Aphrodite

Aeneas, whom Aphrodite bore to Anchises, when she, goddess though she was, had lain with him upon the mountain slopes of Ida.

When they came to the house of Alexander the maid-servants set about their work, but Helen went into her own room, and the laughter-loving goddess took a seat and set it for her facing Alexander.

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

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

but Aphrodite gave so shameful and unjust and unprofitable a gift, and made no account either of Helen, who was her sister, or of Alexander, who had preferred her, but bestowed such a marriage as would destroy him and his parents and his city.

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

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 …

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.

Meanwhile the bard began to sing the loves of Ares and Aphrodite, and how they first began their intrigue in the house of Hephaistos.

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.

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.

Do not the Argives sacrifice to Aphrodite "the Open-thighed," the Athenians to "the Courtesan," and the Syracusans to "the Fair-buttocked," whom Nicander the poet has somewhere called "the Beautiful-rumped"?

"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.

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

never may Cypris, goddess dread, fasten on me a temper to dispute, or restless jealousy, smiting my soul with mad desire for unlawful love, but may she hallow peaceful married life and shrewdly decide whom each of us shall wed.

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

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 …

But when Zeus had driven the Titans from heaven, huge Earth bore her youngest child Typhoeus of the love of Tartarus, by the aid of golden Aphrodite.

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

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

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

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

The Speech of Pausanias

Hence it is that Love from the beginning has been attendant and minister to Aphrodite, since he was begotten on the day of her birth, and is, moreover, by nature a lover bent on beauty since Aphrodite is beautiful.

One might conjecture, also, that different types of love come from the different sources, carnal love from the Vulgar Aphrodite, and from the Heavenly spiritual love, love of friendship and of noble conduct.

But affection for the soul, being pure, is also less liable to satiety, though it does not follow, as one might suppose, that it is also less rich in the graces of Aphrodite;

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

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:

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.

but they consider Aphrodite before Bacchus.

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.

To whom Kypris had promised me.

Whence comes it that her heart is crushed, cruelly afflicted by Aphrodite with unholy love;

Nor fire nor meteor hurls a mightier bolt than Aphrodite’s shaft shot by the hands of Love, the child of Zeus.

Cypris, it seems, is not a goddess after all, but something greater far, for she hath been the ruin of my lady and of me and our whole family.

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.

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.

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

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.

Ladice paid her vow to the goddess;

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 laughter-loving Aphrodite put on all her rich clothes, and when she had decked herself with gold, she left sweet-smelling Cyprus and went in haste towards Troy, swiftly travelling high up among the clouds.

But upon Aphrodite herself Zeus cast sweet desire to be joined in love with a mortal man, to the end that, very soon, not even she should be innocent of a mortal's love;

Muse, tell me the deeds of golden Aphrodite the Cyprian, who stirs up sweet passion in the gods and subdues the tribes of mortal men and birds that fly in air and all the many creatures that the dry land rears, and all that the sea:

I will sing of stately Aphrodite, gold-crowned and beautiful, whose dominion is the walled cities of all sea-set Cyprus.

Cyprian, in speaking or Laurentinus, and Ignatius, both Africans, says, “They too served in the armies of earthly princes, yet they were truly spiritual soldiers of God, defeating the wiles of the Devil by a steady confession of the name of Christ, and earning the palms and crowns of the Lord by their sufferings.

For not much later when strife arose among the goddesses for the prize of beauty, and Alexander, son of Priam, was appointed judge and when Hera offered him sovereignty over all Asia, Athena victory in war, and Aphrodite Helen as his wife, finding himself unable to make a distinction regarding the charms of their persons, but overwhelmed by the sight of the goddesses, Alexander, compelled to make …