- Looks after
- Love, beauty and desire
- Roman name
- Venus
- Often shown with
- The dove, the sparrow, the myrtle, the rose, the scallop shell.
Aphrodite
Ἀφροδίτη
Aphrodite is the goddess of love and beauty. Hesiod has her born from the sea foam; Homer makes her a daughter of Zeus and Dione.
Aphrodite's origin has two versions. In Hesiod's Theogony, she rose from the foam that gathered around the severed genitals of Uranus when Cronus threw them into the sea. She came ashore first at Cythera and then at Cyprus, which is why both are her cult places. In Homer, she is the daughter of Zeus and Dione.
She is the goddess of sexual love, beauty and the pleasure that goes with them, and her power can override gods and mortals alike, with the exception of Athena, Artemis and Hestia. Her attendants are the Graces and Eros.
She was married to the smith god Hephaestus, but loved Ares. She also loved the mortal Anchises, with whom she had Aeneas, the Trojan hero who in Virgil's Aeneid founded the Roman line. She played a part in starting the Trojan War: Paris judged her the fairest of the goddesses and was offered the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen.
Other myths include Adonis, who died young, and Pygmalion in Ovid, whose statue came to life.
In later art and language
The word aphrodisiac comes from her name, and the Venus de Milo, a Hellenistic statue found in 1820 and now in the Louvre, is thought to represent her.
Ancient sources
- Hesiod, Theogony 188-206
- Homer, Iliad 5.311-430
- Homeric Hymn 5 to Aphrodite
- Ovid, Metamorphoses 10
The family of Aphrodite
Partners
Children
In Hesiod she is born from the sea foam around the severed flesh of Uranus; Homer makes her the daughter of Zeus and Dione.