Aphrodite
Biography
Aphrodite was said to have been the most beautiful and sensual of all the goddesses. There are varying stories of her birth. One story holds that she was born from the loins of Uranus, when his sex was severed from him and thrown into the sea: Aphrodite emerged from the sea foam—a daughter of the sea, which is why one of the most famous images of her in artistic expression is of the goddess emerging from the sea (Graves). Homer in the Iliad indicated that Aphrodite was the daughter of Zeus and Dione. Regardless of her origin story, Aphrodite served a central role in the back story of Greece, particularly when it came to her feud with Hera and Athena over who was the most beautiful of all.
Aphrodite was said to have married Hephaestus, the god of blacksmithing. She was also said to have had many paramours, including one with Ares, the god of war. One story told is that Aphrodite and Ares were caught making love by Hephaestus in his very bed and that he caught them in a metal net that he made. He then had the gods and goddesses come and mock the adulterers, but not all did, and Hephaestus agreed to release them. Aphrodite went to Cyprus and was comforted by the Charites also known as Gracs.
One of Aphrodite’s constant companions is Eros, the god of erotic love. Like Aphrodite, the origin of Eros is unclear, but one popular myth is that he was the love-child of Aphrodite and Ares (Cyrino). Some of Aphrodite’s lovers in popular myths include Zeus, Poseidon, Adonis, Hermes, Ares, Phaeton and Dionysus.
Why She is Known as the Goddess of Love
Aphrodite is known as the goddess of love because of the many myths surrounding her love affairs, her infamous beauty, and the fact that her progeny (Eros—or Cupid as he is called in Roman mythology) has long been associated with romantic love. Aphrodite was also worshipped as the goddess of fertility (most likely because she had so many lovers and so many love-children). So whenever a devotee wanted a child, worship of Aphrodite was the best course of action. So powerful was this devotion, in fact, that today what is called a love potion or aphrodisiac is named so after Aphrodite. An aphrodisiac is something that seduces the senses and arouses one’s sexual passion or lust for another. Aphrodite, because of her immense beauty, was said to be able to arouse the love, passion and lust of anyone, mortal or immortal. For that reason, the concept of erotic love has been linked to Aphrodite since the age of the classical period.
The Romans named Aphrodite Venus when they brought the Greek culture into their own. Ares became known as Mars. Today the planets Venus and Mars are named after these same two immortals. The popular marriage counseling book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus plays upon the theme that men and women are completely different beings: women are linked with Venus (Aphrodite) and the concept of romantic love,...…lot for the Greeks (and later the Romans) who adored her. She inspired them with love and helped them to populate the earth. Were it not for Aphrodite, there would be no love goddess to help men and women come together romantically and have children.
She was also an inspiration for artists, who portrayed her in statues and in stories and in paintings. She captured the imagination of one and all because she embodied the idea of physical beauty and the concept of erotic love. For her passionate love was all that mattered (and of course so long as she was the object of that love, all was good and right with the world). She demanded that she be honored and worshipped because she viewed herself as being the patroness of love and life and child-begetting. If people did not honor and worship her, she basically cursed them and ruined their lives, so of course the Greeks and Romans were going to go out of their way to show her respect and homage.
There is even the story of Pygmalion which shows just how gracious Aphrodite could be: Pygmalion was a sculptor who carved a statue of Aphrodite that was so beautiful he fell in love with it and refused to have anything to do with other real live women. Aphrodite took pity on him since he was so devoted to her and brought the statue to life so that Pygmalion could marry her. This was the kind of thing Aphrodite did to those who loved her.
Works…
Aphrodite and Venus Aphrodite vs. Venus In many ways the two goddesses were the same person because they were both said to be beautiful and carried the mantle as goddesses of love and fertility. However, the tradition is much different since both were borrowed from other traditions (Venus came, in part, from the Aphrodite tradition), so were not unique to the pantheons they occupied. The goddesses were both also associated with multiple
Greek Project 1272 ART204 Formal Research Project Summer Term 2012 Ancient Greek sculpture is one of the most famous historical forms of art. Three main forms of life are represented by this sculpture; war, mythology, and rulers of the land of ancient Greece. The main aim of the paper is to revisit the history of the art of sculpturing in ancient Greece and different steps of its development within different time periods.
Greek and Roman Greek Mythology: Identification of Heroic Greek Myths in Modern Movies There are many effective and functional parallels in modern movies to ancient myths. They make us feel and think about many things. Modern movies that have been successful at the box office are inspired by Greek myths. We see common themes, characters and motifs of myth in the modern movies. The goal here is to identify the mythic elements
Greek Sculpture A Timeline of Greek Sculpture Polykleitos, Doryphoros (early fourth century BC) As Paul Johnson (2003) records, this ancient example of Greek classicalism "epitomizes a canon of male beauty embodied in mathematical proportions" (p. 63). Showing the perfection of contraposto, Doryphoros (or the spear-carrier) is a balanced representation of the body's muscles. Polykleitos, a contemporary of Phidias, had his own school of young artists, which carried on into the third century BC.
There were many other gods and goddesses and other supernatural beings in both mythologies (Meeks 2002). There were godlings, demigods, river nymphs and tree dryads and other mythical creatures, such as satyrs, comprising the entire belief systems. These systems were polytheistic as well as animistic. The system held that every tree, river and every part of nature had a spirit or energy behind it. Hercules was a famous demigod (Meeks).
The first is the famous "Bartlett Head," named for Francis Bartlett, who provided the funds for its acquisition by the MFA in 1900. Celebrated in rapturous prose by Henry James within a few years of its first appearance in Boston, it was carved from luminous marble shortly after Praxiteles's Knidos Aphrodite, and remains to this day one of the most admired examples of classical Greek sculpture. The life-size head
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now