Aphrodite, A Compendium of the Ancient Gods

Aphrodite was the goddess of love, of beauty, of sexual desire, of fertility — the great Greek goddess of all that draws living creatures toward each other. Her parentage was given two ways. In the older Hesiodic account, she was born of the foam (Greek aphros, whence her name) that gathered round the severed members of Uranus when Cronus cast them into the sea after the castration; she rose from the foam fully grown, was wafted to the island of Cyprus, and stepped ashore at Paphos, where her great sanctuary stood in classical times. In the alternative Homeric account, she was a daughter of Zeus and the obscure Titaness Dione. The two versions are not easily reconciled, and Greek mythography accepted both with the latitude characteristic of the tradition.

She was married, against her will, to the lame Hephaestus — Zeus having given her to him to settle a difficulty in the Olympian assembly — and she was unfaithful with great regularity. Her best-known affair was with Ares, told in the entry above; she also bore Hermes a son (the Hermaphroditus who united both their natures in his single bisexual form), Dionysus the great Priapus, and the mortal Anchises the hero Aeneas — who, in the Roman tradition, would lead the survivors of Troy to Italy and beget the line that founded Rome. Her interest in mortal lovers was particularly strong: besides Anchises, she was attached to the youth Adonis, whom she found newly born and entrusted to Persephone for safekeeping; the two goddesses then quarreled over which should keep him, and Zeus decreed that he should spend a third of the year with each and a third of his own choosing (which he generally spent with Aphrodite). When Adonis was killed by a wild boar in the prime of his manhood, Aphrodite mourned with such grief that the gods relented and allowed him to come up annually for a portion of the year; the seasonal mourning-and-return of Adonis became the matter of an important women's cult, the Adonia, celebrated each summer with rooftop gardens of quick-blooming and quick-dying plants.

Her cult was widespread. Her great sanctuaries were at Paphos and Amathus on Cyprus, at Cnidus (whose famous nude Aphrodite by Praxiteles, c. 360 BCE, was the first major female nude in Greek monumental art), at Corinth (where her temple atop Acrocorinth maintained a thousand sacred hetairai, attested by Strabo). She was attended by the Charites (the Graces), by Eros and Himeros (love and desire), and by her doves and swans. Her Roman counterpart was Venus.

Curator’s note

What the sources say, and what later tradition added. The sources for this bay

The two birth-stories: Hesiod, Theogony 188–206 (foam-born) and Homer, Iliad 5.370–417 (daughter of Zeus and Dione). The Adonis cycle is most fully in Apollodorus 3.14.4 and Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.500–739; the Adonia festival is described by Plutarch and others. The Cnidian Aphrodite of Praxiteles is one of the most important works of classical Greek sculpture; the original is lost but Roman copies survive. Strabo's account of the temple-prostitution at Corinthian Aphrodite (Strabo 8.6.20) has been disputed by some recent scholarship, which has argued the institution may be misrepresented; the historical reality of organized hieroduly at Corinth is debated. Aphrodite's connection to the Phoenician/Canaanite Astarte, treated in Volume I, is well established and reflects long contact between Greek and Near Eastern religious traditions.

Kin in the sources

Each tie is quoted from the entry that states it.

Child ofUranusshe was born of the foam (Greek aphros, whence her name) that gathered round the severed members of Uranus
Child ofZeusshe was a daughter of Zeus and the obscure Titaness Dione
Consort ofHephaestusShe was married, against her will, to the lame Hephaestus
Consort ofAresHer best-known affair was with Ares, told in the entry above
Consort ofHermesshe also bore Hermes a son (the Hermaphroditus who united both their natures
Consort ofDionysusshe also bore Hermes a son (the Hermaphroditus who united both their natures in his single bisexual form), Dionysus the great Priapus
Parent ofAeneasand the mortal Anchises the hero Aeneas
Companion ofAdonisshe was attached to the youth Adonis, whom she found newly born
Rival ofPersephonethe two goddesses then quarreled over which should keep him
Companion ofThe CharitesShe was attended by the Charites (the Graces), by Eros and Himeros
Compared withAstarteAphrodite's connection to the Phoenician/Canaanite Astarte, treated in Volume I, is well established
Consort ofAdonisbeloved of Aphrodite who hid him as an infant in a chest entrusted to Persephone of the underworld

The same god in other rooms

The ancient sources themselves name these as one god under different names. See Baalat Gebal, Hathor, Aphrodite and Turan hung together

When the sources speak

Dated witnesses for Hades and the Lesser Olympians. A date marks when the evidence was written down, not when the belief began. The whole timeline

c. 1600–1100 BCE: Mycenaean palace tablets in Linear B record offerings and divine names, but little continuous myth.
c. 1100–800 BCE: Post-palatial oral traditions and changing cult landscapes precede the surviving alphabetic epics.
late 8th–7th centuries BCE: The Iliad, Odyssey, Hesiodic Theogony and Works and Days give influential but non-exclusive divine orders.
7th–6th centuries BCE: Homeric Hymns, lyric poetry, colonization, and local sanctuary traditions multiply regional narratives.
6th–5th centuries BCE: Orphic, Pythagorean, and mystery materials develop alternative cosmogonies and afterlife doctrines.
5th century BCE: Athenian tragedy and comedy recast heroic houses and divine justice for civic audiences.
4th century BCE: Philosophers, antiquarians, and local historians interpret or criticize inherited myth.
323–31 BCE: Hellenistic poets and scholars systematize variants across an enlarged Greek world.