Mythman's Major Olympian Gods
ALL ABOUT THE GODS OF MOUNT OLYMPUS

APHRODITE - GODDESS OF LOVE 3

LATIN - VENUS


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APHRODITE PAGE THREE
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Aphrodite set in motion the Trojan War. She promised the shepherd called Paris that Helen, the most beautiful mortal woman in the world, would be his if Paris chose Aphrodite over Athena and Hera in a beauty contest.

Paris took the bait, picked Aphrodite, and when Helen ran away to Troy with Paris, the enraged Greeks gathered a mighty fleet and army and attacked the great city. Thus began the Trojan War, leading to the fall of mighty Troy.

Aphrodite would often help young people in love: Atalanta, a virgin huntress, and swift as a deer, used to force her wooers to race before her, but if she caught them she would put them to death.

If anybody survived she would marry him. None lived.

A man named Melanion (also known as Hippomenes) had a crush on beautiful Atalanta, but was astute enough to know he had no chance to beat her in the race. After the young man beseeched the Goddess of Love for her help, Aphrodite gave Melanion three golden apples, which he scattered on the ground as he ran.

Atalanta could not help but stop to pick up the exquisite and magical fruit, and was thus beaten in the race, becoming his wife.

But Aphrodite wasn't all lovey-dovey. She could be harsh to those who defied her. Because the Lemnian women did not honor her, she inflicted a foul smell on them and caused their husbands to consort with Thracian women.

The Lemnian women, abandoned by their husbands, killed all the remaining men on the island and established a society of women.

When Aphrodite caught her lover Ares in bed with Eos (Dawn), she cursed his lover with a constant longing for young mortals.

When the Sirens refused to yield their virginity to either mortals or gods, Aphrodite turned them into birds.

Her power was immense, and her victims included many very famous women in mythology, including Helen, Medea, Ariadne, Phaedra and Hippodameia, to name but a few.

It's been written that Aphrodite's son was Eros (Love, Cupid), a very wicked and mischievous boy some say, lacking all manners. The brat spent his time in running all night from building to building, and with his love arrows breaking up respectable homes.

Nobody was immune to his capricious nature, not even Zeus, in whom Eros often inspired sexual desires, which constantly got him in trouble with his wife Hera.

Aphrodite's attendants were the Horae (Hours, Seasons, who are worshipped as the wardens of the sky and of Olympus and are also said to attend to the Sun god, Helios) and the Three Graces (Aglaia, Euphrosyne and Thalia, known in Greek as the Charites); Flora (goddess of vegetation) and Zephyrus (the west wind) were ready to do her bidding as well.

She was the patroness of gardens and gardeners as well as lovers. The myrtle was her tree; the rose, lily, hyacinth, crocus and narcissus were also sacred to her.

Her animals were the swan, the dove, the sparrow and the dolphin. The principal places of her worship in Greece were the islands of Cythera and Cyprus, but she was revered just about everywhere.

The presence of sanctuaries dedicated to Aphrodite on many islands suggests that she was a West Asian goddess who was brought to Greece by sea-traders.

Aphrodite appears to have been originally identical with Astarte, the Phoenician goddess of fertility and reproduction, whom the Hebrews called Ashtoreth.

The Romans called her Venus.

 

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