Of radiant beauty and at the same time seductive, Aphrodite was a Greek goddess who left no one indifferent.whether they were mortal or immortal. She, however, did not know how to be indifferent to the charms of love either.

If there was a goddess among the Greeks who aroused passions, it was undoubtedly Aphrodite. It was the goddess of beauty, sensuality and loveunderstood as that erotic impulse that, to be satisfied, stops at nothing. Not even the gods were immune to it.

The double birth of Aphrodite

The myths do not agree about the birth of Aphrodite. The oldest version explains that the goddess came straight out of the foam (in Greek, aphros means “foam”) caused by the genitals of Uranus (Heaven), which his son Cronus had cut down with a sickle and thrown into the sea.

But, back in the 8th century BC. C., a time in which the poet Homer probably lived, this origin must have been considered excessively bloody, so another, friendlier version began to spread according to which Aphrodite was the daughter of the king of the gods, Zeus, and a goddess of the first divine generation, Dione.. In this way she could be included among the Olympic divinities.

Aphrodite, a very oriental Greek goddess

What all versions do agree on is the Asian origin of the goddess Aphrodite: Myths indicate that he had grown up in Cyprus, but that he came from even further east.

The Greeks themselves even recognized that Aphrodite could identify with oriental goddesses such as the Sumerian Inanna, the Babylonian Ishtar and the Phoenician Astarte, all of them rrelated to love, beauty and sex, but also to war.

From Asia, her cult passed to the islands of Cythera and Cyprus, and from there to Greece, where Aphrodite soon became one of the most beloved goddesses.

Aphrodite’s RELATIONSHIPS with gods

Whatever her origin, Aphrodite ended up joining the family of the Olympians. And since her younger ones were not immune to her disturbing beauty, the wife of Zeus, Hera decided to marry her to the ugliest of all, her son Hephaestus.the lame god always covered in soot from the forge.

But the love that Aphrodite represents does not understand conventions such as marriage, so the goddess soon began to have relationships with other gods.

So, with Hermes, the divine messenger, she had Hermaphroditusa young man so ravishingly beautiful that the nymph Salmacis asked the gods to fuse her body with his; In this way, Hermaphroditus ended up being both a man and a woman.

From her relationship with Dionysus, Priapus, rustic god of fertility, was born. and, as such, endowed with an enormous virile member.

The most scandalous and lasting of Aphrodite’s relationships with other gods was the one she had with Ares, the impulsive and violent god of war. Hephaestus caught them one day red-handed on a network and to show them before all the Olympians, but, if with that he wanted the lovers to be ashamed of their behavior and make amends, he was completely wrong.

Fruit of the meetings of Aphrodite and Aresthe Olympian family was increased with new members, two resembling their mother (Eros, the god of the impulse of love, and Harmony, the goddess of concord) and two others resembling their father (Deimos, “pain” or “terror”, and Phobos, “fear”).

Aphrodite’s loves with humans

Aphrodite also had affairs with humans. One of them was the Trojan Anchises, with whom she had Aeneas.

That relationship and that son motivated the goddess to help the Trojans during the trojan war. A war, by the way, that she herself had provoked: it was on the occasion of the dispute that Aphrodite, Hera and Athena had to see which of the three was the most beautiful.

Since Zeus did not want to get involved in that story, the judge chosen to settle the issue was a handsome Trojan prince, Paris, who ended up choosing Aphrodite. The charms of the goddess undoubtedly had something to do with that decision, but no less important was the promise she made to the young man to grant him the most beautiful of women, Elena.

Her husband, Menelaus, did not approve of her leaving with another man and, to recover her, he gathered a large army that marched against Troy…

Another love of Aphrodite was Adonisa young man also loved by Persephone, the wife of Hades and queen of the world of the dead. Adonis had to divide himself between the two: he spent six months with one and another six with the other, until, one day, a wild boar killed him. Roses sprouted from her blood and the anemone from Aphrodite’s tears.

Tragic was also the story of Aphrodite with Hippolytusonly in this case the reason was that the young man, as a good devotee of the hunting goddess Artemis, had taken a vow of chastity. All of Aphrodite’s attempts to seduce him thus ended in failure. Unaccustomed to spite, Aphrodite caused Hippolytus’s stepmother to fall in love with him and the young man to die in a horrible car accident.

The cult of the goddess Aphrodite

Although devotion to Aphrodite was widespread throughout Greece, The most important sanctuaries were in Cyprus and Corinth.:

• Cyprus: in it sanctuary of the city of Paphoswhose remains date back to the 12th century BC. C., the goddess was worshiped in the form of a conical stone. The cult remained in force until well into the 4th century AD.
• Maroon: The sanctuary of Aphrodite in this city was the most famous in mainland Greece. Actually, There were several temples that the goddess had there.: one on the acropolis, later converted into a church and mosque; another in the city, and another in the port.

Ancient authors report that, both in the sanctuary of Paphos and in the acropolis of Corinth, the hierodules or “sacred servants” practiced ritual prostitution. The one in Corinth, specifically, had a thousand courtesans who attracted thousands of visitors from all over Greece. The city became so rich that it even gave rise to a famous proverb: “It is not within the power of every man to travel to Corinth”.