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Aphrodite

Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation

Aphrodite ( ) is an ancient Greek goddess associated with love, lust, beauty, pleasure, passion, procreation, and as her syncretised Roman counterpart Venus, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity, and victory. Aphrodite's major symbols include seashells, myrtles, roses, doves, sparrows, and swans. The cult of Aphrodite may have been derived from the Phoenician goddess Astarte, a cognate of the East Semitic goddess Ishtar, whose cult was based on the Sumerian cult of Inanna; or as asserted by Pausanias, her origin was in Cyprus; or, via the Greek dawn goddess, Eos, her origin could have been Indo-European. Aphrodite's main cult centers were Cythera, Cyprus, Corinth, and Athens. Her main festival was the Aphrodisia, which was celebrated annually in midsummer. In Laconia, Aphrodite was worshipped as a warrior goddess. She was the patron goddess of prostitutes, an association which led early scholars to propose the concept of sacred prostitution in Greco-Roman culture, an idea now generally seen as erroneous. A major goddess in the Greek pantheon, Aphrodite featured prominently in ancient Greek literature. According to many sources, like Homer's Iliad and Sappho's Ode to Aphrodite, she is the daughter of Zeus and Dione. In Hesiod's Theogony, however, Aphrodite is born off the coast of Cythera from the foam (ἀφρός, aphrós) produced by Uranus's genitals, which his son Cronus had severed and thrown into the sea. In his Symposium, Plato asserts that these two origins actually belong to separate entities; Aphrodite Urania (a transcendent "Heavenly" Aphrodite, who "partakes not of the female but only of the male", with Plato describing her as inspiring love between men, but having nothing to do with the love of women) and Aphrodite Pandemos (Aphrodite common to "all the people" who Plato described as "wanton", to contrast her with the virginal Aphrodite Urania, who did not engage in sexual acts. Pandemos inspired love between men and women, unlike her older counterpart). The epithet Aphrodite Areia (the "Warlike") reveals her contrasting nature in ancient Greek religion. Aphrodite had many other epithets, each emphasizing an aspect of the same goddess or used by a local cult. Thus she was known as Cytherea (Lady of Cythera) and Cypris (Lady of Cyprus), because both places claimed to be the site of her birth. Sappho's Ode to Aphrodite is one of the earliest poems dedicated to the goddess and survives from the Archaic period nearly complete. In Greek mythology, Aphrodite was married to Hephaestus, the god of fire, blacksmiths and metalworking. Aphrodite was frequently unfaithful to him and had many lovers; in the Odyssey, she is caught in the act of adultery with Ares, the god of war. In the First Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, she seduces the mortal shepherd Anchises after Zeus made her fall in love with him. Aphrodite was the surrogate mother and lover of the mortal shepherd Adonis, who was killed by a wild boar. Along with Athena and Hera, she was one of the three goddesses whose feud resulted in the Trojan War; she plays a major role throughout the Iliad. Aphrodite has been featured in Western art as a symbol of female beauty and has appeared in numerous works of Western literature. She is a major deity in modern Neopagan religions, including the Church of Aphrodite, Wicca, and Hellenism.