Aphrodite

Aphrodite was very angry, and said, "Bold hussy, do not provoke me;

Still, taunt me not with the gifts that golden Aphrodite has given me;

Then she went to call Helen, and found her on a high tower with the Trojan women crowding round her.

and that the poets slandered the goddess, out of their own incontinence, calling her 'rich in gold.

and no less for the sake of Hera and Aphrodite.

For on account of this absurdity they fabricated the myth about Aphrodite, far more senseless than these things.

This son, Megapenthes, was born to him of a bondwoman, for heaven granted Helen no more children after she had borne Hermione, who was fair as golden Aphrodite herself.

He killed many Trojans and got much information before he reached the Argive camp, for all which things the Trojan women made lamentation, but for my own part I was glad, for my heart was beginning to long after my home, and I was unhappy about the wrong [ atê] that Aphrodite had done me in taking me over there, away from my country, my girl, and my lawful wedded husband, who is indeed by no means …

Zeus’ daughter Aphrodite is always dishonoring me because I am lame.

For the islander Cinyras of Cyprus would never persuade me — he who dared to bring out from night into day the lewd orgies of Aphrodite, ambitious to deify a fellow-citizen who was a harlot.

There is the foam-born and Cyprus-born goddess, dear to Cinyras — I mean Aphrodite, the lover of the members (philomedea), because she was revealed from the members, those severed members of Uranus, the lustful, which after the cutting did violence to the wave.

Aphrodite, put to shame over Ares, passed on to Cinyras, and married Anchises, and lay in wait for Phaethon, and loved Adonis;

"Aphrodite I would even shoot down, if I caught her, because she has corrupted many noble and good women of ours.

There are some who proclaim the vulgar Aphrodite to be a mystical communion, insulting even the name;

and when they have eaten their fill—"in fullness, as they say, comes Cypris"—they overturn the lamps so as to put out the light that would shame their fornicating justice, and unite as they wish with whomever they please.

Chorus:

but if the Cyprian queen in moderate might approach, no goddess is so full of charm as she.

Now, I believe, since thou wilt exaggerate thy favours, that to Cypris alone of gods or men I owe the safety of my voyage.

Her gods and men call Aphrodite, and the foam-born goddess and rich-crowned Cytherea, because she grew amid the foam, and Cytherea because she reached Cythera, and Cyprogenes because she was born in billowy Cyprus, and Philommedes because she sprang from the members.

Thence they arise and go abroad by night, veiled in thick mist, and utter their song with lovely voice, praising Zeus the aegis-holder, and queenly Hera of Argos who walks on golden sandals, and the daughter of Zeus the aegis-holder bright-eyed Athena, and Phoebus Apollo, and Artemis who delights in arrows, and Poseidon the earth holder who shakes the earth, and revered Themis, and quick-glancing …

and she was subject to him in love through golden Aphrodite and bore him neat-ankled Medea.

And Aphrodite too they say is a goddess, an adulteress.

but afterward, while committing adultery with Aphrodite, he was bound by the infant Eros and by Hephaestus.

And they say that Zeus cut off his members and threw them into the sea, whence Aphrodite is fabled to be born.

Pelops said to the god, “If the loving gifts of Cyprian Aphrodite result in any gratitude, Poseidon, then restrain the bronze spear of Oenomaus, and speed me in the swiftest chariot to Elis, and bring me to victory.

And now, with the music of flute and lyre alike I have come to land with Diagoras, singing the sea-child of Aphrodite and bride of Helios, Rhodes, so that I may praise this straight-fighting, tremendous man who had himself crowned beside the Alpheus and near Castalia, as a recompense for his boxing, and also his father Damagetus, a man pleasing to Justice, living on the island of three cities near …

And I praised the lovely son of Archestratus, whom I saw at that time beside the Olympic altar, winning victory with the valor of his hands—beautiful in form, and blended with that youthful bloom which once kept Ganymede from shameless death, with the help of Cyprian Aphrodite.

Cinyras, the obedient priest of Aphrodite.

Aphrodite of Cyprus brought the maddening bird to men for the first time, and she taught the son of Aeson skill in prayerful incantations, so that he could rob Medea of reverence for her parents, and a longing for Greece would lash her, her mind on fire, with the whip of Persuasion.

for we are again ploughing the field of dark-eyed Aphrodite, or of the Graces, as we approach the sacred navel of the loud-roaring land;

Well, do you not believe that Love is the son of Aphrodite and is a god?

And we made four divisions of the divine madness, ascribing them to four gods, saying that prophecy was inspired by Apollo, the mystic madness by Dionysus, the poetic by the Muses, and the madness of love, inspired by Aphrodite and Eros, we said was the best.

The Speech of Pausanias

But the other Love springs from the Heavenly goddess who, firstly, partakes not of the female but only of the male;

for we hear, not of Love caught by Ares, but of Ares caught by Love—of Aphrodite.

Are not all these things marked by Aphrodite’s grace?

Now, whether there is one Aphrodite or two, Heavenly and Vulgar, I do not know;

For we all know that there is no converse worth the mention that does not comprise affection.

Weaver of wiles in Cyprus born and Homer writes of her broidered girdle Cajolery that cheats the wisest wits.

Nevertheless it seemed good to the ancients — I mean those around Cyprian and our own Firmilian — to subject them all to one verdict:

but they consider Aphrodite before Bacchus.

Dionysus will not compel women to be modest in regard to Aphrodite, but in nature you must look for that.

Would that I could go to Cyprus, the island of Aphrodite, where the Loves, who soothe mortals’ hearts, dwell, and to Paphos, fertilized without rain by the streams of a foreign river flowing with a hundred mouths.

To whom Kypris had promised me.

and with him sailed deceitful and murderous Kypris, bearing death for the Danaans.

Kypris offered my beauty, if misfortune is beautiful, for Paris to marry, and so she won.

Hippolytus:

Hippolytus:

thou art stricken by the passion Cypris sends.

Happy are they who find the goddess come in moderate might, sharing with self-restraint in Aphrodite’s gift of marriage and enjoying calm and rest from frenzied passions, where the Love-god, golden-haired, stretches his charmed bow with twin arrows, and one is aimed at happiness, the other at life’s confusion.

for our husbands tell us that fair-haired Menelaus and high-born Agamemnon are leading them to Troy on a thousand ships in quest of Helen, whom Paris the herdsman carried off from the banks of reedy Eurotas, his gift from Aphrodite, when that queen of Cyprus entered beauty’s contest with Hera and Pallas at the gushing fountain.

He married at that time Harmonia, the daughter of Cypris, and begot Polydorus from whom they say Labdacus was born, and Laius from him.

—O Cyprian,

Shall melt and change in Alexander’s eyes,

Yea, till he dream’tis Cypris, his delight

Ladice paid her vow to the goddess;

So Ladice, when the king did not relent at all although she denied it, vowed in her heart to Aphrodite that, if Amasis could have intercourse with her that night, since that would remedy the problem, she would send a statue to Cyrene to her.

and golden Aphrodite to shed grace upon her head and cruel longing and cares that weary the limbs.

And it does not blow through the tender maiden who stays indoors with her dear mother, unlearned as yet in the works of golden Aphrodite, and who washes her soft body and anoints herself with oil and lies down in an inner room within the house, on a winter's day when the Boneless One gnaws his foot in his fireless house and wretched home;

And Anchises was seized with love, and said to her:

” --> Then Aphrodite the daughter of Zeus answered him:

” --> Thereupon Aphrodite the daughter of Zeus answered him: