Aphrodite

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Aphrodite

• Goddess of Love and Desire

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Aphrodite
Aphrodite was the goddess of love, symbolizing
intoxicating sexuality and beauty. The word for a
sudden, irresistible urge is an aphrodite I
have an aphrodite for some chocolate and if I
dont get some soon Ill die! She was the only
goddess portrayed nude in Greek art (where male
nudity was normal but female nudity was
exceptional). She violated many of the most basic
social limitations on women.
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she was famous for her affair with Ares, and was
more often shown with him than with her husband
in Greek and Roman art.
Married to Hephaestus,
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She also had affairs with mortals, acting more
like a god than a goddess Anchises, by whom she
bore the Trojan hero Aeneas, who later founded
Rome, and Adonis, who was killed by a wild boar
during a hunt. Her affair with Ares produced
Eros, and her affair with Hermes produced
Hermaphroditus. Not your average housewife.
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Aphrodites birth

• There are two competing stories of her origins.
  Probably most Greeks didnt worry about this
  conflict.
• Aphrodite Urania (heavenly Aphrodite)
• Hesiod tells us she is born from the severed
  genitals of Uranus and sea-foam (aphros). So she
  was
• older than the gods
• born from elemental priciples, with no mother but
  the sea
• sister to the Furies and forest nymphs

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• Aphrodite Pandemos (Aphrodite of the people)
• Homer (and most other sources) show Aphrodite as
  the daughter of Zeus by Dione (whose name means
  simply goddess and who never appears again).
  So she is
• integrated into the Olympic family, subject to
  her fathers authority
• a little wild, feminine and frivolous

Aphrodite, Eros and Pan - ca. 100 B.C. E.
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Paphos
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Iconography of Aphrodite
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The Graces and the Horae
These are the companions of Aphrodite. Greek myth
abounds with female groups.
The Graces and Horae show the Greek tendency to
personify ideas, and also to envision a
collective feminine.
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The pleasing, sensuous motif of Aphrodite adorned
by the Graces and Horae remains powerful in Greek
art a characteristic moment.
Roman Mosaic from Tunis, 3rd c. CE
I shall sing about beautiful and revered
Aphrodite of the golden crown, who holds as her
domain the battlements of sea-girt Cyprus. The
moist force of the west wind brought her there
amidst the soft foam on the waves of the
resounding sea. The gold-bedecked Horae gladly
received her and clothed her in divine garments.
On her immortal head they placed a crown of gold
. . .
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Aphrodites rising from the sea is another common
image. Though she is not a sea goddess, the lush
watery images are very sexual.
In her pierced ears, they placed flowers of
copper and precious gold. About her soft neck
and silvery breasts they adorned her with
necklaces of gold, the kind that beautify the
Horae themselves when they go to the home of
their father. Then they led her to the
immortals, who took her into their welcoming
hands, and each god prayed that she would be his
wedded wife and he would bring her home . . .
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Here is the same motif in a Celtic-influenced
stele from England. The goddess and her nymphs
are evocative in many cultures.
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Origins of Aphrodite
Goddess of love and sex, associated with the
ocean and the East (Cyprus), and also with the
morning star (the planet Venus), Aphrodite may be
linked with other Eastern goddesses, especially
Inanna.
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Like Aphrodite, Inanna was a goddess of sexual
pleasure (shown here with her consort Dumuzi),
associated with the morning star. She had
further importance as a goddess of the date palm
(agricultural fertility), warfare, and the
communal storehouse.
Shown here with the lion (her rejected lover?)
and emblems of war, Inanna looks very different
from Golden Aphrodite
What other goddess is seen with lions?
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But she had similar cultural functions. Tivka
Frymer-Kensky observes, The goddess Inanna .
. . serves the important role of modeling a role
that women were not expected to fill and that was
not considered socially desirable. She
represents the nondomesticated woman, and
exemplifies all the fear and attraction that such
a woman elicits. She is the exception to the
rule, the woman who does not behave in societally
approved ways. . .
What Greek goddesses are associated with owls and
wild animals?
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She is a woman in a mans life . . .
dangerous, fearsome and threatening because of
her freedom, and yet, at the same time, appealing
and attractive . . . the ultimate femme fatale
(25, 29). Aphrodites marital infidelity,
leisured indulgence of her own beauty, liaisons
with not only other gods but mortals too, and
independent life, were anathema to a womans role
in the real Greek family. But both men and
women loved and honored her . . .
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Sappho
Sappho was the foremost female poet of the Greek
world, called The Tenth Muse. Her poetry
portrays Aphrodite as a powerful, often
supportive and loving, but also unpredictable
goddess. The relationship between poet and
goddess seems almost intimate.
Sappho and Alcaeus, 5 c BCE Athenian vase painting
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Sapphos hymn to Aphrodite
Exquisitely enthroned, immortal Aphrodite, weaver
of charms, child of Zeus, I beg you, reverend
lady, do not crush my heart with sickness and
distress. But come to me here, if ever once
before you heard my cry from afar and listened
and, leaving your fathers house, yoked your
chariot of gold. Beautiful birds drew you
swiftly from heaven over the black earth through
the air between the rapid flutter of their downy
wings.
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Who, Sappho, has wronged you? For if she runs
away now, soon she will follow if she rejects
your gifts, she will bring gifts herself if she
does not now, soon she will love, even though she
does not wish it. Come to me now too and free me
from my harsh anxieties all my heart longs for,
accomplish. You, your very self, stand with me
in my conflict.
Swiftly they came and you, O blessed goddess,
smiling in your immortal beauty asked what I
wished to happen most of all in my frenzied
heart. Who is it this time that you desire that
Persuasion entice to your love?
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Worship
The most common offering to Aphrodite was a dove
the sacrifice was individual and private, not
public. This reflects a sense of intimacy in
worshipping her.
This Roman wall painting shows a small private
shrine to Venus in a woodland setting.
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A woman worshipper with a tympanon (signifying
ecstatic celebration) and an image of the goddess

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And another with an offering bowl and a dove for
sacrifice
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Sanctuaries
Aphrodite also had significant public
sanctuaries, which were both sacred sites and
tourist attractions. One was Cnidus.
Emperor Hadrians reconstruction of the Cnidus
temple for his own private villa
At this site, the famous cult statue was
displayed in the midst of an open, circular
temple. The goddess moved everyone with her
beauty, showing her sexual power or was she an
objectified female in a voyeuristic setting? The
conflicting readings are so common in trying to
understand sexuality in this patriarchal culture.
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The cult statue of Cnidus was famous and much
admired, therefore much copied, but we have only
a fragment of a Roman copy preserved.
Late Classical Aphrodite of Cnidos torso
(fragment of Greco-Roman copy after cult statue
by Praxiteles original ca. 350-340 B.C.)
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Another of Aphrodites most famous temples was in
Corinth, on the Acrocorinth (high citadel).
Prostitutes served the goddess there. (And the
customers. . .)
To get there, you had to climb one huge hill!
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Goddess of Prostitutes
Aphrodite was the goddess of prostitutes
everyone needs a patron deity, and who else would
serve? These figurines are sometimes defined as
Aphrodite, but they may represent real exotic
dancers. The costume is attested in other
sources.
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Priapus
Also associated with Aphrodite is Priapus, an
easily recognizable figure. Hes Aphrodites son,
but whos the daddy? Adonis, Pan, Zeus, Hermes
and Dionysus are all candidates. Priapus is a
fertility figure, another one who inhabits the
mailbox position in a Greek or Roman
house. This fresco is from the entrance hall of a
wealthy house in Pompeii (1st c. CE)
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Golden Aphrodite also had a child by Hermes. He
took after his mom in some ways . . .
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And his dad in others . . . Actually
Hermaphroditus began as a man, but was magically
united with a nymph who loved him, and thats how
he ended with characteristics of both sexes.
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Aphrodite and Adonis
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Eros
But Aphrodites most notable offspring is her
son, Eros. Like her, he has dual origins, a
primal presence in Hesiod and a more tame,
conventional genealogy. He is shown as a
desirable young man, often winged. With his bow,
he shoots love arrows into his victims, though he
has other methods . . .
Eros, the blond god of lovers, strikes me with a
purple ball and asks me to play with a girl
wearing colorful sandals . . . (Anacreon)
M360
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Here Eros is shown more as an emblem, or a
spirit, or a child, rather than as a young
man. On this model egg he is enticing a woman to
love. On the flip side of the vase, two young
men (her suitors?) look on.
Model egg, from a tomb, 420-400 BCE
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Platos Symposium
In his dialog, the Symposium, Plato shows the
philosopher Socrates discussing the nature of
Love. Socrates and his friends use the
personified figure of Eros as a metaphor for the
nature of profound ideas about life and love.
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Platos Symposium
Aristophanes, a comic playwright, gives a comic
story of separation of four-legged, four armed,
two-headed lovers.
Is this what you desire, to be together as much
as possible and never to be separated the
happiness of our race lies in the fulfillment of
love each must find the beloved that is his a
beloved who is of one and the same mind and
nature
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Platos Symposium
Socrates quotes Diotima, a hetaira who showed him
that love, though it begins with physical
attraction, must mature into embracing the good
and the beautiful
He will realize that beauty in the soul is more
precious than that in the body he will beget
beautiful ideas he will see the beauty in
morals and laws and that the beauty in all of
them is related.
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finis
Aphrodite and Eros before a bride