Greek goddess of beauty and love, identified by the Romans with
→ Venus. Attempts to derive her name from the Greek word aphros=foam, date back to antiquity On this interpretation, the goddess is ‘she who is born of the foam’; or, as another of her names—Anadyomene—suggests ‘she who arises from the sea’. Her cult is pre-Greek and probably oriental in origin; certain rites associated with her, like the temple prostitution in Corinth, remind us of → Astarte. She was also known as Kypris and as Kythereia after the main shrines in her honour on Cyprus and Kythera. In coastal areas she was revered as Euploia—‘she who confers a good voyage’.
Plato and others make a distinction between the ‘heavenly’ Aphrodite (Urania) and the goddess who ‘belongs to the whole people’ (Pandemos). According to Homer, Aphrodite was the daughter of → Zeus and Dione, married to → Hephaistos but in love with → Arés, a liaison from which → Éros was born. She also loved the beautiful → Adonis. Her attribute was the dove. Her aegis covered fertility in the plant world, and she was venerated in Athens as the goddess of gardens.
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