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103-403: Ecdysia (from Greek ἑκδύω "to undress") was a ritual involved sacred ceremonies and celebrations at Phaistos , Crete, which were held in honor of Leto Phytia, mother of Apollo and Artemis . The legend is about the story of Galatea, daughter of Evritios and wife of Lambros. Because her husband had warned her that if she gave birth to a daughter he would kill her, Galatea, wanting to save her,

206-541: A strophion ( στρόφιον ) known as the kestos himas ( κεστὸς ἱμάς ), a saltire-shaped undergarment (usually translated as the girdle of Aphrodite ), which accentuated her breasts and made her even more irresistible to men. Such strophia were commonly used in depictions of the Near Eastern goddesses Ishtar and Atargatis . Aphrodite is almost always accompanied by Eros , the god of lust and sexual desire. In his Theogony , Hesiod describes Eros as one of

309-595: A Semitic deity, may have been influenced by the Indo-European dawn goddess. Both Aphrodite and Eos were known for their erotic beauty and aggressive sexuality and both had relationships with mortal lovers. Both goddesses were associated with the colors red, white, and gold. Michael Janda etymologizes Aphrodite's name as an epithet of Eos meaning "she who rises from the foam [of the ocean]" and points to Hesiod's Theogony account of Aphrodite's birth as an archaic reflex of Indo-European myth. Aphrodite rising out of

412-670: A suicide note to Theseus telling him that she killed herself because Hippolytus attempted to rape her. Theseus prays to Poseidon to kill Hippolytus for his transgression. Poseidon sends a wild bull to scare Hippolytus's horses as he is riding by the sea in his chariot, causing the horses to bolt and smash the chariot against the cliffs, dragging Hippolytus to a bloody death across the rocky shoreline. The play concludes with Artemis vowing to kill Aphrodite's own mortal beloved (presumably Adonis) in revenge. Glaucus of Corinth angered Aphrodite by refusing to let his horses for chariot racing mate, since doing so would hinder their speed. During

515-525: A Greek folk tale , originally independent of the Odyssey . In a much later interpolated detail, Ares put the young soldier Alectryon by the door to warn of Helios's arrival but Alectryon fell asleep on guard duty. Helios discovered the two and alerted Hephaestus; Ares in rage turned Alectryon into a rooster , which unfailingly crows to announce the sunrise. After exposing them, Hephaestus asks Zeus for his wedding gifts and dowry to be returned to him; by

618-579: A Near Eastern origin argued that Aphrodite originated as an aspect of the Greek dawn goddess Eos and that she was therefore ultimately derived from the Proto-Indo-European dawn goddess * H a éusōs (properly Greek Eos , Latin Aurora , Sanskrit Ushas ). Most modern scholars have now rejected the notion of a purely Indo-European Aphrodite, but it is possible that Aphrodite, originally

721-480: A city on Crete of that name at or near the current ruins. Phaistos was first inhabited around 3600 BCE, slightly later than other early sites such as Knossos . During the Early Minoan period, the site's hills were terraced and monumental buildings were constructed on them. Like other large Minoan cities, there was a palace that was built in an area that had been used earlier for communal feasting. The palace

824-455: A different aspect of the same goddess or used by a different local cult. Thus she was also known as Cytherea ( Lady of Cythera ) and Cypris ( Lady of Cyprus ), because both locations claimed to be the place of her birth. Sappho 's Ode to Aphrodite is one of the earliest poems dedicated to the goddess and survives from the Archaic period nearly complete. In Greek mythology , Aphrodite

927-650: A festival on the anniversary of his death. In one version of the story, Aphrodite injured herself on a thorn from a rose bush and the rose, which had previously been white, was stained red by her blood. According to Lucian 's On the Syrian Goddess , each year during the festival of Adonis, the Adonis River in Lebanon (now known as the Abraham River ) ran red with blood. The myth of Adonis

1030-551: A fine, near invisible net. The next time Ares and Aphrodite had sex together, the net trapped them both. Hephaestus brought all the gods into the bedchamber to laugh at the captured adulterers, but Apollo , Hermes , and Poseidon had sympathy for Ares and Poseidon agreed to pay Hephaestus for Ares's release. Aphrodite returned to her temple in Cyprus, where she was attended by the Charites . This narrative probably originated as

1133-401: A handsome mortal shepherd who lived in the foothills beneath Mount Ida near the city of Troy . Aphrodite appears to Anchises in the form of a tall, beautiful, mortal virgin while he is alone in his home. Anchises sees her dressed in bright clothing and gleaming jewelry, with her breasts shining with divine radiance. He asks her if she is Aphrodite and promises to build her an altar on top of

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1236-533: A highly contrived etymology, deriving Aphrodite from the compound habrodíaitos ( ἁβροδίαιτος ), "she who lives delicately", from habrós and díaita . The alteration from b to ph is explained as a "familiar" characteristic of Greek "obvious from the Macedonians ". In the Cypriot syllabary , a syllabic script used on the island of Cyprus from the eleventh until the fourth centuries BC, Aphrodite's name

1339-490: A large earthquake. Phaistos was interconnected to various other residences, most notably Hagia Triada and Gortyn . Hagia Triada has a smaller palace which may have been connected to the rulers of Phaistos as a vacation residence. Hagia Triada's port and relative closeness to Phaistos may have allowed for long distance trade and shared economic and political activity. Phaistos was one of the 3 largest cities of Minoan Crete along with Knossos and Malia . A road system connects

1442-434: A public display of grief. In Hesiod's Works and Days , Zeus orders Aphrodite to make Pandora , the first woman, physically beautiful and sexually attractive, so that she may become "an evil men will love to embrace". Aphrodite "spills grace" over Pandora's head and equips her with "painful desire and knee-weakening anguish", thus making her the perfect vessel for evil to enter the world. Aphrodite's attendants, Peitho,

1545-567: A temple to Aphrodite Hathor at Philae . Statuettes of Aphrodite for personal devotion became common in Egypt starting in the early Ptolemaic times and extending until long after Egypt became a Roman province . The ancient Romans identified Aphrodite with their goddess Venus , who was originally a goddess of agricultural fertility, vegetation, and springtime. According to the Roman historian Livy , Aphrodite and Venus were officially identified in

1648-435: A theater. The Minoan Palace at Phaistos was destroyed and rebuilt multiple times. The earliest iteration of the palace was used as a foundation for the newer reconstructions. The new reconstructions of the palace shifted around slightly eastward of the original palace. The reconstructions of the palace expanded on the first build and were made on multiple vertical levels that were interconnected by halls and stairs. The palace

1751-463: A variety of quick-growing plants, such as lettuce and fennel , or even quick-sprouting grains such as wheat and barley . The women would then climb ladders to the roofs of their houses, where they would place the gardens out under the heat of the summer sun. The plants would sprout in the sunlight but wither quickly in the heat. Then the women would mourn and lament loudly over the death of Adonis, tearing their clothes and beating their breasts in

1854-547: Is Philommeidḗs ( φιλομμειδής ), which means "smile-loving", but is sometimes mistranslated as "laughter-loving". This epithet occurs throughout both of the Homeric epics and the First Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite . Hesiod references it once in his Theogony in the context of Aphrodite's birth, but interprets it as "genital-loving" rather than "smile-loving". Monica Cyrino notes that the epithet may relate to

1957-468: Is an ancient Greek goddess associated with love, lust, beauty, pleasure, passion, procreation, and as her syncretized Roman goddess counterpart Venus , desire, sex , fertility , prosperity, and victory. Aphrodite's major symbols include seashells, myrtles , roses, doves, sparrows, and swans. The cult of Aphrodite was largely derived from that of the Phoenician goddess Astarte , a cognate of

2060-403: Is associated with spiritual love, and Pandemos with physical love (desire). A representation of Ourania with her foot resting on a tortoise came to be seen as emblematic of discretion in conjugal love; it was the subject of a chryselephantine sculpture by Phidias for Elis , known only from a parenthetical comment by the geographer Pausanias . One of Aphrodite's most common literary epithets

2163-591: Is associated with the festival of the Adonia , which was celebrated by Greek women every year in midsummer. The festival, which was evidently already celebrated in Lesbos by Sappho's time, seems to have first become popular in Athens in the mid-fifth century BC. At the start of the festival, the women would plant a "garden of Adonis", a small garden planted inside a small basket or a shallow piece of broken pottery containing

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2266-509: Is attested in the forms 𐠀𐠡𐠦𐠭𐠃𐠂 (a-po-ro-ta-o-i, read right-to-left), 𐠀𐠡𐠦𐠯𐠭𐠂 (a-po-ro-ti-ta-i, samewise), and finally 𐠀𐠡𐠦𐠯𐠪𐠈 (a-po-ro-ti-si-jo, " Aphrodisian ", "related to Aphrodite", in the context of a month). The cult of Aphrodite in Greece was imported from, or at least influenced by, the cult of Astarte in Phoenicia , which, in turn, was influenced by

2369-432: Is generally accepted to be of non-Greek (probably Semitic ) origin, but its exact derivation cannot be determined with confidence. Scholars in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, accepting Hesiod's "foam" etymology as genuine, analyzed the second part of Aphrodite's name as * -odítē "wanderer" or as * -dítē "bright". More recently, Michael Janda, also accepting Hesiod's etymology, has argued in favor of

2472-437: Is often seen as Aphrodite's son, but this is actually a comparatively late innovation. A scholion on Theocritus 's Idylls remarks that the sixth-century BC poet Sappho had described Eros as the son of Aphrodite and Uranus, but the first surviving reference to Eros as Aphrodite's son comes from Apollonius of Rhodes 's Argonautica , written in the third century BC, which makes him the son of Aphrodite and Ares. Later,

2575-693: Is probably derived from the ancient Sumerian legend of Inanna and Dumuzid . The Greek name Ἄδωνις ( Adōnis , Greek pronunciation: [ádɔːnis] ) is derived from the Canaanite word ʼadōn , meaning "lord". The earliest known Greek reference to Adonis comes from a fragment of a poem by the Lesbian poet Sappho ( c.  630 – c.  570 BC ), in which a chorus of young girls asks Aphrodite what they can do to mourn Adonis's death. Aphrodite replies that they must beat their breasts and tear their tunics. Later references flesh out

2678-514: Is the younger of the two goddesses: the common Aphrodite, born from the union of Zeus and Dione, and the inspiration of heterosexual desire and sexual promiscuity, the "lesser" of the two loves. Paphian (Παφία), was one of her epithets, after the Paphos in Cyprus where she had emerged from the sea at her birth. Among the Neoplatonists and, later, their Christian interpreters, Ourania

2781-570: Is unmarried and the wife of Hephaestus is Aglaea , the youngest of the three Charites . In Book Eight of the Odyssey , however, the blind singer Demodocus describes Aphrodite as the wife of Hephaestus and tells how she committed adultery with Ares during the Trojan War . The sun-god Helios saw Aphrodite and Ares having sex in Hephaestus's bed and warned Hephaestus, who fashioned

2884-461: The Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus tells how, when the women of the island of Lemnos refused to sacrifice to Aphrodite, the goddess cursed them to stink horribly so that their husbands would never have sex with them. Instead, their husbands started having sex with their Thracian slave-girls . In anger, the women of Lemnos murdered the entire male population of the island, as well as all

2987-496: The Church of Aphrodite , Wicca , and Hellenism . Hesiod derives the name Aphrodite from aphrós ( ἀφρός ) "sea-foam", interpreting the name as "risen from the foam", but most modern scholars regard this as a spurious folk etymology . Early-modern scholars of classical mythology attempted to argue that Aphrodite's name was of Greek or Indo-European origin, but these efforts have mostly been abandoned. Aphrodite's name

3090-593: The East Semitic goddess Ishtar , whose cult was based on the Sumerian cult of Inanna . Aphrodite's main cult centers were Cythera , Cyprus , Corinth , and Athens . Her main festival was the Aphrodisia , which was celebrated annually in midsummer. In Laconia , Aphrodite was worshipped as a warrior goddess. She was also the patron goddess of prostitutes , an association which led early scholars to propose

3193-559: The Garden of the Hesperides and instructed him to toss them in front of Atalanta as he raced her. Hippomenes obeyed Aphrodite's order and Atalanta, seeing the beautiful, golden fruits, bent down to pick up each one, allowing Hippomenes to outrun her. In the version of the story from Ovid's Metamorphoses , Hippomenes forgets to repay Aphrodite for her aid, so she causes the couple to become inflamed with lust while they are staying at

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3296-633: The Theogony , Hesiod describes Dione as an Oceanid , but Apollodorus makes her the thirteenth Titan , child of Gaia and Uranus. Aphrodite is consistently portrayed as a nubile, infinitely desirable adult, having had no childhood. She is often depicted nude. In the Iliad , Aphrodite is the apparently unmarried consort of Ares , the god of war, and the wife of Hephaestus is a different goddess named Charis . Likewise, in Hesiod's Theogony , Aphrodite

3399-530: The Vedic deity Ushas . Modern scholars, due to the believed Near Eastern origins of Aphrodite's worship, have since proposed Semitic origins for the name. Some scholars, such as Fritz Hommel , have suggested that Aphrodite's name is a hellenized pronunciation of the name " Astarte "; other scholars, however, reject this as being linguistically untenable. Martin West reconstructs a Cyprian Canaanite form of

3502-603: The ekdysia , which is a ritual practiced in Phaistos. The temple was built after the Geometric age.   Phaistos was located in 1853 by Thomas Abel Brimage Spratt , a ship captain who surveyed sites around the Mediterranean. Spratt triangulated the location of Phaistos to a hill then known as Kastri ("fort", "small castle") using the locations or Gortyn , Matala , and the coast. A village of 16 houses remained on

3605-533: The 400 BCE, the use of small group and family tombs became common practice. A clay model found at one of the larger tombs depicts couples at altars with offerings. The details of this model have been likened to the Hagia Triada sarcophagus . Pottery including polychrome items and embossing in imitation of metal work has been found at Phaistos. This imitation came in the form of making pottery extremely thin, being likened to eggshell. This pottery also mimicked

3708-561: The Charites, and the Horae, adorn Pandora with gold and jewelry. According to one myth, Aphrodite aided Hippomenes , a noble youth who wished to marry Atalanta , a maiden who was renowned throughout the land for her beauty, but who refused to marry any man unless he could outrun her in a footrace . Atalanta was an exceedingly swift runner and she beheaded all of the men who lost to her. Aphrodite gave Hippomenes three golden apples from

3811-550: The Homeric epics indicate its participation in the Trojan War . The historian Diodorus Siculus indicates that Phaistos, as well as Knossos and Kydonia , are the three towns founded by King Minos on Crete . However, Pausanias and Stephanus of Byzantium indicate that the founder of the city was Phaestos, son of Hercules or Ropalus. The city of Phaistos is associated with the mythical king of Crete Rhadamanthys . Aphrodite Aphrodite ( / ˌ æ f r ə ˈ d aɪ t iː / , AF -rə- DY -tee )

3914-553: The Middle and Late Minoan periods. Bronze Age works from Phaistos include bridge spouted bowls , eggshell cups, tall jars and large pithoi . Grape pips have been found in storage vessels at Phaistos, indicating the production of wine. The site was reinhabited during the Geometric Age (8th century BCE). Phaistos had its own currency, the stater . The city also created an alliance with other autonomous Cretan cities, and with

4017-580: The Minoan site of Hagia Triada , located about 3 kilometers away. Between 1909 and 1922 Antonio Minto excavated on the hill of Christos Effendi, especially the fortification walls there. Between 1950 and 1966 an Italian School of Archaeology at Athens team led by Doro Levi worked at Phaistos. From 2000 to 2004 the effort was led by Vincenzo La Rosa. Beginning in 2007 the Phaistos Project (also Progetto festos), led by Fausto Longo, under

4120-525: The Romans, who saw Venus as a mother goddess, seized on this idea of Eros as Aphrodite's son and popularized it, making it the predominant portrayal in works on mythology until the present day. Aphrodite's main attendants were the three Charites , whom Hesiod identifies as the daughters of Zeus and Eurynome and names as Aglaea ("Splendor"), Euphrosyne ("Good Cheer"), and Thalia ("Abundance"). The Charites had been worshipped as goddesses in Greece since

4223-519: The Thracian slaves. When Jason and his crew of Argonauts arrived on Lemnos, they mated with the sex-starved women under Aphrodite's approval and repopulated the island. From then on, the women of Lemnos never disrespected Aphrodite again. In Euripides 's tragedy Hippolytus , which was first performed at the City Dionysia in 428 BC, Theseus's son Hippolytus worships only Artemis ,

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4326-550: The aegis of the Italian Archaeological School of Athens has worked at the site, mainly conducting surveys, restorations, and targeted excavations. To date 61 Linear A inscribed items have been found at Phaistos (26 tablets, 35 sealed documents). Also found were 12 sealed roundels (9 inscribed with Linear A characters) and thousands of sealings (including nodules). In 1908, the Phaistos Disc

4429-456: The beginning of Greek history, long before Aphrodite was introduced to the pantheon. Aphrodite's other set of attendants was the three Horae (the "Hours"), whom Hesiod identifies as the daughters of Zeus and Themis and names as Eunomia ("Good Order"), Dike ("Justice"), and Eirene ("Peace"). Aphrodite was also sometimes accompanied by Harmonia , her daughter by Ares, and Hebe , the daughter of Zeus and Hera. The fertility god Priapus

4532-471: The chariot race at the funeral games of King Pelias , Aphrodite drove his horses mad and they tore him apart. Polyphonte was a young woman who chose a virginal life with Artemis instead of marriage and children, as favoured by Aphrodite. Aphrodite cursed her, causing her to have children by a bear. The resulting bear-like offspring Agrius and Oreius were wild cannibals who incurred the hatred of Zeus for attacking traveling strangers. Ultimately, Ares (who

4635-583: The cities and the road from Phaistos to Knossos seems to the most prominent. This indicates that trade and transportation between the two cities was important, and that Phaistos was a valuable trade partner. Several artifacts with Linear A inscriptions were excavated at this site. The name of the site also appears in partially deciphered Linear A texts and may be similar to Mycenaean 'PA-I-TO' as written on 62 Linear B tablets found at Knossos. Several kouloura structures (subsurface pits) have been found at Phaistos. Pottery has been recovered at Phaistos from in

4738-413: The city. Arsinoe II introduced the cult of Adonis to Alexandria and many of the women there partook in it. The Tessarakonteres , a gigantic catamaran galley designed by Archimedes for Ptolemy IV Philopator , had a circular temple to Aphrodite on it with a marble statue of the goddess herself. In the second century BC, Ptolemy VIII Physcon and his wives Cleopatra II and Cleopatra III dedicated

4841-472: The concept of " sacred prostitution " in Greco-Roman culture, an idea which is now generally seen as erroneous. A major goddess in the Greek pantheon, Aphrodite featured prominently in ancient Greek literature . In Hesiod 's Theogony , Aphrodite is born off the coast of Cythera from the foam ( ἀφρός , aphrós ) produced by Uranus 's genitals, which his son Cronus had severed and thrown into

4944-752: The cult of the Mesopotamian goddess known as "Ishtar" to the East Semitic peoples and as " Inanna " to the Sumerians . Pausanias states that the first to establish a cult of Aphrodite were the Assyrians , followed by the Paphians of Cyprus and then the Phoenicians at Ascalon . The Phoenicians, in turn, taught her worship to the people of Cythera . Aphrodite took on Inanna-Ishtar's associations with sexuality and procreation. Furthermore, she

5047-422: The fact that, in many artistic depictions of Aphrodite, she is shown smiling. Other epithets of her include Mechanitis meaning skilled in inventing and Automata because, according to Servius , she was the source of spontaneous love. Common literary epithets of Aphrodite are Cypris and Cythereia , which derive from her associations with the islands of Cyprus and Cythera respectively. On Cyprus, Aphrodite

5150-448: The four original primeval forces born at the beginning of time, but, after the birth of Aphrodite from the sea foam, he is joined by Himeros and, together, they become Aphrodite's constant companions. In early Greek art, Eros and Himeros are both shown as idealized handsome youths with wings. The Greek lyric poets regarded the power of Eros and Himeros as dangerous, compulsive, and impossible for anyone to resist. In modern times, Eros

5253-471: The goddess of virginity, and refuses to engage in any form of sexual contact. Aphrodite is infuriated by his prideful behavior and, in the prologue to the play, she declares that, by honoring only Artemis and refusing to venerate her, Hippolytus has directly challenged her authority. Aphrodite therefore causes Hippolytus's stepmother, Phaedra , to fall in love with him, knowing Hippolytus will reject her. After being rejected, Phaedra commits suicide and leaves

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5356-405: The goddess of virginity. Aphrodite tells Anchises that she is still a virgin and begs him to take her to his parents. Anchises immediately becomes overcome with mad lust for Aphrodite and swears that he will have sex with her. Anchises takes Aphrodite, with her eyes cast downwards, to his bed, which is covered in the furs of lions and bears. He then strips her naked and makes love to her. After

5459-475: The goddess to claim that Ourania and Pandemos are, in fact, separate goddesses. He asserts that Aphrodite Ourania is the celestial Aphrodite, born from the sea foam after Cronus castrated Uranus, and the older of the two goddesses. According to the Symposium , Aphrodite Ourania is the inspiration of male homosexual desire , specifically the ephebic eros , and pederasty . Aphrodite Pandemos , by contrast,

5562-631: The islands of Cyprus , Cythera , and Sicily . Aphrodite's Mesopotamian precursor Inanna-Ishtar was also closely associated with prostitution. Scholars in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries believed that the cult of Aphrodite may have involved ritual prostitution , an assumption based on ambiguous passages in certain ancient texts, particularly a fragment of a skolion by the Boeotian poet Pindar , which mentions prostitutes in Corinth in association with Aphrodite. Modern scholars now dismiss

5665-577: The king of Pergamon Eumenes II . Around the end of the 3rd century BCE, Phaistos was destroyed by the Gortynians and since then has not been present in the history of Crete. Scotia Aphrodite and goddess Leto , who was also called Phytia, were worshiped there. Epimenides , the wise man invited by the Athenians to clean the city after the Cylonian affair (Cyloneio agos) in the 6th century BCE,

5768-417: The later iterations. This left few archaeological remains to be found in the palace. The tombs of the rulers of Phaistos were found in a cemetery near the palace remains. To the southwest of Phaistos, tholos tombs have been found and cemeteries were found to the northwest. Some items found in tombs at Phaistos have been declared as bronze armor scraps. Originally, tombs were built for communal use but after

5871-518: The later legends of Hermaphroditus . Aphrodite's main festival, the Aphrodisia , was celebrated across Greece, but particularly in Athens and Corinth . In Athens, the Aphrodisia was celebrated on the fourth day of the month of Hekatombaion in honor of Aphrodite's role in the unification of Attica. During this festival, the priests of Aphrodite would purify the temple of Aphrodite Pandemos on

5974-493: The latter of these interpretations and claims the story of a birth from the foam as an Indo-European mytheme . Similarly, Krzysztof Tomasz Witczak proposes an Indo-European compound *abʰor- "very" and *dʰei- "to shine", also referring to Eos , and Daniel Kölligan has interpreted Aphrodite's name as "shining up from the mist/foam". Other scholars have argued that these hypotheses are unlikely, since Aphrodite's attributes are entirely different from those of both Eos and

6077-555: The lovemaking is complete, Aphrodite reveals her true divine form. Anchises is terrified, but Aphrodite consoles him and promises that she will bear him a son. She prophesies that their son will be the demigod Aeneas , who will be raised by the nymphs of the wilderness for five years before going to Troy to become a nobleman like his father. The story of Aeneas's conception is also mentioned in Hesiod's Theogony and in Book II of Homer's Iliad . The myth of Aphrodite and Adonis

6180-451: The most famous story, Zeus hastily married Aphrodite to Hephaestus in order to prevent the other gods from fighting over her. In another version of the myth, Hephaestus gave his mother Hera a golden throne, but when she sat on it, she became trapped and he refused to let her go until she agreed to give him Aphrodite's hand in marriage. Hephaestus was overjoyed to be married to the goddess of beauty, and forged her beautiful jewelry, including

6283-641: The mother of the entire Roman nation. Julius Caesar claimed to be directly descended from Aeneas's son Iulus and became a strong proponent of the cult of Venus. This precedent was later followed by his nephew Augustus and the later emperors claiming succession from him. This syncretism greatly impacted Greek worship of Aphrodite. During the Roman era, the cults of Aphrodite in many Greek cities began to emphasize her relationship with Troy and Aeneas. They also began to adopt distinctively Roman elements, portraying Aphrodite as more maternal, more militaristic, and more concerned with administrative bureaucracy. She

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6386-464: The mountain if she will bless him and his family. Aphrodite lies and tells him that she is not a goddess, but the daughter of one of the noble families of Phrygia . She claims to be able to understand the Trojan language because she had a Trojan nurse as a child and says that she found herself on the mountainside after she was snatched up by Hermes while dancing in a celebration in honor of Artemis ,

6489-532: The name as either *ʿAprodît or *ʿAproḏît , and cautiously suggests the latter as being an epithet with the meaning "She of the Villages". Aren Wilson-Wright suggests the Phoenician form *ʾAprodīt as an elative epithet meaning "unique, excellent, sublime". A number of improbable non-Greek etymologies have also been suggested. One Semitic etymology compares Aphrodite to the Assyrian barīrītu ,

6592-666: The name of a female demon that appears in Middle Babylonian and Late Babylonian texts. Hammarström looks to Etruscan , comparing (e)prθni "lord", an Etruscan honorific loaned into Greek as πρύτανις . This would make the theonym in origin an honorific, "the lady". Most scholars reject this etymology as implausible, especially since Aphrodite's name actually appears in Etruscan in the borrowed form Apru (from Greek Aphrō , clipped form of Aphrodite ). The medieval Etymologicum Magnum ( c.  1150 ) offers

6695-648: The notion of ritual prostitution in Greece as a "historiographic myth" with no factual basis. During the Hellenistic period , the Greeks identified Aphrodite with the ancient Egyptian goddesses Hathor and Isis . Aphrodite was the patron goddess of the Lagid queens and Queen Arsinoe II was identified as her mortal incarnation. Aphrodite was worshipped in Alexandria and had numerous temples in and around

6798-472: The oldest strata of her worship and see it as an indication of her Near Eastern origins. Nineteenth-century classical scholars had a general aversion to the idea that ancient Greek religion was at all influenced by the cultures of the Near East, but, even Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker , who argued that Near Eastern influence on Greek culture was largely confined to material culture, admitted that Aphrodite

6901-425: The ridge, but the vestiges of fortification walls indicated that a city had existed there. In 1894, Antonio Taramelli excavated pottery at Phaistos at the behest of Federico Halbherr . Seal stones and cylinder seals were also found. From 1900 to 1904 Federico Halbherr and his student Luigi Pernier excavated at Phaistos. Occasional work continued at Phaistos until 1908 while Halbherr and Pernier excavated at

7004-467: The royal apartments in the northern section of the palace, with a view of the tops of Psiloritis (Mount Ida). The rooms were constructed from alabaster and other materials. The rooms for princes were smaller and less luxurious than the rooms of the royal departments. A temple to Rhea was found in the palace. The temple is located in the Southern section of the palace. This temple was connected with

7107-406: The sea a long time, and white foam arose from the immortal flesh; with it a girl grew." After Aphrodite was born from the sea-foam, she washed up to shore in the presence of the other gods. Hesiod's account of Aphrodite's birth following Uranus's castration is probably derived from The Song of Kumarbi , an ancient Hittite epic poem in which the god Kumarbi overthrows his father Anu , the god of

7210-466: The sea. In Homer 's Iliad , however, she is the daughter of Zeus and Dione . In his Symposium , Plato asserts that these two origins actually belong to separate entities; Aphrodite Urania (a transcendent "Heavenly" Aphrodite) and Aphrodite Pandemos (Aphrodite common to "all the people"). The epithet Aphrodite Areia (the "Warlike") reveals her contrasting nature in ancient Greek religion . Aphrodite had many other epithets, each emphasizing

7313-480: The shapes that metal items were made in. Many of the pottery items had fluting or embossments. This metallurgy replication was mostly found in small vases and cups. Minoan pottery quality changed around 1800 BCE, and shiny vibrant colors were replaced by multiple dull colors. References to Phaistos in ancient Greek literature are quite infrequent. Phaistos is referenced by Homer , in the Iliad, as "well populated", and

7416-541: The sky, and bites off his genitals, causing him to become pregnant and give birth to Anu's children, which include Ishtar and her brother Teshub , the Hittite storm god. In the Iliad , Aphrodite is described as the daughter of Zeus and Dione. Dione's name appears to be a feminine cognate to Dios and Dion , which are oblique forms of the name Zeus . Zeus and Dione shared a cult at Dodona in northwestern Greece. In

7519-617: The southwestern slope of the Acropolis with the blood of a sacrificed dove . Next, the altars would be anointed and the cult statues of Aphrodite Pandemos and Peitho would be escorted in a majestic procession to a place where they would be ritually bathed. Aphrodite was also honored in Athens as part of the Arrhephoria festival. The fourth day of every month was sacred to Aphrodite. Pausanias records that, in Sparta, Aphrodite

7622-410: The story with more details. According to the retelling of the story found in the poem Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC – 17/18 AD), Adonis was the son of Myrrha , who was cursed by Aphrodite with insatiable lust for her own father, King Cinyras of Cyprus , after Myrrha's mother bragged that her daughter was more beautiful than the goddess. Driven out after becoming pregnant, Myrrha

7725-641: The story, the boar was either sent by Ares, who was jealous that Aphrodite was spending so much time with Adonis, or by Artemis, who wanted revenge against Aphrodite for having killed her devoted follower Hippolytus . In another version, Apollo in fury changed himself into a boar and killed Adonis because Aphrodite had blinded his son Erymanthus when he stumbled upon Aphrodite naked as she was bathing after intercourse with Adonis. The story also provides an etiology for Aphrodite's associations with certain flowers. Reportedly, as she mourned Adonis's death, she caused anemones to grow wherever his blood fell and declared

7828-456: The temple of Cybele . The couple desecrate the temple by having sex in it, leading Cybele to turn them into lions as punishment. The myth of Pygmalion is first mentioned by the third-century BC Greek writer Philostephanus of Cyrene , but is first recounted in detail in Ovid's Metamorphoses . According to Ovid, Pygmalion was an exceedingly handsome sculptor from the island of Cyprus, who

7931-413: The theater area, in conjunction with two staircases, gave access to the main hall of the propylaea through large doors. A twin gate led directly to the central courtyard through a wide street. The floors and walls of the interior rooms were decorated with plates of sand and white gypsum stone. The upper floors of the west sector had spacious ceremonial rooms. The entrance from the central courtyard led to

8034-527: The third century BC when the cult of Venus Erycina was introduced to Rome from the Greek sanctuary of Aphrodite on Mount Eryx in Sicily. After this point, Romans adopted Aphrodite's iconography and myths and applied them to Venus. Because Aphrodite was the mother of the Trojan hero Aeneas in Greek mythology and Roman tradition claimed Aeneas as the founder of Rome, Venus became venerated as Venus Genetrix ,

8137-706: The time of the Trojan War , he is married to Charis / Aglaea , one of the Graces , apparently divorced from Aphrodite. Afterwards, it was generally Ares who was regarded as the husband or official consort of the goddess; on the François Vase , the two arrive at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis on the same chariot, as do Zeus with Hera and Poseidon with Amphitrite . The poets Pindar and Aeschylus refer to Ares as Aphrodite's husband. Later stories were invented to explain Aphrodite's marriage to Hephaestus. In

8240-569: The version of her birth recounted by Hesiod in his Theogony , Cronus severed Uranus' genitals and threw them behind him into the sea. The foam from his genitals gave rise to Aphrodite (hence her name, which Hesiod interprets as "foam-arisen"), while the Giants , the Erinyes (furies), and the Meliae emerged from the drops of his blood. Hesiod states that the genitals "were carried over

8343-461: The waters after Cronus defeats Uranus as a mytheme would then be directly cognate to the Rigvedic myth of Indra defeating Vrtra , liberating Ushas . Another key similarity between Aphrodite and the Indo-European dawn goddess is her close kinship to the Greek sky deity, since both of the main claimants to her paternity (Zeus and Uranus) are sky deities. Aphrodite's most common cultic epithet

8446-660: The year with Aphrodite, one third with Persephone, and one third with whomever he chose. Adonis chose to spend that time with Aphrodite. Then, one day, while Adonis was hunting, he was wounded by a wild boar and bled to death in Aphrodite's arms. In a semi-mocking work, the Dialogues of the Gods , the satirical author Lucian comedically relates how a frustrated Aphrodite complains to the moon goddess Selene about her son Eros making Persephone fall in love with Adonis and now she has to share him with her. In different versions of

8549-593: Was Ourania , meaning "heavenly", but this epithet almost never occurs in literary texts, indicating a purely cultic significance. Another common name for Aphrodite was Pandemos ("For All the Folk"). In her role as Aphrodite Pandemos, Aphrodite was associated with Peithō ( Πείθω ), meaning "persuasion", and could be prayed to for aid in seduction. The character of Pausanias in Plato 's Symposium , takes differing cult-practices associated with different epithets of

8652-456: Was a Cretan who may have descended from the people of Phaistos. Phaistos is home to one of the structures commonly known as a Minoan Palace . The structure of Minoan palaces differs from actual palaces and have been proven to serve more purposes, but the name has stuck. These structures are complex buildings that have multiple uses. The palace at Phaistos seemed to have religious and political purposes as well as sections for storage, housing, and

8755-518: Was a place of pilgrimage in the ancient world for centuries. Other versions of her myth have her born near the island of Cythera , hence another of her names, "Cytherea". Cythera was a stopping place for trade and culture between Crete and the Peloponesus , so these stories may preserve traces of the migration of Aphrodite's cult from the Middle East to mainland Greece . According to

8858-538: Was around 2/3 as large as the palace at Knossos. The first level contained the theater area and some shrines. The theater was larger than the one at Knossos. The second level consisted of servant and guest rooms as well as the commissariat quarter. Above this was the primary royal apartments. The fourth and final level was made up of the Hall of the State and balconies that overlooked the palace and its exterior. The levels of

8961-569: Was built on a hill in the East and an acropolis was built on a hill in the West. The first palace was built in the Middle Minoan IB period, around 2000 BCE. The initial palace was destroyed and rebuilt three times in a period of about three centuries. The palace history is divided into three construction phases because of its reconstructions. The palace was destroyed around 1400 BCE and not rebuilt. This destruction may have been caused by

9064-449: Was changed into a myrrh tree, but still gave birth to Adonis. Aphrodite found the baby and took him to the underworld to be fostered by Persephone . She returned for him once he was grown and discovered him to be strikingly handsome. Persephone wanted to keep Adonis, resulting in a custody battle between the two goddesses over whom should rightly possess Adonis. Zeus settled the dispute by decreeing that Adonis would spend one third of

9167-470: Was claimed as a divine guardian by many political magistrates. Appearances of Aphrodite in Greek literature also vastly proliferated, usually showing Aphrodite in a characteristically Roman manner. Aphrodite is usually said to have been born near her chief center of worship, Paphos , on the island of Cyprus , which is why she is sometimes called "Cyprian", especially in the poetic works of Sappho . The Sanctuary of Aphrodite Paphia , marking her birthplace,

9270-469: Was clearly of Phoenician origin. The significant influence of Near Eastern culture on early Greek religion in general, and on the cult of Aphrodite in particular, is now widely recognized as dating to a period of orientalization during the eighth century BC, when archaic Greece was on the fringes of the Neo-Assyrian Empire . Some early comparative mythologists opposed to the idea of

9373-448: Was forced to conceal the child's gender and raise her as a boy, naming her Leucippus . When the young girl grew up and it was now impossible to hide her gender, Galatea desperately resorted as a supplicant to the sacred temple of Leto and asked her to transform her daughter to a son, in order to stay alive. The goddess felt sorry for her and accepted her prayers. Thus, the young girl abdicated her maiden veil and by Leto's divine intervention

9476-464: Was found in a basement room (Room 101), along with a Linear A tablet, on the northern side of the palace in a Middle Minoan IIIb level. The disc was found with assorted pottery that dates to approximately 1800 BCE, which was around when the palace could have been reconstructed. Finding artifacts in Phaistos is difficult because the Minoans thoroughly cleaned the original palace ruins before beginning

9579-579: Was horrified to see that the child had a massive, permanently erect penis , a potbelly , and a huge tongue. Aphrodite abandoned the infant to die in the wilderness, but a herdsman found him and raised him, later discovering that Priapus could use his massive penis to aid in the growth of plants. The First Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite ( Hymn 5 ), which was probably composed sometime in the mid-seventh century BC, describes how Zeus once became annoyed with Aphrodite for causing deities to fall in love with mortals, so he caused her to fall in love with Anchises ,

9682-462: Was killed by a wild boar . Along with Athena and Hera , Aphrodite was one of the three goddesses whose feud resulted in the beginning of the Trojan War and plays a major role throughout the Iliad . Aphrodite has been featured in Western art as a symbol of female beauty and has appeared in numerous works of Western literature . She is a major deity in modern Neopagan religions , including

9785-720: Was known as Ourania (Οὐρανία), which means "heavenly", a title corresponding to Inanna's role as the Queen of Heaven . Early artistic and literary portrayals of Aphrodite are extremely similar on Inanna-Ishtar. Like Inanna-Ishtar, Aphrodite was also a warrior goddess; the second-century AD Greek geographer Pausanias records that, in Sparta, Aphrodite was worshipped as Aphrodite Areia , which means "warlike". He also mentions that Aphrodite's most ancient cult statues in Sparta and on Cythera showed her bearing arms. Modern scholars note that Aphrodite's warrior-goddess aspects appear in

9888-469: Was married to Hephaestus , the god of fire, blacksmiths and metalworking. Aphrodite was frequently unfaithful to him and had many lovers; in the Odyssey , she is caught in the act of adultery with Ares , the god of war. In the First Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite , she seduces the mortal shepherd Anchises . Aphrodite was also the surrogate mother and lover of the mortal shepherd Adonis , who

9991-595: Was renowned throughout the ancient world for its many hetairai , who had a widespread reputation for being among the most skilled, but also the most expensive, prostitutes in the Greek world. Corinth also had a major temple to Aphrodite located on the Acrocorinth and was one of the main centers of her cult. Records of numerous dedications to Aphrodite made by successful courtesans have survived in poems and in pottery inscriptions. References to Aphrodite in association with prostitution are found in Corinth as well as on

10094-784: Was so sickened by the immorality of women that he refused to marry. He fell madly and passionately in love with the ivory cult statue he was carving of Aphrodite and longed to marry it. Because Pygmalion was extremely pious and devoted to Aphrodite, the goddess brought the statue to life. Pygmalion married the girl the statue became and they had a son named Paphos, after whom the capital of Cyprus received its name. Pseudo-Apollodorus later mentions "Metharme, daughter of Pygmalion, king of Cyprus". Aphrodite generously rewarded those who honored her, but also punished those who disrespected her, often quite brutally. A myth described in Apollonius of Rhodes's Argonautica and later summarized in

10197-785: Was sometimes called Eleemon ("the merciful"). In Athens, she was known as Aphrodite en kēpois (" Aphrodite of the Gardens "). At Cape Colias, a town along the Attic coast, she was venerated as Genetyllis "Mother". The Spartans worshipped her as Potnia "Mistress", Enoplios "Armed", Morpho "Shapely", Ambologera "She who Postpones Old Age". Across the Greek world, she was known under epithets such as Melainis in Corinth "Black or Dark One", Skotia "Dark One", Androphonos "Killer of Men", Anosia "Unholy", and Tymborychos "Gravedigger", all of which indicate her darker, more violent nature. A male version of Aphrodite known as Aphroditus

10300-538: Was transformed into a man. Thus, the feast “Ekdysia” was named after this incident. This article related to LGBTQ studies is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Phaistos Ancient Phaistos was located about 5.6 km (3.5 mi) east of the Mediterranean Sea and 62 km (39 mi) south of Heraklion . Phaistos was one of the largest cities of Minoan Crete . The name Phaistos survives from ancient Greek references to

10403-506: Was usually considered to be Aphrodite's son by Dionysus , but he was sometimes also described as her son by Hermes, Adonis, or even Zeus. A scholion on Apollonius of Rhodes 's Argonautica states that, while Aphrodite was pregnant with Priapus, Hera envied her and applied an evil potion to her belly while she was sleeping to ensure that the child would be hideous. In another version, Hera cursed Aphrodite's unborn son because he had been fathered by Zeus. When Aphrodite gave birth, she

10506-684: Was worshipped as Aphrodite Areia , which means "warlike". This epithet stresses Aphrodite's connections to Ares, with whom she had extramarital relations. Pausanias also records that, in Sparta and on Cythera, a number of extremely ancient cult statues of Aphrodite portrayed her bearing arms. Other cult statues showed her bound in chains. Aphrodite was the patron goddess of prostitutes of all varieties, ranging from pornai (cheap street prostitutes typically owned as slaves by wealthy pimps ) to hetairai (expensive, well-educated hired companions, who were usually self-employed and sometimes provided sex to their customers). The city of Corinth

10609-480: Was worshipped in the city of Amathus on Cyprus. Aphroditus was depicted with the figure and dress of a woman, but had a beard , and was shown lifting his dress to reveal an erect phallus . This gesture was believed to be an apotropaic symbol , and was thought to convey good fortune upon the viewer. Eventually, the popularity of Aphroditus waned as the mainstream, fully feminine version of Aphrodite became more popular, but traces of his cult are preserved in

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