Why Aphrodite?

Aphrodite was the goddess of erotic love and beauty. Today she is one of the best known goddesses and easily one of the most recognisable. Images such as Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus and statues like the Venus de Milo are some of the many iconic representations of Aphrodite. Her status as a goddess of love is well documented. Homer, Hesiod, and Euripides have all shown her to be a goddess of great beauty (naked or adorned), seduction, persuasion and passion. She is the divine source of peitho, "persuasion," eros, "sexual desire" and himeros "longing" and Eros was her companion.[i] Hesiod links Aphrodite inextricably to sex with his account of her birth; from the sea where Ouranos’ castrated genitals had been discarded.[ii]

Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli c.1486. It depicts Aphrodite/Venus emerging out of the sea as a fully grown women, relating to Hesiod's version of Aphrodite's birth. 

The Venus de Milo sculpted by Alexandros of Antioch between 130 and 100 BC

 Before researching this blog I thought Aphrodite’s remit was limited to love and seduction but there are other sides to Aphrodite that I feel have been a little neglected. Homer repeatedly calls her the Dios thugater (daughter of Zeus)[iii] which brings into light the relationship between the Homeric and Hesiodic Aphrodite and Zeus. Aphrodite was the goddess of mixis, the “mingling” of bodies in an intimate physical contact, in a martial and sexual sense.[iv] She could also be fiercely protective and brave at times, such as when she rescued Paris from the Battle of Troy.[v] I want to discover why she called Aphrodite Pandemos “She who Belongs to all the People”.[vi] Was it because she encompassed so many ideas in one deity?

Detail of a Apulian Red Figure vase showing Zeus, Aphrodite and Eros in a palace or temple.

So it is because of these different and lesser known traits of this deity that I have decided to make this blog solely focused on her. I want to explore the little known sides of Aphrodite and in doing so learn a more about her, her interactions with other figures from ancient Greek religion.

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[i] Cyrnio, Monica S. Aphrodite. London: Routledge (2010)  pg. 3

[ii] Hesiod, Theogany. lines 188-206, trans M.L. West, Oxford: OUP (1999) pg 8-9

[iii] Homer. There are multiple references to Aphrodite being called “Dios thugatēr”  in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. Trans Stanley Lombardo. Indianapolis: Hacket (1997)

[iv] Cyrino. Aphrodite.  pg. 3

[v] Homer, Iliad  Book 3 lines 374-82

[vi] Cyrino, pg. 3

Bibliography

Cyrino, Monica S. Aphrodite. London: Routledge, 2010.

Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days (trans. M.L. West), Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 1999.

Homer, Iliad Trans Stanley Lombardo. Indianapolis: Hacket (1997)

Joint Association of Classical Teachers', The World of Athens. 2nd Ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2008.