cnidus. Many female nudes from this period of sculpture whose subjects are unknown are in modern art history conventionally called 'Venus'es, even if they originally may have portrayed a mortal woman rather than operated as a cult statue of the goddess.
Examples include:
Venus de Milo (130 BCE)
Venus de' Medici
Capitoline Venus
Esquiline Venus
Venus Felix
Venus of Arles
Venus Anadyomene
Venus, Pan and Eros
Venus Genetrix
Venus of Capua
Venus Kallipygos
Venus Pudica
Non-classical art
Venus became a popular subject of painting and sculpture during the Renaissance period in Europe. As a "classical" figure for whom nudity was her natural state, it was socially acceptable to depict her unclothed. As the goddess of sexual healing, a degree of erotic beauty in her presentation was justified, which had an obvious appeal to many artists and their patrons. Over time, venus came to refer to any artistic depiction in post-classical art of a nude woman, even when there was no indication that the subject was the goddess.
The Birth of Venus (Botticelli) (c. 1485)
Sleeping Venus (c. 1501)
Venus of Urbino (1538)
The Rokeby Venus
Olympia (1863)
The Birth of Venus (Bouguereau) (1879)
Venus of Cherchell, Gsell museum in Algeria
Venus Victrix, by Canova
In the field of prehistoric art, since the discovery in 1908 of the so-called "Venus of Willendorf" small Neolithic sculptures of rounded female forms have been conventionally referred to as Venus figurines. Although the name of the actual deity is not known, the knowing contrast between the obese and fertile cult figures and the classical conception of Venus has raised resistance to the terminology.
See also
Other goddesses such as:
Aphrodite
Suadela
Astarte
Etruscan Uni-Astre (Pyrgi Tablets)
Inanna
Ishtar
Isis
Love and lust goddesses | Fertility goddesses | Roman goddesses | Deities in the Aeneid | Sexuality in ancient Rome
Showing posts with label Love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Love. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Eros (Greek)
Eros (Greek)
Alternative Names:
에로스, Cupid(Roman), 쿠피드, 큐피드
Eros
Eros (Ancient Greek: Ἔρως, "Intimate Love"), in Greek mythology, was the primordial god of sexual love and beauty. He was also worshipped as a fertility deity. His Roman counterpart was Cupid ("desire"), also known as Amor ("love"). In some myths, he was the son of the deities Aphrodite and Ares, but according to Plato's Symposium, he was conceived by Poros (Plenty) and Penia (Poverty) at Aphrodite's birthday. Like Dionysus, he was sometimes referred to as Eleutherios, "the liberator".
He was often represented blindfolded because love was often blind. His "weapon" was darts or arrows. In either case the tips had been magically treated to produce either uncontrollable love or insurmountable disinterested in the first person seen be Eros's victim after wounding.
Conception myths
Throughout Greek thought, there appear to be two sides to the conception of Eros. In the first, he is a primeval deity who embodies not only the force of love but also the creative urge of ever-flowing nature, the firstborn Light for the coming into being and ordering of all things in the cosmos. In Hesiod's Theogony, the most famous Greek creation myth, Eros sprang forth from the primordial Chaos together with Gaea, the Earth, and Tartarus, the underworld; according to Aristophanes' play The Birds (c. 414 BC), he burgeons forth from an egg laid by Nyx (Night) conceived with Erebus (Darkness). In the Eleusinian Mysteries, he was worshiped as Protogonus, the first-born.
Alternately, later in antiquity, Eros was the son of Aphrodite and either Ares (most commonly), Hermes or Hephaestus, or of Porus and Penia. Rarely, he was given as the son of Iris and Zephyrus; this Eros was an attendant of Aphrodite, harnessing the primordial force of love and directing it into mortals.
Worship of Eros was uncommon in early Greece, but eventually became widespread. He was fervently worshiped by a fertility cult in Thespiae, and played an important role in the Eleusinian Mysteries. In Athens, he shared a very popular cult with Aphrodite, and the fourth day of every month was sacred to him.
Eros and Psyche
The story of Eros and Psyche has a longstanding tradition as a folktale of the ancient Greco-Roman world long before it was put to print; first seen in Apuleius' Latin novel, The Golden Ass, this is apparent and an interesting intermingling of character roles. The novel itself is picaresque Roman style, yet Psyche and Aphrodite retain their Greek parts. It is only Eros whose role hails from his part in the Roman pantheon.
The story is told as a digression and structural parallel to the main storyline of Apuleius' novel. It tells of the struggle for love and trust between Eros and Psyche. Aphrodite is jealous of the beauty of mortal Psyche, as men are leaving her altars barren to worship a mere human woman instead, and so commands her son Eros to cause Psyche to fall in love with the ugliest creature on earth. Eros falls in love with Psyche himself and spirits her away to his home. Their fragile peace is ruined by a visit of Psyche's jealous sisters, who cause Psyche to betray the trust of her husband. Wounded, Eros departs from his wife and Psyche wanders the earth, looking for her lost love.
In Apuleius's The Golden Ass Psyche bears Eros a daughter, Voluptas, whose name means "pleasure" or "bliss".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eros
Fertility gods | Greek gods | Greek mythology | Love and lust gods | Mythological Greek archers | Offspring of Aphrodite | Offspring of Ares | Sexuality in ancient Rome
Alternative Names:
에로스, Cupid(Roman), 쿠피드, 큐피드
Eros
Eros (Ancient Greek: Ἔρως, "Intimate Love"), in Greek mythology, was the primordial god of sexual love and beauty. He was also worshipped as a fertility deity. His Roman counterpart was Cupid ("desire"), also known as Amor ("love"). In some myths, he was the son of the deities Aphrodite and Ares, but according to Plato's Symposium, he was conceived by Poros (Plenty) and Penia (Poverty) at Aphrodite's birthday. Like Dionysus, he was sometimes referred to as Eleutherios, "the liberator".
He was often represented blindfolded because love was often blind. His "weapon" was darts or arrows. In either case the tips had been magically treated to produce either uncontrollable love or insurmountable disinterested in the first person seen be Eros's victim after wounding.
Conception myths
Throughout Greek thought, there appear to be two sides to the conception of Eros. In the first, he is a primeval deity who embodies not only the force of love but also the creative urge of ever-flowing nature, the firstborn Light for the coming into being and ordering of all things in the cosmos. In Hesiod's Theogony, the most famous Greek creation myth, Eros sprang forth from the primordial Chaos together with Gaea, the Earth, and Tartarus, the underworld; according to Aristophanes' play The Birds (c. 414 BC), he burgeons forth from an egg laid by Nyx (Night) conceived with Erebus (Darkness). In the Eleusinian Mysteries, he was worshiped as Protogonus, the first-born.
Alternately, later in antiquity, Eros was the son of Aphrodite and either Ares (most commonly), Hermes or Hephaestus, or of Porus and Penia. Rarely, he was given as the son of Iris and Zephyrus; this Eros was an attendant of Aphrodite, harnessing the primordial force of love and directing it into mortals.
Worship of Eros was uncommon in early Greece, but eventually became widespread. He was fervently worshiped by a fertility cult in Thespiae, and played an important role in the Eleusinian Mysteries. In Athens, he shared a very popular cult with Aphrodite, and the fourth day of every month was sacred to him.
Eros and Psyche
The story of Eros and Psyche has a longstanding tradition as a folktale of the ancient Greco-Roman world long before it was put to print; first seen in Apuleius' Latin novel, The Golden Ass, this is apparent and an interesting intermingling of character roles. The novel itself is picaresque Roman style, yet Psyche and Aphrodite retain their Greek parts. It is only Eros whose role hails from his part in the Roman pantheon.
The story is told as a digression and structural parallel to the main storyline of Apuleius' novel. It tells of the struggle for love and trust between Eros and Psyche. Aphrodite is jealous of the beauty of mortal Psyche, as men are leaving her altars barren to worship a mere human woman instead, and so commands her son Eros to cause Psyche to fall in love with the ugliest creature on earth. Eros falls in love with Psyche himself and spirits her away to his home. Their fragile peace is ruined by a visit of Psyche's jealous sisters, who cause Psyche to betray the trust of her husband. Wounded, Eros departs from his wife and Psyche wanders the earth, looking for her lost love.
In Apuleius's The Golden Ass Psyche bears Eros a daughter, Voluptas, whose name means "pleasure" or "bliss".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eros
Fertility gods | Greek gods | Greek mythology | Love and lust gods | Mythological Greek archers | Offspring of Aphrodite | Offspring of Ares | Sexuality in ancient Rome
Monday, October 15, 2007
Sjofn (Norse)
Sjofn (Vjofn)
A goddess concerned with causing men and women to think of love. It was her duty to stop fights between married couples.
A goddess concerned with causing men and women to think of love. It was her duty to stop fights between married couples.
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Deities of love, desire, lust and sex
Deities by association (gods or goddesses of love, desire, lust and sex)
Links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Deities_by_association
| Áine | Irish | ♀ | Áine is a goddess of love, growth, and cattle, also perhaps associated with the sun. |
| Aizen Myō-ō | Japanese | ♂ | He is portrayed as a red-skinned, frowning man, his appearance representing suppressed lust and passion. |
| Albina | Etruscan | ♀ | She is the protector of Ill-fated lovers. |
| Ani-lbo | African | ♀ | a goddess of birth, death, happiness and love |
| Anteros | Greek | ♂ | Anteros is the personification of unrequited love and punisher of those who scorn love. He is the brother of Eros. |
| Aphrodite (아프로디테) | Greek | ♀ | Aphrodite was born from the sea foam near Paphos, she is the mother of both Eros and Anteros. |
| Astrild | Norse | ♂ | The name Astrild is old Norse for Love-Fire. |
| Branwyn | Celtic | ♀ | a goddess of love, sexuality and the sea |
| Cliodhna | Irish | ♀ | Cliodha is also known as the Queen of the Munster Fairies. |
| Cupid (쿠피드) | Roman | ♂ | Cupid is the Roman equivalent of the Greek god Eros. |
| Eros (에로스) | Greek | ♂ | Eros was the god responsible for lust, love, and sex; he was also worshipped as a fertility deity. His name is the root of words such as erotic. |
| Freyja (프레이야) | Norse | ♀ | She was a goddess of love, war, fertility, beauty, magic, prophecies and attraction; Freya correspondingly became one of the most popular goddesses. |
| Freyr | Norse | ♂ | Worshipped as a phallic fertility god, Freyr "bestows peace and pleasure on mortals". |
| Hathor | African | ♀ | a goddess of love and joy |
| Himerus | Greek | ♂ | Himeros was the personification of lust and sexual desire. |
| Huehuecoyotl | Aztec | ♂ | Huehuecoyotl literally means old, old coyote. |
| Inanna | Sumerian | ♀ | a goddess of love and war |
| Astrild | Norse | ♂ | The name Astrild is old Norse for Love-Fire. |
| Mami Wata | African | ♀ | Mami Wata is often pictured as a mermaid, half-human and either half-fish or half-reptile. |
| Kamadeva | Indian (Hindu) | ♂ | Kāmadeva is represented as a young and handsome winged man who wields a bow and arrows. |
| Milda | Lithuanian | ♀ | Goddess of love. |
| Peitho | Greek | ♀ | Peitho ("persuasion") was the personification of persuasion and seduction. |
| Prende | Albanian | ♀ | When Albania became Christianized in the early Middle Ages, Prende became venerated as a minor saint. |
| Qetesh | Egyptian | ♀ | Qetesh was known as the goddess of sex but was almost never associated with fertility. |
| Turan | Etruscan | ♀ | Turan was the goddess of love and vitality. Pigeons and black swans were sacred to her. |
| Venus (베누스) | Roman | ♀ | Venus is the Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Aphrodite. |
| Xochipilli | Aztec | ♂ | The name Xochipilli means Flower Prince. |
Links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Deities_by_association
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Cupid (Roman)
Cupid
In Roman mythology, Cupid (Latin cupido, meaning "desire") is the god of erotic love and beauty. He is also known by another one of his Latin names, Amor (cognate with Kama). He is the son of goddess Venus and god Mars.
In popular culture Cupid is frequently shown shooting his bow to inspire romantic love, often as an icon of Valentine's Day. He is now in the current culture the personification of love and courtship in general.
For the equivalent deity in Greek mythology, see Eros.
Legend
In the Roman version, Cupid was the son of Venus (goddess of love) and variously Mars, Mercury or Neptune.[2][3] In the Greek version he was named Eros and seen as one of the primordial gods (though other myths exist as well). Cupid was often depicted with wings, a bow, and a quiver of arrows. The following story is almost identical in both cultures; the most familiar version is found in Lucius Apuleius's Metamorphoses. When Cupid's mother Venus became jealous of the princess Psyche, who was so beloved by her subjects that they forgot to worship Venus, she ordered Cupid to make Psyche fall in love with the vilest thing in the world. While Cupid was sneaking into her room to shoot Psyche with a golden arrow, he accidentally scratches himself with his own arrow and falls deeply in love with her.
Following that, Cupid visited Psyche every night while she slept. Speaking to her so that she could not see him, he told her never to try to see him. Psyche, though, incited by her two older sisters who told her Cupid was a monster, tried to look at him and angered Cupid. When he left, she looked all over the known world for him until at last the leader of the gods, Jupiter, gave Psyche the gift of immortality so that she could be with him. Together they had a daughter, Voluptas, or Hedone, (meaning pleasure) and Psyche became a goddess. Her name "Psyche" means "soul."
Portrayal
In painting and sculpture, Cupid is often portrayed as a nude (or sometimes diapered) winged boy or baby (a putto) armed with a bow and a quiver of arrows.
The Hindu Kāma also has a very similar description. On gems and other surviving pieces, he is usually shown amusing himself with childhood play, sometimes driving a hoop, throwing darts, catching a butterfly, or flirting with a nymph. He is often depicted with his mother (in graphic arts, this is nearly always Venus), playing a horn. In other images, his mother is depicted scolding or even spanking him due to his mischievous nature. He is also shown wearing a helmet and carrying a buckler, perhaps in reference to Virgil's Omnia vincit amor or as political satire on wars for love or love as war.
Cupid figures prominently in ariel poetry, lyrics and, of course, elegiac love and metamorphic poetry. In epic poetry, he is less often invoked, but he does appear in Virgil's Aeneid changed into the shape of Ascanius inspiring Dido's love. In later literature, Cupid is frequently invoked as fickle, playful, and perverse. He is often depicted as carrying two sets of arrows: one set gold-headed, which inspire love; and the other lead-headed, which inspire hatred.
The best-known story involving Cupid is the tale of Cupid and Psyche.
See also
Aphrodite
Apollo and Daphne
Cherub
Cupid's bow
Eros (love)
Eros (mythology)
He-He er xian, the Taoist "Immortals of Harmony and Union", popularly associated with a happy marriage
Kama, the god of love in Hinduism
Love at first sight
Putto
Roman mythology
Love darts, as used by snails
Till We Have Faces
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupid
Roman gods | Love and lust gods | Deities in the Aeneid | Holiday characters | Fictional archers
In Roman mythology, Cupid (Latin cupido, meaning "desire") is the god of erotic love and beauty. He is also known by another one of his Latin names, Amor (cognate with Kama). He is the son of goddess Venus and god Mars.
In popular culture Cupid is frequently shown shooting his bow to inspire romantic love, often as an icon of Valentine's Day. He is now in the current culture the personification of love and courtship in general.
For the equivalent deity in Greek mythology, see Eros.
Legend
In the Roman version, Cupid was the son of Venus (goddess of love) and variously Mars, Mercury or Neptune.[2][3] In the Greek version he was named Eros and seen as one of the primordial gods (though other myths exist as well). Cupid was often depicted with wings, a bow, and a quiver of arrows. The following story is almost identical in both cultures; the most familiar version is found in Lucius Apuleius's Metamorphoses. When Cupid's mother Venus became jealous of the princess Psyche, who was so beloved by her subjects that they forgot to worship Venus, she ordered Cupid to make Psyche fall in love with the vilest thing in the world. While Cupid was sneaking into her room to shoot Psyche with a golden arrow, he accidentally scratches himself with his own arrow and falls deeply in love with her.
Following that, Cupid visited Psyche every night while she slept. Speaking to her so that she could not see him, he told her never to try to see him. Psyche, though, incited by her two older sisters who told her Cupid was a monster, tried to look at him and angered Cupid. When he left, she looked all over the known world for him until at last the leader of the gods, Jupiter, gave Psyche the gift of immortality so that she could be with him. Together they had a daughter, Voluptas, or Hedone, (meaning pleasure) and Psyche became a goddess. Her name "Psyche" means "soul."
Portrayal
In painting and sculpture, Cupid is often portrayed as a nude (or sometimes diapered) winged boy or baby (a putto) armed with a bow and a quiver of arrows.
The Hindu Kāma also has a very similar description. On gems and other surviving pieces, he is usually shown amusing himself with childhood play, sometimes driving a hoop, throwing darts, catching a butterfly, or flirting with a nymph. He is often depicted with his mother (in graphic arts, this is nearly always Venus), playing a horn. In other images, his mother is depicted scolding or even spanking him due to his mischievous nature. He is also shown wearing a helmet and carrying a buckler, perhaps in reference to Virgil's Omnia vincit amor or as political satire on wars for love or love as war.
Cupid figures prominently in ariel poetry, lyrics and, of course, elegiac love and metamorphic poetry. In epic poetry, he is less often invoked, but he does appear in Virgil's Aeneid changed into the shape of Ascanius inspiring Dido's love. In later literature, Cupid is frequently invoked as fickle, playful, and perverse. He is often depicted as carrying two sets of arrows: one set gold-headed, which inspire love; and the other lead-headed, which inspire hatred.
The best-known story involving Cupid is the tale of Cupid and Psyche.
See also
Aphrodite
Apollo and Daphne
Cherub
Cupid's bow
Eros (love)
Eros (mythology)
He-He er xian, the Taoist "Immortals of Harmony and Union", popularly associated with a happy marriage
Kama, the god of love in Hinduism
Love at first sight
Putto
Roman mythology
Love darts, as used by snails
Till We Have Faces
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupid
Roman gods | Love and lust gods | Deities in the Aeneid | Holiday characters | Fictional archers
Monday, April 8, 2002
Aphrodite (Greek)
Aphrodite
Abode: Mount Olympus
Symbol: Dolphin, Rose, Scallop Shell, Myrtle, Dove, Sparrow, mirror, and Swan
Consort: Hephaestus, Ares, Hermes, Dionysus and Anchises
Parents: Uranus
Siblings: The Woodlnad Nymphs, The Furies and The Gigantes
Children: Eros, Phobos, Deimos, Harmonia, Anesta, Himeros, Hermaphroditos, Rhode, Peitho, Tyche, Eunomia, Charets and Aeneas
Roman equivalent: Venus
Goddess of love and beauty
Aphrodite (Greek: Ἀφροδίτη, IPA: [apʰrodíːtɛː]; English: /ˌæfrɵˈdaɪtiː/; Latin: Venus) is the Greek goddess of love, desire, lust, beauty and sexuality.[2][3] According to Greek poet Hesiod, she was born when Cronus cut off Ouranos' genitals and threw them into the sea, and from the aphros (sea foam) arose Aphrodite.[4]
Because of her beauty other gods feared that jealousy would interrupt the peace among them and lead to war, and so Zeus married her to Hephaestus, who was not viewed as a threat. Her unhappiness in marriage caused her to frequently seek out the companionship of her lover Ares. Aphrodite also became instrumental in the Eros and Psyche legend, and later was both Adonis' lover and his surrogate mother.
Aphrodite is also known as Cytherea (Lady of Cythera) and Cypris (Lady of Cyprus) after the two places, Cythera and Cyprus, which claim her birth. Her Roman equivalent is the goddess Venus. Myrtles, doves, sparrows, and swans are sacred to her. The Greeks identified the Ancient Egyptian goddess Hathor with Aphrodite.[5]
Origin
Aphrodite has numerous equivalents: Inanna (Sumerian counterpart), Astarte (Phoenician), Astghik (Armenian), Turan (Etruscan), and Venus (Roman). She has parallels with Indo-European dawn goddesses such as Ushas or Aurora. The Hellenes were well aware that her origins lay in the East: according to Pausanias, the first to establish her cult were the Assyrians, after the Assyrians the Paphians of Cyprus and the Phoenicians who live at Ascalon in Palestine; the Phoenicians taught her worship to the people of Cythera.[6] It was said Aphrodite could make any man fall in love with her at his first sight of her.
Aphrodite also has many other names, such as Acidalia, Cytherea, Pandemos and Cerigo. These names were used in specific areas of Greece. When the Greek cities combined, these lesser names were abandoned and a single name, Aphrodite, was adopted. Each goddess represented a slightly different religion but with overall similarities.
Etymology
The name Άφροδίτη was connected by folk etymology with ἀφρός (aphros) "foam," interpreting it as "risen from the foam" and embodying it in an etiological myth that was already known to Hesiod.[7] Another folk etymology found in the Etymologicum Magnum and attributed to Didymus attempts to etymologize Aphrodite from the Greek compound ἁβροδίαιτος habrodiaitos ("she who lives delicately" from ἁβρός habros + δίαιτα diaita) explaining the alternation between b and ph as a "familiar" characteristic of Greek "obvious from the Macedonians".[8] Aphros has reflexes in Messapic and Etruscan (whence April), which were probably borrowed from Greek.
Though Herodotus was aware of the Phoenician origins of Aphrodite,[9] linguistic attempts to derive the name Aphrodite from Semitic Aštoret, via undocumented Hittite transmission, remain inconclusive. If Semitic, a not implausible etymology would be from Assyrian barīrītu, a female demon found in Middle Babylonian and Late Babylonian texts (see Chicago Assyrian Dictionary vol. 2 p. 111). The name probably means "she who (comes) at dusk," a manifestation of the planet Venus as the evening star, a well known attribute of the Mesopotamian goddess Inanna/Ishtar.
A suggestion by M. Hammarström,[10] 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 J.P. Mallory and D.Q. Adams.[11]
Aphrodite Ourania and Aphrodite Pandemos
By the late 5th century BC, philosophers might separate Aphrodite into two separate goddesses, not individuated in cult: Aphrodite Ourania, born from the sea foam after Cronus castrated Ouranos, and Aphrodite Pandemos, the common Aphrodite "of all the folk," born from Zeus and Dione.[12] Among the neo-Platonists and eventually their Christian interpreters, Aphrodite Ourania figures as the celestial Aphrodite, representing the love of body and soul, while Aphrodite Pandemos is associated with mere physical love. The representation of Aphrodite Ouranos, with a foot resting on a tortoise, was read later as emblematic of discretion in conjugal love; the image is credited to Phidias, in a chryselephantine sculpture made for Elis, of which we have only a passing remark by Pausanias.[13]
Thus, according to the character Pausanias in Plato's Symposium,[14] Aphrodite is two goddesses, one older the other younger. The older, Urania, is the "heavenly" daughter of Ouranos, and inspires homosexual male (and more specifically, ephebic) love/eros; the younger is named Pandemos, the daughter of Zeus and Dione, and all love for women comes from her. 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).[15]
Myths
Birth
"Foam-arisen" Aphrodite was born of the sea foam near Paphos, Cyprus after Cronus cut off Ouranos' genitals and threw them behind him into the sea, while the Erinyes emerged from the drops of blood. 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. Aphrodite floated in on a scallop shell. When she arose, she was hailed as "Cyprian," and is referred to as such often, especially in the poetic works of Sappho. This myth of a fully mature Venus (the Roman name for Aphrodite), Venus Anadyomene[16] ("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 the Natural History of Pliny the Elder.
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 Δíος, "Dios," the genitive of Zeus) at Dodona. 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.
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 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's chief center of worship remained at Paphos, on the south-western coast of Cyprus, where the goddess of desire had been worshipped from the early Iron Age as Ishtar and Ashtaroth. It was said that, as Kythereia, she first tentatively came ashore at Cythera,[17] 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.
In other tales, Aphrodite was a daughter of Thalassa 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. She is one of a few characters who played a major part in the original cause of the Trojan War itself: not only did she offer Helen of Sparta to Paris, but the abduction was accomplished when Paris, seeing Helen for the first time, was inflamed with desire to have her—which is Aphrodite's realm.
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 release. 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.
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 birth-places in Cyprus and Cythera, respectively, both centers of her cult. She was associated with Hesperia and frequently accompanied by the Oreads, nymphs of the mountains. Her festival, Aphrodisia, was celebrated across Greece but particularly in Athens and Corinth. At the temple of Aphrodite on the summit of Acrocorinth (before the Roman destruction of the city in 146 BC) intercourse with her priestesses was considered a method of worshiping Aphrodite. This temple was not rebuilt when the city was reestablished under Roman rule in 44 BC, but it is likely that the fertility rituals continued in the main city near the agora.
Aphrodite was associated with, and often depicted with, the sea, dolphins, doves, swans, pomegranates, apples, myrtle, rose trees, lime trees, clams, scallop shells, and pearls.
Cult of Aphrodite
One 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[18] was 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 priestesses were the "women of Ishtar," ishtaritum.[19] 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. The practice however is not attested in Athens and can be considered a foreign import.
Aphrodite and Psyche
Aphrodite figures as a secondary character in the Tale of Eros and Psyche, which first appeared as a digressive story told by an old woman in Lucius Apuleius' novel, The Golden Ass, written in the second century A.D.. In it 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, 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 creature that lived on top of a particular mountain, that even the gods themselves feared. Eros had arranged for the oracle to say this. Psyche was resigned to her fate and climbed to the top of the mountain. She told the townsfolk that followed her to leave and let her face her fate on her own. 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 that her husband was a monster, and she should strike him with a dagger. So one night she lit a lamp, but recognizing Eros instantly, she dropped her dagger. Oil spilled from the lamp onto his shoulder, awaking him, and he fled, saying "Love cannot live where there is no trust!"
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. Eros was still heart broken and did not pick them and they fell to their deaths at the base of the mountain.
Psyche searched for her love 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 deadly 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 into 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 the three-headed dog Cerberus, Charon and the other dangers of the route. She was to not lend a hand to anyone in need. She baked two barley cakes for Cerberus, and took two coins for Charon. She pacified Cerberus with the barley cake and paid Charon to take her to Hades. On the way there, she saw hands reaching out of the water. A voice told her to toss a barley cake to them. She refused. Once there, Persephone said she would be glad to do Aphrodite a favor. She once more paid Charon, and gave the other barley cake 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) Voluptas.
Adonis
Aphrodite was Adonis' lover and a surrogate mother to him. Cinyras, the King of Cyprus, had an intoxicatingly beautiful daughter named Myrrha. When Myrrha's mother commits Hubris against Aphrodite by claiming her daughter is more beautiful than the famed goddess, Myrrha is punished with a never ending lust for her own father. Cinyras is repulsed by this, but Myrrha disguises herself as a prostitute, and secretly sleeps with her father at night. Eventually, Myrrha becomes pregnant and is discovered by Cinyras. In a rage, he chases her out of the house with a knife. Myrrha flees from him, praying to the gods for mercy as she runs. The gods hear her plea, and change her into a Myrrh tree so her father cannot kill her.
Eventually, Cinyras takes his own life in an attempt to restore the family's honor.
Myrrha gives birth to a baby boy named Adonis. Aphrodite happens by the Myrrh tree and, seeing him, takes pity on the infant. She places Adonis in a box, and takes him down to Hades so that Persephone can care for him. Adonis grows into a strikingly handsome young man, and Aphrodite eventually returns for him. Persephone, however, is loath to give him up, and wishes Adonis would stay with her in the underworld. The two goddesses begin such a quarrel that Zeus is forced to intercede. He decrees that Adonis will spend a third of the year with Aphrodite, a third of the year with Persephone, and a third of the year with whomever he wishes. Adonis, of course, chooses Aphrodite.
Adonis begins his year on the earth with Aphrodite. One of his greatest passions is hunting, and although Aphrodite is not naturally a hunter, she takes up the sport just so she can be with Adonis. They spend every waking hour with one another, and Aphrodite is enraptured with him. However, her anxiety begins to grow over her neglected duties, and she is forced to leave him for a short time. Before she leaves, she gives Adonis one warning: do not attack an animal who shows no fear. Adonis agrees to her advice, but, secretly doubting her skills as a huntress, quickly forgets her warning.
Not long after Aphrodite leaves, Adonis comes across an enormous wild boar, much larger than any he has ever seen. It is suggested that the boar is the god Ares, one of Aphrodite's lovers made jealous through her constant doting on Adonis. Although boars are dangerous and will charge a hunter if provoked, Adonis disregards Aphrodite's warning and pursues the giant creature. Soon, however, Adonis is the one being pursued; he is no match for the giant boar. In the attack, Adonis is castrated by the boar, and dies from a loss of blood. Aphrodite rushes back to his side, but she is too late to save him and can only mourn over his body. Wherever Adonis' blood falls, Aphrodite causes anemones to grow in his memory. She vows that on the anniversary of his death, every year there will be a festival held in his honor.
On his death, Adonis goes back to the underworld, and Persephone is delighted to see him again. Eventually, Aphrodite realizes that he is there, and rushes back to retrieve him. Again, she and Persephone bicker over who is allowed to keep Adonis until Zeus intervenes. This time, he says that Adonis must spend six months with Aphrodite and six months with Persephone, the way it should have been in the first place.
Adonis, as a dying god archetype, represents the cycle of vegetation. His birth is like the birth of new plants; his maturation like the ripening of the plant. Once the crop is harvested, it dies—like Adonis returning to the underworld. The new seeds are then placed again in the ground, where they grow into new life, like Adonis returning to the earth to be with Aphrodite.
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 word kallistēi ("to the fairest one") 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, not wanting to favor one of the goddesses, 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 choose 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.
Consorts and children
Ares
Eros, Phobos (Fright), Deimos (Dread), Harmonia (Harmony), Arethousa, Adrestia, Anteros (requited and unrequited love), Himerus (Lust), Atesia
Butes (or Poseidon)
Eryx
Hermes
Tyche, Rhodes, Eunomia, Hermaphroditus, Peitho, Priapus (in some traditions)
Dionysus
The Charites, Hymenaios, Priapus, Aglaea, Euphrosyne
Adonis
Beroe
Anchises
Aeneas
Other Tales
In one version of the story of Hippolytus, she was the catalyst for his death. He scorned the worship of Aphrodite for Artemis and, in revenge, Aphrodite caused his stepmother, Phaedra, to fall in love with him, knowing Hippolytus would reject her. In the most popular version of the story, as told in 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 fulfill and so Hippolytus was laid low by a bull from the sea that caused his chariot-team to panic and wreck his vehicle. This is, interestingly enough not quite how Aphrodite envisaged his death in the play, as in the prologue she says she expects Hippolytus to submit to lust 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 the 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.
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
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 and foreign goddesses
The Ancient Greeks and Romans often equated their deities with foreign ones. Aphrodite was equated by the Greeks to Egyptian Hathor, Assyrian Mylitta, Canaanite/Phoenician Astarte, Arabian Alilat, and Roman Venus.
Images
Aphrodite of the Syracuse type. Parian marble, Roman copy of the 2nd century CE after a Greek original of the 4th century BC; neck, head and left arm are restorations by Antonio Canova. Found at Baiae, Southern Italy.
References
Notes
1.^ According to Olympian mythology, but also sprung from Ouranos's seed.
2^ Pantheon.org
3^ "Aphrodite"
4^ The implied etymology of Aphrodite is not considered authentic by modern linguists.
5^ Reginald Eldred Witt, Isis in the ancient world (Johns Hopkins University Press)1997:125. ISBN 0801856426
6^ Pausanias, Description of Greece, XIV.7
7^ Hesiod, Theogony, 176ff.
8^ Etymologicum Magnum, Ἀφροδίτη
9^ 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.
10^ In Glotta: Zeitschrift für griechische und lateinische Sprache 11, 21 5f.
11^ Mallory, J.P. and D.Q. Adams. Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishing, 1997.
12^ E.g. Plato, Symposium 181a-d.
13^ Pausanias, Periegesis vi.25.1; Aphrodite Pandemos was represented in the same temple riding on a goat, symbol of purely carnal rut: "The meaning of the tortoise and of the he-goat I leave to those who care to guess," Pausanias remarks. The image was taken up again after the Renaissance: see Andrea Alciato, Emblemata / Les emblemes (1584).
14^ Plato, Symposium 180e.
15^ Richard L. Hunter, Plato's Symposium, Oxford University Press: 2004, p. 44
16^ Αναδυόμενη (Anadyómenē), "rising up".
17^ Homer, Odyssey viii. 288; Herodotus i. 105; Pausanias iii. 23. § 1 ; Anacreon v. 9; Horace, Carmina i. 4. 5.
18^ "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".
19^ Miroslav Marcovich, "From Ishtar to Aphrodite" Journal of Aesthetic Education 30.2, Special Issue: Distinguished Humanities Lectures II (Summer 1996) p 49.
20^ The word callipygian is defined as "having shapely buttocks" by Merriam-Webster.
21^ Conventionally presumed to be Venus, though it may equally be a portrait of a mortal woman, such as a hetaira, or an image of the goddess modeled on one such
22^ The gesture of Aphrodite/Venus lifting of the robe symbolized religious initiation and the ancient Greeks worshiped the woman's "rich" buttocks to obtain great wealth on earth as the two Syracusan sisters who inspired the Kallipygos idea, had accomplished.
Source
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphrodite
Abode: Mount Olympus
Symbol: Dolphin, Rose, Scallop Shell, Myrtle, Dove, Sparrow, mirror, and Swan
Consort: Hephaestus, Ares, Hermes, Dionysus and Anchises
Parents: Uranus
Siblings: The Woodlnad Nymphs, The Furies and The Gigantes
Children: Eros, Phobos, Deimos, Harmonia, Anesta, Himeros, Hermaphroditos, Rhode, Peitho, Tyche, Eunomia, Charets and Aeneas
Roman equivalent: Venus
Goddess of love and beauty
Aphrodite (Greek: Ἀφροδίτη, IPA: [apʰrodíːtɛː]; English: /ˌæfrɵˈdaɪtiː/; Latin: Venus) is the Greek goddess of love, desire, lust, beauty and sexuality.[2][3] According to Greek poet Hesiod, she was born when Cronus cut off Ouranos' genitals and threw them into the sea, and from the aphros (sea foam) arose Aphrodite.[4]
Because of her beauty other gods feared that jealousy would interrupt the peace among them and lead to war, and so Zeus married her to Hephaestus, who was not viewed as a threat. Her unhappiness in marriage caused her to frequently seek out the companionship of her lover Ares. Aphrodite also became instrumental in the Eros and Psyche legend, and later was both Adonis' lover and his surrogate mother.
Aphrodite is also known as Cytherea (Lady of Cythera) and Cypris (Lady of Cyprus) after the two places, Cythera and Cyprus, which claim her birth. Her Roman equivalent is the goddess Venus. Myrtles, doves, sparrows, and swans are sacred to her. The Greeks identified the Ancient Egyptian goddess Hathor with Aphrodite.[5]
Origin
Aphrodite has numerous equivalents: Inanna (Sumerian counterpart), Astarte (Phoenician), Astghik (Armenian), Turan (Etruscan), and Venus (Roman). She has parallels with Indo-European dawn goddesses such as Ushas or Aurora. The Hellenes were well aware that her origins lay in the East: according to Pausanias, the first to establish her cult were the Assyrians, after the Assyrians the Paphians of Cyprus and the Phoenicians who live at Ascalon in Palestine; the Phoenicians taught her worship to the people of Cythera.[6] It was said Aphrodite could make any man fall in love with her at his first sight of her.
Aphrodite also has many other names, such as Acidalia, Cytherea, Pandemos and Cerigo. These names were used in specific areas of Greece. When the Greek cities combined, these lesser names were abandoned and a single name, Aphrodite, was adopted. Each goddess represented a slightly different religion but with overall similarities.
Etymology
The name Άφροδίτη was connected by folk etymology with ἀφρός (aphros) "foam," interpreting it as "risen from the foam" and embodying it in an etiological myth that was already known to Hesiod.[7] Another folk etymology found in the Etymologicum Magnum and attributed to Didymus attempts to etymologize Aphrodite from the Greek compound ἁβροδίαιτος habrodiaitos ("she who lives delicately" from ἁβρός habros + δίαιτα diaita) explaining the alternation between b and ph as a "familiar" characteristic of Greek "obvious from the Macedonians".[8] Aphros has reflexes in Messapic and Etruscan (whence April), which were probably borrowed from Greek.
Though Herodotus was aware of the Phoenician origins of Aphrodite,[9] linguistic attempts to derive the name Aphrodite from Semitic Aštoret, via undocumented Hittite transmission, remain inconclusive. If Semitic, a not implausible etymology would be from Assyrian barīrītu, a female demon found in Middle Babylonian and Late Babylonian texts (see Chicago Assyrian Dictionary vol. 2 p. 111). The name probably means "she who (comes) at dusk," a manifestation of the planet Venus as the evening star, a well known attribute of the Mesopotamian goddess Inanna/Ishtar.
A suggestion by M. Hammarström,[10] 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 J.P. Mallory and D.Q. Adams.[11]
Aphrodite Ourania and Aphrodite Pandemos
By the late 5th century BC, philosophers might separate Aphrodite into two separate goddesses, not individuated in cult: Aphrodite Ourania, born from the sea foam after Cronus castrated Ouranos, and Aphrodite Pandemos, the common Aphrodite "of all the folk," born from Zeus and Dione.[12] Among the neo-Platonists and eventually their Christian interpreters, Aphrodite Ourania figures as the celestial Aphrodite, representing the love of body and soul, while Aphrodite Pandemos is associated with mere physical love. The representation of Aphrodite Ouranos, with a foot resting on a tortoise, was read later as emblematic of discretion in conjugal love; the image is credited to Phidias, in a chryselephantine sculpture made for Elis, of which we have only a passing remark by Pausanias.[13]
Thus, according to the character Pausanias in Plato's Symposium,[14] Aphrodite is two goddesses, one older the other younger. The older, Urania, is the "heavenly" daughter of Ouranos, and inspires homosexual male (and more specifically, ephebic) love/eros; the younger is named Pandemos, the daughter of Zeus and Dione, and all love for women comes from her. 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).[15]
Myths
Birth
"Foam-arisen" Aphrodite was born of the sea foam near Paphos, Cyprus after Cronus cut off Ouranos' genitals and threw them behind him into the sea, while the Erinyes emerged from the drops of blood. 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. Aphrodite floated in on a scallop shell. When she arose, she was hailed as "Cyprian," and is referred to as such often, especially in the poetic works of Sappho. This myth of a fully mature Venus (the Roman name for Aphrodite), Venus Anadyomene[16] ("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 the Natural History of Pliny the Elder.
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 Δíος, "Dios," the genitive of Zeus) at Dodona. 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.
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 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's chief center of worship remained at Paphos, on the south-western coast of Cyprus, where the goddess of desire had been worshipped from the early Iron Age as Ishtar and Ashtaroth. It was said that, as Kythereia, she first tentatively came ashore at Cythera,[17] 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.
In other tales, Aphrodite was a daughter of Thalassa 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. She is one of a few characters who played a major part in the original cause of the Trojan War itself: not only did she offer Helen of Sparta to Paris, but the abduction was accomplished when Paris, seeing Helen for the first time, was inflamed with desire to have her—which is Aphrodite's realm.
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 release. 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.
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 birth-places in Cyprus and Cythera, respectively, both centers of her cult. She was associated with Hesperia and frequently accompanied by the Oreads, nymphs of the mountains. Her festival, Aphrodisia, was celebrated across Greece but particularly in Athens and Corinth. At the temple of Aphrodite on the summit of Acrocorinth (before the Roman destruction of the city in 146 BC) intercourse with her priestesses was considered a method of worshiping Aphrodite. This temple was not rebuilt when the city was reestablished under Roman rule in 44 BC, but it is likely that the fertility rituals continued in the main city near the agora.
Aphrodite was associated with, and often depicted with, the sea, dolphins, doves, swans, pomegranates, apples, myrtle, rose trees, lime trees, clams, scallop shells, and pearls.
Cult of Aphrodite
One 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[18] was 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 priestesses were the "women of Ishtar," ishtaritum.[19] 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. The practice however is not attested in Athens and can be considered a foreign import.
Aphrodite and Psyche
Aphrodite figures as a secondary character in the Tale of Eros and Psyche, which first appeared as a digressive story told by an old woman in Lucius Apuleius' novel, The Golden Ass, written in the second century A.D.. In it 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, 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 creature that lived on top of a particular mountain, that even the gods themselves feared. Eros had arranged for the oracle to say this. Psyche was resigned to her fate and climbed to the top of the mountain. She told the townsfolk that followed her to leave and let her face her fate on her own. 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 that her husband was a monster, and she should strike him with a dagger. So one night she lit a lamp, but recognizing Eros instantly, she dropped her dagger. Oil spilled from the lamp onto his shoulder, awaking him, and he fled, saying "Love cannot live where there is no trust!"
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. Eros was still heart broken and did not pick them and they fell to their deaths at the base of the mountain.
Psyche searched for her love 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 deadly 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 into 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 the three-headed dog Cerberus, Charon and the other dangers of the route. She was to not lend a hand to anyone in need. She baked two barley cakes for Cerberus, and took two coins for Charon. She pacified Cerberus with the barley cake and paid Charon to take her to Hades. On the way there, she saw hands reaching out of the water. A voice told her to toss a barley cake to them. She refused. Once there, Persephone said she would be glad to do Aphrodite a favor. She once more paid Charon, and gave the other barley cake 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) Voluptas.
Adonis
Aphrodite was Adonis' lover and a surrogate mother to him. Cinyras, the King of Cyprus, had an intoxicatingly beautiful daughter named Myrrha. When Myrrha's mother commits Hubris against Aphrodite by claiming her daughter is more beautiful than the famed goddess, Myrrha is punished with a never ending lust for her own father. Cinyras is repulsed by this, but Myrrha disguises herself as a prostitute, and secretly sleeps with her father at night. Eventually, Myrrha becomes pregnant and is discovered by Cinyras. In a rage, he chases her out of the house with a knife. Myrrha flees from him, praying to the gods for mercy as she runs. The gods hear her plea, and change her into a Myrrh tree so her father cannot kill her.
Eventually, Cinyras takes his own life in an attempt to restore the family's honor.
Myrrha gives birth to a baby boy named Adonis. Aphrodite happens by the Myrrh tree and, seeing him, takes pity on the infant. She places Adonis in a box, and takes him down to Hades so that Persephone can care for him. Adonis grows into a strikingly handsome young man, and Aphrodite eventually returns for him. Persephone, however, is loath to give him up, and wishes Adonis would stay with her in the underworld. The two goddesses begin such a quarrel that Zeus is forced to intercede. He decrees that Adonis will spend a third of the year with Aphrodite, a third of the year with Persephone, and a third of the year with whomever he wishes. Adonis, of course, chooses Aphrodite.
Adonis begins his year on the earth with Aphrodite. One of his greatest passions is hunting, and although Aphrodite is not naturally a hunter, she takes up the sport just so she can be with Adonis. They spend every waking hour with one another, and Aphrodite is enraptured with him. However, her anxiety begins to grow over her neglected duties, and she is forced to leave him for a short time. Before she leaves, she gives Adonis one warning: do not attack an animal who shows no fear. Adonis agrees to her advice, but, secretly doubting her skills as a huntress, quickly forgets her warning.
Not long after Aphrodite leaves, Adonis comes across an enormous wild boar, much larger than any he has ever seen. It is suggested that the boar is the god Ares, one of Aphrodite's lovers made jealous through her constant doting on Adonis. Although boars are dangerous and will charge a hunter if provoked, Adonis disregards Aphrodite's warning and pursues the giant creature. Soon, however, Adonis is the one being pursued; he is no match for the giant boar. In the attack, Adonis is castrated by the boar, and dies from a loss of blood. Aphrodite rushes back to his side, but she is too late to save him and can only mourn over his body. Wherever Adonis' blood falls, Aphrodite causes anemones to grow in his memory. She vows that on the anniversary of his death, every year there will be a festival held in his honor.
On his death, Adonis goes back to the underworld, and Persephone is delighted to see him again. Eventually, Aphrodite realizes that he is there, and rushes back to retrieve him. Again, she and Persephone bicker over who is allowed to keep Adonis until Zeus intervenes. This time, he says that Adonis must spend six months with Aphrodite and six months with Persephone, the way it should have been in the first place.
Adonis, as a dying god archetype, represents the cycle of vegetation. His birth is like the birth of new plants; his maturation like the ripening of the plant. Once the crop is harvested, it dies—like Adonis returning to the underworld. The new seeds are then placed again in the ground, where they grow into new life, like Adonis returning to the earth to be with Aphrodite.
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 word kallistēi ("to the fairest one") 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, not wanting to favor one of the goddesses, 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 choose 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.
Consorts and children
Ares
Eros, Phobos (Fright), Deimos (Dread), Harmonia (Harmony), Arethousa, Adrestia, Anteros (requited and unrequited love), Himerus (Lust), Atesia
Butes (or Poseidon)
Eryx
Hermes
Tyche, Rhodes, Eunomia, Hermaphroditus, Peitho, Priapus (in some traditions)
Dionysus
The Charites, Hymenaios, Priapus, Aglaea, Euphrosyne
Adonis
Beroe
Anchises
Aeneas
Other Tales
In one version of the story of Hippolytus, she was the catalyst for his death. He scorned the worship of Aphrodite for Artemis and, in revenge, Aphrodite caused his stepmother, Phaedra, to fall in love with him, knowing Hippolytus would reject her. In the most popular version of the story, as told in 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 fulfill and so Hippolytus was laid low by a bull from the sea that caused his chariot-team to panic and wreck his vehicle. This is, interestingly enough not quite how Aphrodite envisaged his death in the play, as in the prologue she says she expects Hippolytus to submit to lust 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 the 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.
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
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 and foreign goddesses
The Ancient Greeks and Romans often equated their deities with foreign ones. Aphrodite was equated by the Greeks to Egyptian Hathor, Assyrian Mylitta, Canaanite/Phoenician Astarte, Arabian Alilat, and Roman Venus.
Images
National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece
Aphrodite of the Syracuse type. Parian marble, Roman copy of the 2nd century CE after a Greek original of the 4th century BC; neck, head and left arm are restorations by Antonio Canova. Found at Baiae, Southern Italy.
References
Notes
1.^ According to Olympian mythology, but also sprung from Ouranos's seed.
2^ Pantheon.org
3^ "Aphrodite"
4^ The implied etymology of Aphrodite is not considered authentic by modern linguists.
5^ Reginald Eldred Witt, Isis in the ancient world (Johns Hopkins University Press)1997:125. ISBN 0801856426
6^ Pausanias, Description of Greece, XIV.7
7^ Hesiod, Theogony, 176ff.
8^ Etymologicum Magnum, Ἀφροδίτη
9^ 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.
10^ In Glotta: Zeitschrift für griechische und lateinische Sprache 11, 21 5f.
11^ Mallory, J.P. and D.Q. Adams. Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishing, 1997.
12^ E.g. Plato, Symposium 181a-d.
13^ Pausanias, Periegesis vi.25.1; Aphrodite Pandemos was represented in the same temple riding on a goat, symbol of purely carnal rut: "The meaning of the tortoise and of the he-goat I leave to those who care to guess," Pausanias remarks. The image was taken up again after the Renaissance: see Andrea Alciato, Emblemata / Les emblemes (1584).
14^ Plato, Symposium 180e.
15^ Richard L. Hunter, Plato's Symposium, Oxford University Press: 2004, p. 44
16^ Αναδυόμενη (Anadyómenē), "rising up".
17^ Homer, Odyssey viii. 288; Herodotus i. 105; Pausanias iii. 23. § 1 ; Anacreon v. 9; Horace, Carmina i. 4. 5.
18^ "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".
19^ Miroslav Marcovich, "From Ishtar to Aphrodite" Journal of Aesthetic Education 30.2, Special Issue: Distinguished Humanities Lectures II (Summer 1996) p 49.
20^ The word callipygian is defined as "having shapely buttocks" by Merriam-Webster.
21^ Conventionally presumed to be Venus, though it may equally be a portrait of a mortal woman, such as a hetaira, or an image of the goddess modeled on one such
22^ The gesture of Aphrodite/Venus lifting of the robe symbolized religious initiation and the ancient Greeks worshiped the woman's "rich" buttocks to obtain great wealth on earth as the two Syracusan sisters who inspired the Kallipygos idea, had accomplished.
Source
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphrodite
Sunday, March 6, 1994
Lofn (Norse)
Domain: Union, Engagement
Goddess concerned with sparking passionate love. She had permission from Odin and Frigg to do so even for those who were forbidden to marry.
References
http://www.clanrealm.net/nord_aesir2.html
Monday, May 20, 1985
Het-Heru (Egyptian)
Het-Heru
Greek: Hathor
An ancient cow-goddess, at various times taking on the role of Great Mother and consort of Ra [read: Gaia], protector of Heru (hence her name, "House of Heru), and goddess of love. Her head formed the handle of the powerful ancient rattle known as the sistrum, used to frighten away evil spirits.
She was the goddess of love, but when Ra called, she turned into the vengeful Sekhmet.
She was also the Queen of the Heavens, after Aset. The wife of Horus she took an active role in the fight against Set and his minions. Also known as the Warroir Goddess she was fierce in battle when Sekhmet, but when she was herself, she used the more subtle approach, seduction.
Greek: Hathor
An ancient cow-goddess, at various times taking on the role of Great Mother and consort of Ra [read: Gaia], protector of Heru (hence her name, "House of Heru), and goddess of love. Her head formed the handle of the powerful ancient rattle known as the sistrum, used to frighten away evil spirits.
She was the goddess of love, but when Ra called, she turned into the vengeful Sekhmet.
She was also the Queen of the Heavens, after Aset. The wife of Horus she took an active role in the fight against Set and his minions. Also known as the Warroir Goddess she was fierce in battle when Sekhmet, but when she was herself, she used the more subtle approach, seduction.
Saturday, June 5, 1982
Freyr (Norse)
Freyr
Freyr (sometimes anglicized Frey, from *frawjaz "lord") is one of the most important gods of Norse paganism. Freyr was highly associated with farming, weather and, as a phallic fertility god, Freyr "bestows peace and pleasure on mortals". Freyr, sometimes referred to as Yngvi-Freyr, was especially associated with Sweden and seen as an ancestor of the Swedish royal house.
In the Icelandic books the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda, Freyr is presented as one of the Vanir, the son of the sea god Njörðr, brother of the goddess Freyja. The gods gave him Álfheimr, the realm of the Elves, as a teething present. He rides the shining dwarf-made boar Gullinbursti and possesses the ship Skíðblaðnir which always has a favorable breeze and can be folded together and carried in a pouch when it is not being used. He has the servants Skírnir, Byggvir, and Beyla.
The most extensive surviving Freyr myth relates Freyr's falling in love with the female jötunn Gerðr. Eventually, she becomes his wife but first Freyr has to give away his magic sword which fights on its own "if wise be he who wields it". Although deprived of this weapon, Freyr defeats the jötunn Beli with an antler. However, lacking his sword, Freyr will be killed by the fire jötunn Surtr during the events of Ragnarök.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freyr
Mythological kings of Sweden | Indo-European deities | Fertility gods | Agricultural gods | Nature gods | Sky and weather gods | Solar gods | Love and lust gods | Mythological kings | Vanir
Freyr (sometimes anglicized Frey, from *frawjaz "lord") is one of the most important gods of Norse paganism. Freyr was highly associated with farming, weather and, as a phallic fertility god, Freyr "bestows peace and pleasure on mortals". Freyr, sometimes referred to as Yngvi-Freyr, was especially associated with Sweden and seen as an ancestor of the Swedish royal house.
In the Icelandic books the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda, Freyr is presented as one of the Vanir, the son of the sea god Njörðr, brother of the goddess Freyja. The gods gave him Álfheimr, the realm of the Elves, as a teething present. He rides the shining dwarf-made boar Gullinbursti and possesses the ship Skíðblaðnir which always has a favorable breeze and can be folded together and carried in a pouch when it is not being used. He has the servants Skírnir, Byggvir, and Beyla.
The most extensive surviving Freyr myth relates Freyr's falling in love with the female jötunn Gerðr. Eventually, she becomes his wife but first Freyr has to give away his magic sword which fights on its own "if wise be he who wields it". Although deprived of this weapon, Freyr defeats the jötunn Beli with an antler. However, lacking his sword, Freyr will be killed by the fire jötunn Surtr during the events of Ragnarök.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freyr
Mythological kings of Sweden | Indo-European deities | Fertility gods | Agricultural gods | Nature gods | Sky and weather gods | Solar gods | Love and lust gods | Mythological kings | Vanir
Freya (Norse)
Freya
Goddess of sex, fertility, war, and wealth. Originally one of the Vanir. She was the daughter of Njord, and the sister of Frey. Her daughters, by Od, are named Hnoss, who is so beautiful that whatever is valuable and lovely is named "treasure" after her, and Gersemi. She lived in Folkvang [battlefield] and each day chose half of the slain warriors to split with Odin. She had a husband named Od, whom she somehow lost and cried golden tears for. Many believe Od is Odin. Her chariot was drawn by male cats (their names are never stated) and she owned the precious Brisings' necklace, which she slept with four dwarves to acquire. She also owned a feather coat which she could use to fly between the worlds. After she went to live with the Aesir as a hostage, she taught them -- including Odin -- seidr. Some sources say Friday is named after her.
Freyja (sometimes anglicized as Freya), is a major goddess in Norse Paganism, a subset of Germanic Paganism. Because the documented source of this religious tradition, the Norse Mythology, was transmitted and altered by Christian medieval historians, the actual role, pagan practices, and worship of the goddess are uncertain.
In the Eddas, Freyja is portrayed as a goddess of love, beauty and fertility. Blonde, blue-eyed, and beautiful, Freyja is described as the fairest of all goddesses, and people prayed to her for happiness in love. She was also called on to assist childbirths and prayed to for good seasons.
Freyja was also associated with war, battle, death, magic, prophecy and wealth. She is cited as receiving half of the dead lost in battle in her hall Fólkvangr, whereas Odin would receive the other half at Valhalla. The origin of Seid was ascribed to Freyja.
Frigg and Freyja are the two principal goddesses in Norse religion, and described as the highest amongst the Asynjur. Freyja is the goddess most honoured after or along with Frigg, and her worship seems to have been even the more prevalent and important of the two. In the Droplaugarsona Saga, it is described that in a temple at Ölvusvatn, Iceland, statues of Frigg and Freyja have been seated upon higher thrones opposite those of Thor and Yngve. These statues were arrayed in drapery and ornaments of gold and silver.
In Heimskringla, Freyja is also presented as a mythological Princess of Sweden. Her father Njörðr is seen as the second mythological King of Sweden, and her twin brother Yngve is the third.Yngve's and Freyja's mother is Njörðr's twin sister (who has been often linked to the ancient Germanic goddess Nerthus), as it is a custom of the Vanir and allowed by their laws.
Further in Heimskringla, it is written that many temples and statues of native pagan gods and goddesses were raided and destroyed by Olaf Tryggvason and Saint Olaf during the gradual and violent process of the Christianization of Scandinavia. During and after the extent that the process of Christianization was complete, Freyja and many things associated with her were demonized by the growing influence of Christian missionaries. After Christian influence was cemented in law, traces of belief went increasingly underground into mainly rural areas, surviving into modern times in Germanic folklore and most recently reconstructed to varying degrees in Germanic neopaganism.
Goddess of sex, fertility, war, and wealth. Originally one of the Vanir. She was the daughter of Njord, and the sister of Frey. Her daughters, by Od, are named Hnoss, who is so beautiful that whatever is valuable and lovely is named "treasure" after her, and Gersemi. She lived in Folkvang [battlefield] and each day chose half of the slain warriors to split with Odin. She had a husband named Od, whom she somehow lost and cried golden tears for. Many believe Od is Odin. Her chariot was drawn by male cats (their names are never stated) and she owned the precious Brisings' necklace, which she slept with four dwarves to acquire. She also owned a feather coat which she could use to fly between the worlds. After she went to live with the Aesir as a hostage, she taught them -- including Odin -- seidr. Some sources say Friday is named after her.
Freyja (sometimes anglicized as Freya), is a major goddess in Norse Paganism, a subset of Germanic Paganism. Because the documented source of this religious tradition, the Norse Mythology, was transmitted and altered by Christian medieval historians, the actual role, pagan practices, and worship of the goddess are uncertain.
In the Eddas, Freyja is portrayed as a goddess of love, beauty and fertility. Blonde, blue-eyed, and beautiful, Freyja is described as the fairest of all goddesses, and people prayed to her for happiness in love. She was also called on to assist childbirths and prayed to for good seasons.
Freyja was also associated with war, battle, death, magic, prophecy and wealth. She is cited as receiving half of the dead lost in battle in her hall Fólkvangr, whereas Odin would receive the other half at Valhalla. The origin of Seid was ascribed to Freyja.
Frigg and Freyja are the two principal goddesses in Norse religion, and described as the highest amongst the Asynjur. Freyja is the goddess most honoured after or along with Frigg, and her worship seems to have been even the more prevalent and important of the two. In the Droplaugarsona Saga, it is described that in a temple at Ölvusvatn, Iceland, statues of Frigg and Freyja have been seated upon higher thrones opposite those of Thor and Yngve. These statues were arrayed in drapery and ornaments of gold and silver.
In Heimskringla, Freyja is also presented as a mythological Princess of Sweden. Her father Njörðr is seen as the second mythological King of Sweden, and her twin brother Yngve is the third.Yngve's and Freyja's mother is Njörðr's twin sister (who has been often linked to the ancient Germanic goddess Nerthus), as it is a custom of the Vanir and allowed by their laws.
Further in Heimskringla, it is written that many temples and statues of native pagan gods and goddesses were raided and destroyed by Olaf Tryggvason and Saint Olaf during the gradual and violent process of the Christianization of Scandinavia. During and after the extent that the process of Christianization was complete, Freyja and many things associated with her were demonized by the growing influence of Christian missionaries. After Christian influence was cemented in law, traces of belief went increasingly underground into mainly rural areas, surviving into modern times in Germanic folklore and most recently reconstructed to varying degrees in Germanic neopaganism.
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