Aphrodite/Venus

Afrodite

Afrodite (in greco antico: Ἀφροδίτη, Aphrodítē) è, nella religione greca, la dea della bellezza, dell'amore, della generazione e della primavera. Nata nel mare, veniva anche venerata come dea che rende sicura la navigazione.  

Il nome e le origini

Il nome Ἀφροδίτη (Aphrodítē) non è attestato in Lineare B (miceneo). D'altronde il suo accostamento etimologico, a partire da Esiodo, al termine ἀφρός (spuma del mare) sembrerebbe di tipo "popolare". Il suo nome è stato collegato alla fenicia dea Astarte (greco antico: Ἀστάρτη, "Astártē; fenicio: ʻštrt, "Ashtart"), o al radicale di πρύτανις ("guida").
Atteso che non vi sono certezze sul significato originario del nome di Afrodite, anche l'origine della sua figura divina è piuttosto controversa. La tradizione greca la vuole di derivazione orientale: Erodoto sostiene che il suo santuario di provenienza è quello di Afrodite Urania ad Ascalona, da lì i Ciprioti ne importarono il culto; mentre, per Pausania, i Fenici trasferirono direttamente il culto a Citera. Comunque sia la sua figura venne ellenizzata già al tempo di Omero: nell'Odissea la si fa originare dal santuario di Pafo nell'isola di Cipro. Quindi se è probabile una sua influenza orientale è da tener presente che il tempio di Afrodite rinvenuto a Pafo è datato al XII secolo a.C., quando vi giunsero i Micenei (Achei), mentre la colonizzazione fenicia è invece attestata al IX secolo a.C..

Caratteristiche della potenza divina di Afrodite

(GRC) « μοῦσά μοι ἔννεπε ἔργα πολυχρύσου Ἀφροδίτης, Κύπριδος, ἥτε θεοῖσιν ἐπὶ γλυκὺν ἵμερον ὦρσε καί τ᾽ ἐδαμάσσατο φῦλα καταθνητῶν ἀνθρώπων οἰωνούς τε διιπετέας καὶ θηρία πάντα, ἠμὲν ὅσ᾽ ἤπειρος πολλὰ τρέφει ἠδ᾽ ὅσα πόντος »	(IT) « O Musa, dimmi le opere di Afrodite d'oro, dea di Cipro, che infonde il dolce desiderio negli dei e domina le stirpi degli uomini mortali, e gli uccelli che volano nel cielo, e tutti gli animali, quanti, innumerevoli, nutre la terra, e quanti il mare »
(Inni omerici- Ad Afrodite, V, 1-4. Traduzione di Filippo Càssola, Milano, Mondadori/Lorenzo Valla, 2006, pp.254-5)

La potenza divina di Afrodite è l'amplesso (γάμος), non solo quello "legittimo" perché «qualunque attività umana può assumere una dimensione sacrale; e l'amplesso è sacro in quanto vi si manifesta "la forza" (δύναμις) che congiunge l'elemento maschile con l'elemento femminile, impersonata da Afrodite».

« È verosimile d'altronde, che anche di Afrodite (Aphrodíte) si tramandi che sia nata nel mare per nessun altro motivo se non per questo: affinché tutto venga all'essere, c'è bisogno di movimento e di umidità, fatto entrambi presenti nel mare in abbondanza. [...] Afrodite, per altro, è la potenza che conduce insieme il maschile e il femminile: forse ha assunto tale denominazione in virtù del fatto che i semi generatori degli animali sono spumosi (aphróde) [...] È presentata come bellissima, poiché agli uomini risulta gradito in massima misura il piacere relativo al congiungimento come eccellente al di sopra di tutti gli altri, ed è chiamata per questo anche "amante del sorriso" (philomeidés) [...] La fascia ricamata, poi, è come adorna, trapunta e variegata, e ha il potere di legare e serrare insieme. È chiamata inoltre sia celeste (ouranía) sia terrena (pándemos) sia marina (pontía), poiché la sua potenza si osserva sia in cielo sia in terra sia in mare. »

(Anneo Cornuto, Compendio di teologia greca XXIV; traduzione di Ilaria Ramelli, Milano, Bompiani, 2003, pp. 247 e sgg.)

Afrodite nei poemi del ciclo "omerico"

« Afrodite rappresenta la potenza irresistibile dell'amore e l'impulso alla sessualità che stanno alla radice della vita stessa. In ogni creatura vivente la dea, se vuole, sa accendere il desiderio, che procede come un incendio, travolgendo ogni regola [...]. Al di là delle regole, al di là della giustizia, una forza possente travolge ogni creatura e la spinge a osare ciò che non avrebbe mai osato se fosse stata in senno. Poiché quando ama, ognuno sembra perdere la ragione, e si lascia trascinare dalla passione, quella di Afrodite è considerata μανία, una follia appunto, ma di tipo particolare: "i più grandi doni (scrive Platone, Fedro 244 a) vengono agli uomini da parte degli dèi attraverso la follia, quella che viene data per grazia divina". »

(Giulio Guidorizzi. Il mito greco - Gli dèi. Milano, Mondadori, 2009, p. 507)

Nell'Iliade Afrodite appare come figlia di Zeus (Ζεύς) e di Dione (Διώνη), difende i Troiani ed è madre dell'eroe Enea, generato con l'eroe troiano Anchise, da lei personalmente difeso. La sua origine non guerriera è in questo poema evidenziata dal fatto che non solo viene ferita dall'eroe greco Diomede ma anche che, a seguito di ciò, il re degli dèi e suo padre, Zeus, la rimprovera di occuparsi di fatti guerreschi anziché attendere a quelli riguardanti "amabili cose d'amore" che sono di sua competenza. Questo passo tuttavia pare essere una trasposizione greca di un passo rilevante della tavola n.VI dell'Epopea di Gilgamesh: l'eroe insulta la dea, che va dai genitori a piangere e lamentarsi dell'onta subita: Anu, il padre, ribatte rispondendole che era colpa sua, e quanto detto da Gilgamesh era la realtà. Infatti, Gilgamesh ha come parallelo Diomede, mentre la madre Dione (presentata come moglie di Zeus, come se Era non esistesse), che non appare altrove né ha alcun culto ad essa dedicato, è la letterale traduzione di Antu, dea-moglie di Anu, dio del cielo: Dione è il femminile tratto dalla stessa radice di Zeus, *dewos, ''luce del giorno'': entrambe le coppie stanno a significare ''Signore e Signora Cielo''. Questo considerato, il passo non è deducibile come esatta visione dei Greci della dea, in quanto pura trasposizione letteraria. 
Anche nell'Odissea, Afrodite è la dea dell'amore ma qui è moglie del dio Efesto (Ἥφαιστος) ma è amata anche da Ares (Ἄρης).

Afrodite nella Teogonia di Esiodo

Esiodo nella Teogonia (vv. 188-206) fa derivare il nome Ἀφροδίτη da ἀφρός (spuma, aphrós) e ne narra in questo modo la nascita provocata dalla spuma marina, frutto del seme del membro di Urano evirato da Kronos, mischiato con l'acqua del mare:

(GRC) « Μήδεα δ᾽ ὡς τὸ πρῶτον ἀποτμήξας ἀδάμαντι κάββαλ᾽ ἀπ᾽ ἠπείροιο πολυκλύστῳ ἐνὶ πόντῳ, ὣς φέρετ᾽ ἂμ πέλαγος πουλὺν χρόνον, ἀμφὶ δὲ λευκὸς ἀφρὸς ἀπ᾽ ἀθανάτου χροὸς ὤρνυτο• τῷ δ᾽ ἔνι κούρη ἐθρέφθη• πρῶτον δὲ Κυθήροισιν ζαθέοισιν ἔπλητ᾽, ἔνθεν ἔπειτα περίῤῥυτον ἵκετο Κύπρον. Ἐκ δ᾽ ἔβη αἰδοίη καλὴ θεός, ἀμφὶ δὲ ποίη ποσσὶν ὕπο ῥαδινοῖσιν ἀέξετο τὴν δ᾽ Ἀφροδίτην [ἀφρογενέα τε θεὰν καὶ ἐυστέφανον Κυθέρειαν] κικλῄσκουσι θεοί τε καὶ ἀνέρες, οὕνεκ᾽ ἐν ἀφρῷ θρέφθη• ἀτὰρ Κυθέρειαν, ὅτι προσέκυρσε Κυθήροις• [Κυπρογενέα δ᾽, ὅτι γέντο πολυκλύστῳ ἐνὶ Κύπρῳ• ἠδὲ φιλομμηδέα, ὅτι μηδέων ἐξεφαάνθη.] Τῇ δ᾽ Ἔρος ὡμάρτησε καὶ Ἵμερος ἕσπετο καλὸς γεινομένῃ τὰ πρῶτα θεῶν τ᾽ ἐς φῦλον ἰούσῃ. Ταύτην δ᾽ ἐξ ἀρχῆς τιμὴν ἔχει ἠδὲ λέλογχε μοῖραν ἐν ἀνθρώποισι καὶ ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσι, Παρθενίους τ᾽ ὀάρους μειδήματά τ᾽ ἐξαπάτας τε τέρψιν τε γλυκερὴν φιλότητά τε μειλιχίην τε. »

(IT) « E come ebbe tagliati i genitali con l'adamante lì getto dalla terra nel mare molto agitato, e furono portati al largo, per molto tempo; attorno bianca la spuma dall'immortale membro sortì, e in essa una fanciulla nacque, e dapprima a Citera divina giunse, e di lì poi giunse a Cipro molto lambita dai flutti; lì approdò, la dea veneranda e bella, e attorno l'erba sotto i piedi nasceva; lei Afrodite, cioè dea Afrogenea e Citerea dalla bella corona, chiamano dèi e uomini, perché nella spuma nacque; e anche Citerea, perché prese terra a Citera; Ciprogenea che nacque in Cipro, molto battuta dai flutti; oppure Philommedea perché nacque dai genitali. Lei Eros accompagnò e Himeros bello la seguì da quando, appena nata, andò verso la schiera degli dèi immortali. Fin dal principio tale onore lei ebbe e sortì come destino fra gli uomini e gli dèi immortali, ciance di fanciulle e sorrisi e inganni e il dolce piacere e affetto e blandizie. »

(Esiodo, Teogonia, 188-206. Traduzione di Graziano Arrighetti, in Esiodo Opere : 1998 Einaudi-Gallimard; 2007 Mondadori, p. 11.13)

Genealogia (Esiodo)

Urano

Gea

Genitali di  Urano

CRONO

Rea

Zeus

Era

Poseidone

Ade

Demetra

Estia

a

b

Ares

Efesto

Meti

Atena

Latona

Apollo

Artemide

Maia

Ermes

Semele

Dioniso

Dione

a

b

Afrodite

Afrodite nei Lirici

André Motte e Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge ricordano come Afrodite si presenti già nella Teogonia di Esiodo, come la prima figura femminile in forme antropomorfe, emergendo da un contesto di desiderio e di violenza che ne caratterizza i tratti di seduzione e di inganno, poi presenti nella prima donna, Pandora.

(GRC) « ποικιλόθρον' ἀθανάτ' Αφρόδιτα, παῖ Δίος δολόπλοκε, λίσσομαί σε, μή μ' ἄσαισι μηδ' ὀνίαισι δάμνα, πότνια, θῦμον »	(IT) « Afrodite, immortale che siedi sopra il trono intarsiato, figlia di Zeus, tessitrice di inganni ti supplico: non domare il mio cuore con ansie, tormenti, o divina. »
(Saffo; traduzione di Giulio Guidorizzi, in Lirici greci, Milano, Mondadori, 2007, pp. 240-1)

Altri miti su Afrodite

• Nell'Inno omerico (VI) ad Afrodite, la dea emerge nuda dalle acque del mare, sono le divinità Horai (Ὥραι) che accogliendola, l'abbigliarono con divine vesti.
• Nella teogonia orfica riportata dal Papiro di Derveni, un rotolo di papiro rinvenuto semicombusto all'interno di una tomba macedone collocata a Derveni (nei pressi di Salonicco) datata al IV secolo a.C., la dea Afrodite è concepita dal re degli dèi, Zeus

« Zeus è re, Zeus dalla vivida folgore il sovrano di tutte le cose; li nascose tutti e poi alla luce dispensatrice di gioia li fece salire dal suo cuore sacro, terribili atti compiendo. In verità prima di ogni altra cosa l'aurea Afrodite, l'Urania desiderabile, con una sola eiaculazione concepì »

(Papiro di Derveni. Traduzione di Paolo Scarpi, in Le religioni dei misteri vol. 1, pp. 369 e sgg.)

• Afrodite sconvolge le menti degli uomini, ma sa suscitare il desiderio anche nelle menti divine, per l'Inno omerico (V) ad Afrodite solo tre dee non vengono influenzate: Atena, Artemide ed Estia.

Afrodite e Psiche

Afrodite era gelosa della bellezza di una donna mortale di nome Psiche. Chiese quindi a Eros di usare le sue frecce dorate per farla innamorare dell’uomo più brutto della terra. Eros accettò ma si innamorò egli stesso di Psiche (forse pungendosi inavvertitamente con una delle sue frecce). Eros la visitò ogni notte nella caverna ed ebbero dei rapporti sessuali. Eros le chiese solo di non accendere mai alcuna lampada, poiché non voleva che lei sapesse chi egli fosse (avere le ali lo rendeva individuabile). Le due sorelle, gelose di Psiche, la convinsero a trasgredire e così una notte ella accese una lampada, riconoscendo Eros all'istante. Una goccia di olio bollente cadde sul petto di Eros svegliandolo e facendolo fuggire. Nella disperata ricerca del perduto amore Psiche giunge al palazzo di Afrodite. La dea, mossa dall'ira, sottopone la fanciulla a una serie di prove, che Psiche riesce a superare grazie all'aiuto di esseri divini. Eros intanto, in preda alla nostalgia, si pone alla ricerca dell'amata e, trovatala, chiede a Zeus il permesso di sposarla. Ottenutolo, i due si sposarono ed ebbero una figlia di nome Edoné, che in greco significa piacere.

Afrodite e Adone

Afrodite era l’amante di Adone, dalla bellezza ultraterrena, ed ebbe una ruolo nella sua nascita. Ella spinse Mirra a commettere incesto col padre Cinira, re di Cipro. Quando Cinira scoprì la cosa, si adirò e inseguì la figlia con un coltello. Gli dei la trasformarono in un albero di mirra e Adone nacque da questo albero. Secondo altre versioni, fu Afrodite a trasformarla in albero e Adone nacque quando Teia colpì l'albero con una freccia o quando un cinghiale usò le sue zanne per strapparne la corteccia.
Una volta nato Adone, Afrodite lo prese sotto la sua ala, seducendolo con l’aiuto di Elena, sua amica, e rimanendo ammaliata dalla sua bellezza ultraterrena. Afrodite lo diede a Persefone perché lo vigilasse, ma anche Persefone fu meravigliata dalla sua bellezza e si rifiutò di restituirlo. La discussione tra le due dee venne appianata da Zeus o da Calliope, con Adone che avrebbe passato quattro mesi l’anno con Afrodite, quattro con Persefone e quattro per conto suo.
Adone alla fine venne ucciso dal geloso Ares. Afrodite fu avvertita di questa gelosia e le venne detto che Adone sarebbe stato ucciso da un cinghiale in cui si sarebbe trasformato Ares. Afrodite cercò di persuadere Adone a restare con lei tutto il tempo, ma il suo amore per la caccia fu la sua disgrazia. Mentre Adone cacciava, Ares lo trovò e lo colpì a morte. Afrodite arrivò appena in tempo per udire il suo ultimo respiro. Si narra anche che Afrodite diede una figlia ad Adone, Beroe.

Afrodite nel Giudizio di Paride e nella guerra di Troia

Alle nozze di Peleo e Teti sul monte Olimpo, la dea della discordia Eris, lanciò una mela d'oro con scritto "Alla più bella". Ne derivò allora un'aspra contesa tra Afrodite, Era e Atena, per arrogarsi quel titolo. Zeus lasciò il compito di giudicare a Paride, il quale scelse Afrodite poiché gli aveva promesso l'amore di Elena, la donna più bella del mondo. Afrodite dunque contribuì allo scoppio della guerra di Troia, nella quale lei si schierò dalla parte dei Troiani contro gli Achei. Nel terzo libro dell'Iliade, Afrodite salvò Paride quando stava per essere ucciso da Menelao, e fu molto protettiva nei confronti del figlio Enea.

Afrodite e Nerito

Prima di diventare una degli dei dell'Olimpo, Afrodite viveva nel mare, e si era innamorata di Nerito, l'unico figlio maschio di Nereo e Doride. Quando ella volle salire sull'Olimpo invitò anche Nerito a venire con lei, ma lui preferì rimanere tra le onde insieme alle sorelle, e Afrodite, infuriata, lo trasformò in una conchiglia.

Afrodite nelle teologie

• In Empedocle, Amore (Φιλότης) è indicato anche con il nome di Afrodite (Ἀφροδίτη), o con il suo appellativo di Kýpris (Κύπρις), indicando qui la «natura divina che tutto unisce e genera la vita». Tale accostamento tra Amore e Afrodite ispirò al poeta epicureo romano Lucrezio l'inno a Venere, collocato nel proemio del De rerum natura. In questa opera Venere non è la dea dell'amplesso, quanto piuttosto «l'onnipotente forza creatrice che pervade la natura e vi anima tutto l'essere», venendo poi, come nel caso di Empedocle, opposta a Marte, dio del conflitto.

Culto

Nonostante la prerogativa della potenza divina della dea Afrodite fosse l'amore inteso come amplesso, il suo culto era generalmente serio se non austero.
Le prostitute la invocavano come loro protettrice e, a Corinto, si esercitava la ierodulia in suo onore.
Non si sa molto delle feste in onore di Afrodite, ma la dea era sovente onorata al termine di imprese importanti. Plutarco ricorda che in suo onore si chiudevano le celebrazioni a Posidone a Egina.
Le feste "Afrodisie" erano proprie dei marinai, che la veneravano come dea sorta dal mare, al termine del loro viaggio per mare, vissute con larga partecipazione dei piaceri.
Gli animali sacri ad Afrodite erano il delfino, il passero, il cigno e soprattutto la colomba. Tra le piante a lei sacre ci sono la rosa, il mirto, la palma e il melocotogno.

Iconografia

Pausania ricorda nei suoi scritti che già all'epoca di Dedalo esistevano xoana (simulacro templari in legno) di Afrodite. A partire dal V secolo a.C. la rappresentazione della dea greca assunse un significato più specifico con opere come la famosa Afrodite Sosandra di Calamide (460 a.C. circa), in cui essa era rappresentata avvolta nel mantello e con un'espressione solenne e sacrale. Anche Fidia diede altre rappresentazioni della dea un forte senso di dignità, come nell'Afrodite Urania o nei frammenti del frontone est del Partenone.
A partire dal IV secolo a.C. l'iconografia della dea mutò radicalmente, a partire dall'Afrodite cnidia di Prassitele, primo nudo femminile dell'arte greca: in tale statua Afrodite è rappresentata mentre sta per immergersi nel bagno sacro, con uno sguardo lontano che ne sottolinea il carattere ultraterreno. In quegli stessi anni Apelle ne dipingeva una celebre immagine (perduta), l'Anadiomene, che la mostra sorgente dalle acque nell'atto di strizzare i capelli bagnati.
Ulteriori sviluppi si ebbero con l'ellenismo. Verso il 250 a.C. Doidalsa scolpì una celebre Afrodite accovacciata, in cui la dea è piegata nell'atto di ricevere su di sé l'acqua del bagno, in un atteggiamento umanizzato reso con estrema attenzione naturalistica, scevro dalla connotazione "eroica" delle figure precedenti. Negli anni successivi si continuò sulla medesima strada. Al II secolo a.C. risale la celebre Afrodite di Melos (nota come Venere di Milo), nuda dall'addome in su, con le gambe coperte da un fitto panneggio e il corpo animato da una misurata torsione. Un braccio della dea doveva incrociarsi verso la gamba opposta, leggermente sollevata, anticipando il gesto dell'Afrodite pudica, un tema sviluppato in varie versioni (Capitolina, Medici e Landolina le principali). Nelle opere più tarde dell'arte greca la resa naturalistica del corpo femminile nudo aveva ormai posto in secondo piano i significati religiosi, come si vede nell'Afrodite di Cirene o nell'Esquilina.

Epiteti e titoli

• Ambologera (᾿Αμβολογήρα; "che non invecchia mai", "la cui bellezza non deperisce"); in Pausania (III, 18,1) riferito a una sua statua collocata a Sparta che riportava tale epiteto.
• Anadiomene (᾿Αναδυομένη; "che emerge [dal mare]"); in riferimento all'Afrodite Anadiomene, un dipinto andato perduto di Apelle di Kos descritto da Ateneo (Deipnosofisti, XII, 591).
• 'Cipride/Ciprigna (Κύπρις); nell' Iliade (V, 330), in Esiodo, Teogonia (188-206) in quanto sorge dal mare e quindi tocca terra sull'isola di Cipro (isola dove la dea godeva di un culto particolare).
• Citerèa (Κυϑέρεια) in Esiodo, Teogonia (188-206); in quanto appena nata si recò sull'isola di Citera.
• Calliglutea (Καλλιγλυτος, "dai bei glutei"), compare in Nicandro, frammento 23.
• Callipigia (καλλιπῦγos, "dalle belle natiche"), compare in Ateneo, (Deipnosofisti XII.554).
• Colpode (Κολπώδες, "sinuosa" e «[con il] kolpos», κολπος che letteralmente significa "seno") in riferimento alla dea che indossa il kolpos ovvero quella parte del chitone ionico che fascia morbidamente il seno (il chitone ionico è infatti stretto sotto il petto da una cintura che lascia ripiegare a sbuffo la veste). Il termine, col secondo significato, compare associato ad Afrodite nella forma ἱοκόλπος («cinta di viole») in Alceo (frammento 12) e Saffo.
• Euplea o Euploia, "della buona navigazione"
• Eustéphanos "dal bel diadema" (trad. Privitera), in Hom. Od., VIII, 266
• Genetyllis (Γενετυλίς)
• Idalia, venerata nel santuario di Idalio nell'isola di Cipro
• Melaina, la nera
• Melainis, la nera
• Morfo (μορφώ), armoniosa e come sinonimo di bellezza, compare in Licofrone 449 e Pausania 3.15.10
• Pandemia, dell'amore triviale
• Skotia, la scura
• Anosia, l'empia
• Androphonos, sterminatrice di uomini
• Tymborychos,
• Epitymbidia, colei che sta sulle tombe
• Basilis, regina
• Persephaessa
• Praxis
• Vergine, Colei che è una in se stessa
• Polikilòtron, seduta su un trono variegato, immagine presente in Saffo, la divinità in Età Arcaica era infatti spesso raffigurata su di un trono
• Dolòplokos, tessitrice di inganni, riferito all'ambito erotico del termine.
• Filommedea, amante dei genitali, "perché apparve dai genitali [di Urano]" (Esiodo, Teogonia, v. 200).

Amanti e figli di Afrodite

Padre	Stato	Figli
Adone	Umano	Golgo Beroe Priapo
Anchise	Umano	Enea Lirno
Ares	Dio	Eros Anteros Armonia Imeros Deimos Phobos Athys Ares
Bute	Umano	Erice
Crono	Titano	Poto
Dioniso	Dio	Cariti Aglaia Eufrosine Talia Imeneo Priapo
Dinlas	Umano	-
Ermes	Dio	Ermafrodito Eros Eunomia Peito Priapo Tyche
Fetonte	Umano	Astinoo
Pigmalione		Pafo
Poseidone	Dio	Erice Rodo
Zeus	Dio	Eros Priapo
-		Elena

English: Copy after Praxiteles

Français : Copie de Praxitèle

English: Aphrodite of the Syracuse type. Parian marble, Roman copy of the 2nd century CE after a Greek original of the 4th century BC; neck, head and left arm are restorations by Antonio Canova. Found at Baiae, Southern Italy.

Français : Statue d'Aphrodite en marbre de Paros, trouvée à Baïes en Italie du Sud. Le cou, la tête et le bras droit sont des restaurations du fameux sculpteur italien A. Canova (1757-1822). Aphrodite est représentée debout, nue, sauf pour une himation qu'elle retient de la main gauche pour cacher ses pudenda. Copie romaine du IIe s. p. C. de l'Aphrodite de Syracuse, datant du IVe s. a. C.

 National Archaeological Museum

Aphrodite (/æfrəˈdaɪti/ ( listen) af-rə-DY-tee; Greek: Ἀφροδίτη Aphrodítē) is the ancient Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation. She is identified with the planet Venus, which is named after the Roman goddess Venus, with whom Aphrodite was extensively syncretized. Aphrodite's major symbols include myrtles, roses, doves, sparrows, and swans.
The cult of Aphrodite was largely derived from that of the Phoenician goddess Astarte, a cognate of 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 the concept of "sacred prostitution", an idea which is now generally seen as erroneous.
In Hesiod's Theogony, Aphrodite is born off the coast of Cythera from the foam (aphros) produced by Uranus's genitals, which his son Cronus has severed and thrown into the sea. In Homer's Iliad, however, she is the daughter of Zeus and Dione. Plato, in his Symposium 180e, asserts that these two origins actually belong to separate entities: Aphrodite Ourania (a transcendent, "Heavenly" Aphrodite) and Aphrodite Pandemos (Aphrodite common to "all the people"). Aphrodite had many other epithets, each emphasizing 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), due to the fact that both locations claimed to be the place of her birth.
In Greek mythology, Aphrodite was married to Hephaestus, the god of blacksmiths and metalworking. Despite this, 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 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 she 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 the Church of Aphrodite, Wicca, and Hellenismos.

Etymology

Hesiod derives 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 now been mostly abandoned. Aphrodite's name is generally accepted to be of non-Greek, probably Semitic, origin, but its exact derivation cannot be determined.
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 *-dítē "bright". Michael Janda, also accepting Hesiod's etymology, has argued in favor of the latter of these interpretations and claims the story of a birth from the foam as an Indo-European mytheme. Likewise, Witczak proposes an Indo-European compound *abʰor- "very" and *dʰei- "to shine", also referring to Eos. Other scholars have argued that these hypotheses are unlikely since Aphrodite's attributes are entirely different from those of both Eos and the Vedic deity Ushas.
A number of improbable non-Greek etymologies have also been suggested. One Semitic etymology compares Aphrodite to the Assyrian barīrītu, 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 actually appears in Etruscan in the borrowed form Apru (from Greek Aphrō, clipped form of Aphrodite).
The medieval Etymologicum Magnum (c. 1150) offers 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".

Origins

Near Eastern love goddess

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 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, after the Assyrians, 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 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 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 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.

Indo-European dawn goddess

Some early comparative mythologists opposed to the idea of 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_aéusōs (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 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 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.

Forms and epithets

Aphrodite's most common cultic epithet 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. Plato, in his Symposium, argues that Aphrodite Ourania and Aphrodite 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. Aphrodite Pandemos, by contrast, is the younger of the two goddesses: the common Aphrodite, born from the union of Zeus and Dione, and the inspiration of heterosexual desire, the "lesser" of the two loves.
Among the Neoplatonists and, later, their Christian interpreters, Aphrodite Ourania is associated with spiritual love, and Aphrodite Pandemos with physical love (desire). A representation of Aphrodite 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 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 the fact that, in many artistic depictions of Aphrodite, she is shown smiling. Other common literary epithets are Cypris and Cythereia, which derive from her associations with the islands of Cyprus and Cythera respectively.
On Cyprus, Aphrodite was sometimes called Eleemon ("the merciful"). In Athens, she was known as Aphrodite en kopois ("Aphrodite of the Gardens"). At Cape Colias, a town along the Attic coast, she was venerated as Genetyllis ("the mother"). The Spartans worshipped her as Potnia ("the Mistress"), Enoplios ("the armed"), Morpho ("the shapely"), Ambologera ("she who postpones old age"). Across the Greek world, she was known under epithets such as Melainis ("the Black One"), Skotia ("the Dark One"), Androphonos ("the Killer of Men"), Anosia ("the Unholy"), and Tymborychos ("the gravedigger", all of which indicate her darker, more violent nature.
A male version of Aphrodite known as Aphroditus was worshipped in the city of Amathus on Cyprus. Aphroditus was depicted with the figure and dress of a woman, but had a full 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 the later legends of Hermaphroditus.

Worship

Classical period

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 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 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 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 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 the notion of ritual prostitution in Greece as a "historiographic myth" with no factual basis.

Hellenistic and Roman periods

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 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 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 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, 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 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.

Mythology

Birth

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. However, 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 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 the sea a long time, and white foam arose from the immortal flesh; with it a girl grew." 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 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 Theogony, Hesiod describes Dione as an Oceanid.

Among the gods

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 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 a net of gold. 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. Humiliated, Aphrodite returned to Cyprus, where she was attended by the Charites. This narrative probably originated as a Greek folk tale, originally independent of the Odyssey.
Later stories were invented to explain Aphrodite's marriage to Hephaestus. In 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 a strophion known as the kestos imas, a saltire-shaped undergarment (usually translated as "girdle"), 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 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 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 poetess 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, 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 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 own daughter by Ares, and Hebe, the daughter of Zeus and Hera.
The fertility god Priapus 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. When Aphrodite gave birth, she 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.

Mortal lovers

Anchises

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, 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 the mountain if she will bless him and his family.
Aphrodite, however, lies and tells him that she 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, 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 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 prophecizes 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.

Adonis

The myth of Aphrodite and Adonis 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 poetess Sappho, dating to the seventh century 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 the story with more details: 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 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 which of them Adonis rightly belonged to. Zeus settled the dispute by decreeing that Adonis would spend one third of the year with Aphrodite, one third with Persephone, and one third with whomever he chose. Adonis chose Aphrodite, and they remained constantly together. Then, one day while Adonis was out hunting, he was wounded by a wild boar, and bled to death in Aphrodite's arms. In different versions of 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. 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 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 De Dea Syria, 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 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 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 a public display of grief.

Divine favoritism

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, 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 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 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 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".

Anger myths

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 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 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, 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 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 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 offspring, Agrius and Oreius, were wild cannibals who incurred the hatred of Zeus. Ultimately, he transformed all the members of the family into birds of ill omen.

Judgment of Paris and Trojan War

The myth of the Judgement of Paris is mentioned briefly in the Iliad, but is described in depth in an epitome of the Cypria, a lost poem of the Epic Cycle, which records that all the gods and goddesses as well as various mortals were invited to the marriage of Peleus and Thetis (the eventual parents of Achilles). Only Eris, goddess of discord, was not invited. She was annoyed at this, so she arrived with a golden apple inscribed with the word καλλίστῃ (kallistēi, "for the fairest"), which she threw among the goddesses. Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena all claimed to be the fairest, and thus the rightful owner of the apple.
The goddesses chose to place the matter before Zeus, who, not wanting to favor one of the goddesses, put the choice into the hands of Paris, a Trojan prince. After bathing in the spring of Mount Ida where Troy was situated, the goddesses appeared before Paris for his decision. In the extant ancient depictions of the Judgement of Paris, Aphrodite is only occasionally represented nude, and Athena and Hera are always fully clothed. Since the Renaissance, however, western paintings have typically portrayed all three goddesses as completely naked.
All three goddesses were ideally beautiful and Paris could not decide between them, so they resorted to bribes. Hera tried to bribe Paris with power over all Asia and Europe, and Athena offered wisdom, fame and glory in battle, but Aphrodite promised Paris that, if he were to choose her as the fairest, she would let him marry the most beautiful woman on earth. This woman was Helen, who was already married to King Menelaus of Sparta. Paris selected Aphrodite and awarded her the apple. The other two goddesses were enraged and, as a direct result, sided with the Greeks in the Trojan War.
Aphrodite plays an important and active role throughout the entirety of Homer's Iliad. In Book III, she rescues Paris from Menelaus after he foolishly challenges him to a one-on-one duel. She then appears to Helen in the form of an old woman and attempts to persuade her to have sex with Paris, reminding her of his physical beauty and athletic prowess. Helen immediately recognizes Aphrodite by her beautiful neck, perfect breasts, and flashing eyes and chides the goddess, addressing her as her equal. Aphrodite sharply rebukes Helen, reminding her that, if she vexes her, she will punish her just as much as she has favored her already. Helen demurely obeys Aphrodite's command.
In Book V, Aphrodite charges into battle to rescue her son Aeneas from the Greek hero Diomedes. Diomedes recognizes Aphrodite as a "weakling" goddess and, thrusting his spear, nicks her wrist through her "ambrosial robe". Aphrodite borrows Ares's chariot to ride back to Mount Olympus. Zeus chides her for putting herself in danger, reminding her that "her specialty is love, not war." According to Walter Burkert, this scene directly parallels a scene from Tablet VI of the Epic of Gilgamesh in which Ishtar, Aphrodite's Akkadian precursor, cries to her mother Antu after the hero Gilgamesh rejects her sexual advances, but is mildly rebuked by her father Anu. In Book XIV of the Iliad, during the Dios Apate episode, Aphrodite lends her kestos himas to Hera for the purpose of seducing Zeus and distracting him from the combat while Poseidon aids the Greek forces on the beach. In the Theomachia in Book XXI, Aphrodite again enters the battlefield to carry Ares away after he is wounded.

Consorts and children

1. Hephaestus
2. Ares
   1. Phobos
   2. Deimos
   3. Harmonia
   4. Adrestia
   5. The Erotes, viz.
      1. Eros (originally a primordial being; only later became Aphrodite's son)
      2. Anteros
      3. Himeros (originally born from the sea alongside Aphrodite; only later became her son)
      4. Pothos
3. Poseidon
   1. Rhodos
4. Hermes
   1. Hermaphroditos
   2. Priapus (rarely)
5. Dionysus
   1. Priapus (usually)
6. Zeus
   1. Priapus (very rarely)
7. ^Adones
   1. Beroe
   2. Golgos
   3. Priapus (rarely)
8. Phaethon (son of Eos)
   1. Astynoos
9. Anchises
   1. Aeneas
10. Butes
    1. Eryx
    2. Meligounis + several more unnamed daughters

Iconography

Symbols

“	Rich-throned immortal Aphrodite, scheming daughter of Zeus, I pray you, with pain and sickness, Queen, crush not my heart, but come, if ever in the past you heard my voice from afar and hearkened, and left your father's halls and came, with gold chariot yoked; and pretty sparrows brought you swiftly across the dark earth fluttering wings from heaven through the air.	”
— Sappho, "Ode to Aphrodite", lines 1-10, translated by M. L. West

Aphrodite's most prominent avian symbol was the dove, which was originally an important symbol of her Near Eastern precursor Inanna-Ishtar. (In fact, the ancient Greek word for "dove", peristerá, may be derived from a Semitic phrase peraḥ Ištar, meaning "bird of Ishtar".) Aphrodite frequently appears with doves in ancient Greek pottery and the temple of Aphrodite Pandemos on the southwest slope of the Athenian Acropolis was decorated with relief sculptures of doves with knotted fillets in their beaks. Votive offerings of small, white, marble doves were also discovered in the temple of Aphrodite at Daphni. In addition to her associations with doves, Aphrodite was also closely linked with sparrows and she is described riding in a chariot pulled by sparrows in Sappho's "Ode to Aphrodite".
Because of her connections to the sea, Aphrodite was associated with a number of different types of water fowl, including swans, geese, and ducks. Aphrodite's other symbols included the sea, conch shells, and roses. The rose and myrtle flowers were both sacred to Aphrodite. Her most important fruit emblem was the apple, but she was also associated with pomegranates, possibly because the red seeds suggested sexuality or because Greek women sometimes used pomegranates as a method of birth control. In Greek art, Aphrodite is often also accompanied by dolphins and Nereids.

Representations in classical art

A scene of Aphrodite rising from the sea appears on the back of the Ludovisi Throne (c. 460 BC), which was probably originally part of a massive altar that was constructed as part of the Ionic temple to Aphrodite in the Greek polis of Locri Epizephyrii in Magna Graecia in southern Italy. The throne shows Aphrodite rising from the sea, clad in a diaphanous garment, which is drenched with seawater and clinging to her body, revealing her upturned breasts and the outline of her navel. Her hair hangs dripping as she reaches to two attendants standing barefoot on the rocky shore on either side of her, lifting her out of the water. Scenes with Aphrodite appear in works of classical Greek pottery, including a famous white-ground kylix by the Pistoxenos Painter dating the between c. 470 and 460 BC, showing her riding on a swan or goose.
In c. 364/361 BC, the Athenian sculptor Praxiteles carved the marble statue Aphrodite of Knidos, which Pliny the Elder later praised as the greatest sculpture ever made. The statue showed a nude Aphrodite modestly covering her pubic region while resting against a water pot with her robe draped over it for support. The Aphrodite of Knidos was the first ever full-sized statue to depict Aphrodite completely naked and one of the first sculptures that was intended to be viewed from all sides. The statue was purchased by the people of Knidos in around 350 BC and proved to be tremendously influential on later depictions of Aphrodite.The original sculpture has been lost, but written descriptions of it as well several depictions of it on coins are still extant and over sixty copies, small-scale models, and fragments of it have been identified.
The Greek painter Apelles of Kos, a contemporary of Praxiteles, produced the panel painting Aphrodite Anadyomene (Aphrodite Rising from the Sea). According to Athenaeus, Apelles was inspired to paint the painting after watching the courtesan Phryne take off her clothes, untie her hair, and bathe naked in the sea at Eleusis. The painting was displayed in the Asclepeion on the island of Kos. The Aphrodite Anadyomene went unnoticed for centuries, but Pliny the Elder records that, in his own time, it was regarded as Apelles's most famous work.
During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, statues depicting Aphrodite proliferated; many of these statues were modeled at least to some extent on Praxiteles's Aphrodite of Knidos. Some statues show Aphrodite crouching naked; others show her wringing water out of her hair as she rises from the sea. Another common type of statue is known as Aphrodite Kallipygos, the name of which is Greek for "Aphrodite of the Beautiful Buttocks"; this type of sculpture shows Aphrodite lifting her peplos to display her buttocks to the viewer while looking back at them from over her shoulder. The ancient Romans produced massive numbers of copies of Greek sculptures of Aphrodite and more sculptures of Aphrodite have survived from antiquity than of any other deity.

Post-classical culture

Middle Ages

Early Christians frequently adapted pagan iconography to suit Christian purposes. In the Early Middle Ages, Christians adapted elements of Aphrodite/Venus's iconography and applied them to Eve and prostitutes, but also female saints and even the Virgin Mary. Christians in the east reinterpreted the story of Aphrodite's birth as a metaphor for baptism; in a Coptic stele from the sixth century AD, a female orant is shown wearing Aphrodite's conch shell as a sign that she is newly baptized. Throughout the Middle Ages, villages and communities across Europe still maintained folk tales and traditions about Aphrodite/Venus and travelers reported a wide variety of stories. Numerous Roman mosaics of Venus survived in Britain, preserving memory of the pagan past. In North Africa in the late fifth century AD, Fulgentius of Ruspe encountered mosaics of Aphrodite and reinterpreted her as a symbol of the sin of Lust, arguing that she was shown naked because "the sin of lust is never cloaked" and that she was often shown "swimming" because "all lust suffers shipwreck of its affairs." He also argued that she was associated with doves and conchs because these are symbols of copulation, and that she was associated with roses because "as the rose gives pleasure, but is swept away by the swift movement of the seasons, so lust is pleasant for a moment, but is swept away forever."
While Fulgentius had appropriated Aphrodite as a symbol of Lust, Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636) interpreted her as a symbol of marital procreative sex and declared that the moral of the story of Aphrodite's birth is that sex can only be holy in the presence of semen, blood, and heat, which he regarded as all being necessary for procreation. Meanwhile, Isidore denigrated Aphrodite/Venus's son Eros/Cupid as a "demon of fornication" (daemon fornicationis). Aphrodite/Venus was best known to Western European scholars through her appearances in Virgil's Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses. Venus is mentioned in the Latin poem Pervigilium Veneris ("The Eve of Saint Venus"), written in the third or fourth century AD, and in Giovanni Boccaccio's Genealogia Deorum Gentilium.

Art

Aphrodite is the central figure in Sandro Botticelli's painting Primavera, which has been described as "one of the most written about, and most controversial paintings in the world", and "one of the most popular paintings in Western art". The story of Aphrodite's birth from the foam was a popular subject matter for painters during the Italian Renaissance, who were attempting to consciously reconstruct Apelles of Kos's lost masterpiece Aphrodite Anadyomene based on the literary ekphrasis of it preserved by Cicero and Pliny the Elder. Artists also drew inspiration from Ovid's description of the birth of Venus in his Metamorphoses. Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus (c. 1485) was also partially inspired by a description by Poliziano of a relief on the subject. Later Italian renditions of the same scene include Titian's Venus Anadyomene (c. 1525) and Raphael's painting in the Stufetta del cardinal Bibbiena (1516). Titian's biographer Giorgio Vasari identified all of Titian's paintings of naked women as paintings of "Venus", including an erotic painting from c. 1534, which he called the Venus of Urbino, even though the painting does not contain any of Aphrodite/Venus's traditional iconography and the woman in it is clearly shown in a contemporary setting, not a classical one.

Jacques-Louis David's final work was his 1824 magnum opus, Mars Being Disarmed by Venus, which combines elements of classical, Renaissance, traditional French art, and contemporary artistic styles. While he was working on the painting, David described it, saying, "This is the last picture I want to paint, but I want to surpass myself in it. I will put the date of my seventy-five years on it and afterwards I will never again pick up my brush." The painting was exhibited first in Brussels and then in Paris, where over 10,000 people came to see it. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres's painting Venus Anadyomene was one of his major works. Louis Geofroy described it as a "dream of youth realized with the power of maturity, a happiness that few obtain, artists or others." Théophile Gautier declared: "Nothing remains of the marvelous painting of the Greeks, but surely if anything could give the idea of antique painting as it was conceived following the statues of Phidias and the poems of Homer, it is M. Ingres's painting: the Venus Anadyomene of Apelles has been found." Other critics dismissed it as a piece of unimaginative, sentimental kitsch, but Ingres himself considered it to be among his greatest works and used the same figure as the model for his later 1856 painting La Source.
Paintings of Venus were favorites of the late nineteenth-century Academic artists in France. In 1863, Alexandre Cabanel won widespread critical acclaim at the Paris Salon for his painting The Birth of Venus, which the French emperor Napoleon III immediately purchased for his own personal art collection. Édouard Manet's 1865 painting Olympia parodied the nude Venuses of the Academic painters, particularly Cabanel's Birth of Venus. In 1867, the English Academic painter Frederic Leighton displayed his Venus Disrobing for the Bath at the Academy. The art critic J. B. Atkinson praised it, declaring that "Mr Leighton, instead of adopting corrupt Roman notions regarding Venus such as Rubens embodied, has wisely reverted to the Greek idea of Aphrodite, a goddess worshipped, and by artists painted, as the perfection of female grace and beauty." A year later, the English painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, painted Venus Verticordia (Latin for "Aphrodite, the Changer of Hearts"), showing Aphrodite as a nude red-headed woman in a garden of roses. Though he was reproached for his outré subject matter, Rossetti refused to alter the painting and it was soon purchased by J. Mitchell of Bradford. In 1879, William Adolphe Bouguereau exhibited at the Paris Salon his own Birth of Venus, which imitated the classical tradition of contrapposto and was met with widespread critical acclaim, rivalling the popularity of Cabanel's version from nearly two decades prior.

Literature

William Shakespeare's erotic narrative poem Venus and Adonis (1593), a retelling of the courtship of Aphrodite and Adonis from Ovid's Metamorphoses, was the most popular of all his works published within his own lifetime. Six editions of it were published before Shakespeare's death (more than any of his other works) and it enjoyed particularly strong popularity among young adults. In 1605, Richard Barnfield lauded it, declaring that the poem had placed Shakespeare's name "in fames immortall Booke". Despite this, the poem has received mixed reception from modern critics; Samuel Taylor Coleridge defended it, but Samuel Butler complained that it bored him and C. S. Lewis described an attempted reading of it as "suffocating".
Aphrodite appears in Richard Garnett's short story collection The Twilight of the Gods and Other Tales (1888), in which the gods' temples have been destroyed by Christians. Stories revolving around sculptures of Aphrodite were common in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Examples of such works of literature include the novel The Tinted Venus: A Farcical Romance (1885) by Thomas Anstey Guthrie and the short story The Venus of Ille (1887) by Prosper Mérimée both of which are about statues of Aphrodite that come to life. Another noteworthy example is Aphrodite in Aulis by the Anglo-Irish writer George Moore, which revolves around an ancient Greek family who moves to Aulis. The French writer Pierre Louÿs titled his erotic historical novel Aphrodite: mœurs antiques (1896) after the Greek goddess. The novel enjoyed widespread commercial success, but scandalized French audiences due to its sensuality and its decadent portrayal of Greek society.
In the early twentieth century, stories of Aphrodite were used by feminist poets, such as Amy Lowell and Alicia Ostriker Many of these poems dealt with Aphrodite's legendary birth from the foam of the sea. Other feminist writers, including Claude Cahun, Thit Jensen, and Anaïs Nin also made use of the myth of Aphrodite in their writings. Ever since the publication of Isabel Allende's book Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses in 1998, the name "Aphrodite" has been used as a title for dozens of books dealing with all topics even superficially connected to her domain. Frequently these books do not even mention Aphrodite, or mention her only briefly, but make use of her name as a selling point.

Modern worship

In 1938, Gleb Botkin, a Russian immigrant to the United States, founded the Church of Aphrodite, a Neopagan religion centered around the worship of a Mother Goddess, whom its practitioners identified as Aphrodite. The Church of Aphrodite's theology was laid out in the book In Search of Reality, published in 1969, two years before Botkin's death. The book portrayed Aphrodite in a drastically different light than the one in which the Greeks envisioned her, instead casting her as "the sole Goddess of a somewhat Neoplatonic Pagan monotheism". It claimed that the worship of Aphrodite had been brought to Greece by the mystic teacher Orpheus, but that the Greeks had misunderstood Orpheus's teachings and had not realized the importance of worshipping Aphrodite alone.
Aphrodite is a major deity in Wicca, a contemporary nature-based syncretic Neopagan religion. Wiccans regard Aphrodite as one aspect of the Goddess and she is frequently invoked by name during enchantments dealing with love and romance. Wiccans regard Aphrodite as the ruler of human emotions, erotic spirituality, creativity, and art. As one of the twelve Olympians, Aphrodite is a major deity within Hellenismos (Hellenic Polytheistic Reconstructionism), a Neopagan religion which seeks to authentically revive and recreate the religion of ancient Greece in the modern world. Unlike Wiccans, Hellenists are usually strictly polytheistic or pantheistic. Hellenists venerate Aphrodite primarily as the goddess of romantic love, but also as a goddess of sexuality, the sea, and war. Her many epithets include "Sea Born", "Killer of Men", "She upon the Graves", "Fair Sailing", and "Ally in War"

 

Late second-millennium BC nude figurine of Ishtar from Susa, showing her wearing a crown and clutching her breasts 

Rama and one more author - Own work

Venere

Venere (in latino Venus, Venĕris) è una delle maggiori dee romane principalmente associata all'amore, alla bellezza e alla fertilità, l'equivalente della dea greca Afrodite. Sono molte le ipotesi sulla nascita della dea, c'è chi sostiene che essa scaturì dal seme di Urano, dio del cielo quando i suoi genitali caddero in mare dalla castrazione subita dal figlio Saturno, per vendicare Gea, sua madre e sposa di Urano.Un'altra ipotesi è che essa sia nata da una conchiglia uscita dal mare.Venere è la consorte di Vulcano. Veniva considerata l'antenata del popolo romano per via del suo leggendario fondatore, Enea, svolgendo un ruolo chiave in molte festività e miti della religione romana.  

Amori della dea

In quanto dea, Venere amò numerosi dèi o mortali, dai quali ebbe figli.
Dalla sua unione con Anchise sarebbe nato Enea, il padre di Ascanio e il capostipite della futura Roma. Si dice che dagli amori di Venere e Marte nacquero invece Eros (detto anche Cupido), Deimo e Fobo.

Culto

A Roma venivano celebrati i Veneralia in onore di Venere Verticordia, "che apre i cuori", e del suo compagno, Fortuna Virile (o Fortuna Vergine, una dea, come risulta da studi recenti).
Sempre a Roma fu eretto un tempio, il Tempio di Venere e Roma, dedicato alla dea e alla città.
Tra le piante a lei sacre ci sono: il mirto, la rosa, il melo e il papavero. I suoi animali sacri invece sono: la lepre, il delfino, il cigno (simbolo di bellezza ed eleganza), il passero e, soprattutto, la colomba: simbolo dell'amore.
Venere si distingue per il carattere capriccioso, vanitoso e volitivo.
Esistono diversi racconti della nascita di Venere, ma i più noti sono quelli che risalgono a Esiodo e Omero. Secondo il primo, quando il Titano Saturno recise i genitali del padre Urano e li gettò in mare, il sangue e il seme in essi contenuti divennero schiuma dalla quale, presso l'isola di Cipro, emerse Venere (aphròs in greco significa proprio schiuma). Secondo il secondo, invece, Venere sarebbe figlia di Giove e della ninfa degli oceani Dione.
A causa della sua immensa bellezza, Giove temeva che Venere sarebbe stata causa di disputa tra gli altri dei e la diede quindi in sposa a Vulcano, il dio del fuoco, fabbro degli dei, di brutto aspetto, ma caratterizzato da un carattere fermo e costante e sempre dedito al lavoro. Il matrimonio non soddisfò, però, la dea, che intrecciò molte relazioni amorose, sia con umani che con dei. In particolare, è nota la relazione con il dio della guerra Marte. I due furono scoperti da Vulcano e, imprigionati in una rete metallica da lui stesso lavorata, furono esposti al ludibrio degli altri dei. L'unico in grado di resistere al fascino di Venere fu Narciso.
Dalle relazioni di Venere nacquero diversi figli. Uno dei più famosi è certamente il dio dell'amore Cupido (Eros, nella tradizione greca), di cui non si conosce con sicurezza il padre (Marte? Vulcano? Mercurio?), probabilmente ignoto anche alla dea, vista la grande promiscuità che la caratterizza. Cupido collaborò sempre con la madre, tranne in un caso. Gelosa della bellezza di una donna mortale di nome Psiche, Venere chiese al figlio di farla innamorare del più brutto degli umani. Cupido dapprima accettò l'incarico ma poi si innamorò egli stesso della donna. Psiche superò tutte le prove richieste da Venere e alla fine fu ricompensata da Giove che benedisse l'unione con Cupido.
Un altro figlio della dea è Enea, uno dei protagonisti della guerra di Troia scaturita dalla rivalità fra Giunone, Minerva e Venere. Le tre divinità volevano aggiudicarsi la mela destinata da Eris, dea della discordia, alla più bella tra le dee. Giove, interpellato sulla questione, scelse il principe troiano Paride come giudice. Giunone cercò di corrompere Paride offrendogli l'Asia Minore, mentre Minerva gli offrì fama, saggezza e gloria in battaglia, ma Venere promise a Paride la più bella delle donne mortali, ed egli scelse quest'ultima. Questa donna era Elena, figlia di Giove e Leda e moglie del re di Sparta Menelao. Sotto l'influsso di Venere Paride rapì Elena e la condusse a Troia. Menelao, insieme al fratello Agamennone, radunò un imponente esercito e mosse guerra a Troia. L'assedio della città durò molti anni e gli dei si schierarono a fianco dell'una o dell'altra fazione. Successivamente Giove ordinò agli dei di cessare qualsiasi interferenza nella guerra troiana. Fu l'astuto Odisseo, re di Itaca, ad escogitare lo stratagemma del cavallo per far penetrare soldati greci all'interno delle mura troiane. Fu così che i greci vinsero la guerra ed Enea, insieme a pochi altri superstiti, lasciò per sempre Troia e, approdato sulle coste Italiche, fondò una nuova città, da cui viene generalmente fatta discendere la civiltà romana. I romani adottarono il pantheon greco, modificando i nomi e spesso i caratteri degli dei. Afrodite fu da allora conosciuta con il nome di Venere.

I 7 difetti

Si possono identificare sette tratti definiti del corpo della dea Venere, qualificati come "difetti" ma dette anche "buchi" o "ali":

1. capelli biondi con colore differente all'attaccatura;
2. dito medio della mano più lungo del palmo;
3. rughe a circonferenza sul collo;
4. il piede alla greca (ovvero col secondo dito più lungo dell'alluce);
5. lo strabismo di Venere;
6. linee addominali oblique;
7. Le fossette di Venere (i 2 piccoli incavi simmetrici sul fondoschiena).

Venere nell'arte

La sua figura, presa a modello come ideale di bellezza, è diventata il soggetto di innumerevoli opere d'arte, fin dall'antichità, sia sotto forma di sculture tra le quali famosi esempi sono la Venere di Milo , la Venere di Morgantina e dipinti, come l'affresco di Pompei e la Nascita di Venere del Botticelli.

Pittura

• Venere Anadiomene di Apelle (IV secolo a.C.)
• Allegoria del trionfo di Venere di Bronzino (1540-1545 circa)
• Nascita di Venere di Sandro Botticelli
• Nascita di Venere di William-Adolphe Bouguereau
• Marte che spoglia Venere con amorino e cane di Paolo Veronese
• Marte e Venere sorpresi da Vulcano di François Boucher (1754)
• Venere e Amore spiati da un satiro di Correggio (1528 circa)
• Venere e amorini di Salvador Dalí (1925)
• Venere e Cupido di Diego Velázquez
• Venere e Marte di Sandro Botticelli
• Venere e Giove di Paolo Veronese

Scultura

• Venere di Morgantina
• Venere di Milo
• Venere Callipigia
• Venere Capitolina
• Venere Esquilina
• Venere accovacciata
• Venere Sosandra
• Venere Cnidia
• Venere de' Medici
• Venere pudica

Letteratura

• Gerd Scherm, Brigitte Tast Astarte und Venus. Eine foto-lyrische Annäherung (1996), ISBN 3-88842-603-0

In altre mitologie

Biblia è il nome con cui i Fenici identificavano questa divinità. Biblia aveva un grandioso tempio nella città di Biblo.

Fresco from Pompei, Casa di Venus, 1st century AD. Dug out in 1960. It is supposed that this fresco could be the Roman copy of famous portrait of Campaspe, mistress of Alexander the Great

unknown ancient Rome artist, photo of Stephen Haynes - archive of Stephen Haynes

Venus (/ˈviːnəs/, Classical Latin: /ˈwɛnʊs/) is the Roman goddess whose functions encompassed love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity and victory. In Roman mythology, she was the mother of the Roman people through her son, Aeneas, who survived the fall of Troy and fled to Italy. Julius Caesar claimed her as his ancestor. Venus was central to many religious festivals, and was revered in Roman religion under numerous cult titles.
The Romans adapted the myths and iconography of her Greek counterpart Aphrodite for Roman art and Latin literature. In the later classical tradition of the West, Venus becomes one of the most widely referenced deities of Greco-Roman mythology as the embodiment of love and sexuality.

Name and attributes

Venus embodies sex, love, beauty, enticement, seduction, and persuasive female charm among the community of immortal gods; in Latin orthography, her name is indistinguishable from the Latin noun venus ("sexual love" and "sexual desire"), from which it derives. It has connections to venerari ("to honour, to try to please") and venia ("grace, favour") through a possible common root in an Indo-European *wenes- or *u̯enis ("friend"). Their common Proto-Indo-European root is assumed as *wen- or *u̯en- "to strive for, wish for, desire, love").
Venus has been described as perhaps "the most original creation of the Roman pantheon", and "an ill-defined and assimilative" native goddess, combined "with a strange and exotic Aphrodite". Her cults may represent the religiously legitimate charm and seduction of the divine by mortals, in contrast to the formal, contractual relations between most members of Rome's official pantheon and the state, and the unofficial, illicit manipulation of divine forces through magic. The ambivalence of her persuasive functions has been perceived in the relationship of the root *venes- with Latin venenum (poison), in the sense of "a charm, magic philtre".
In myth, Venus-Aphrodite was born of sea-foam. Roman theology presents Venus as the yielding, watery female principle, essential to the generation and balance of life. Her male counterparts in the Roman pantheon, Vulcan and Mars, are active and fiery. Venus absorbs and tempers the male essence, uniting the opposites of male and female in mutual affection. She is essentially assimilative and benign, and embraces several otherwise quite disparate functions. She can give military victory, sexual success, good fortune and prosperity. In one context, she is a goddess of prostitutes; in another, she turns the hearts of men and women from sexual vice to virtue.
Images of Venus have been found in domestic murals, mosaics and household shrines (lararia). Petronius, in his Satyricon, places an image of Venus among the Lares (household gods) of the freedman Trimalchio's lararium. Prospective brides offered Venus a gift "before the wedding"; the nature of the gift, and its timing, are unknown. Some Roman sources say that girls who come of age offer their toys to Venus; it is unclear where the offering is made, and others say this gift is to the Lares. In dice-games, a popular pastime among Romans of all classes, the luckiest, best possible roll was known as "Venus".

Signs and symbols

Venus' signs were for the most part the same as Aphrodite's. They include roses, which were offered in Venus' Porta Collina rites, and above all, myrtle (Latin murtos), which was cultivated for its white, sweetly scented flowers, aromatic, evergreen leaves and its various medical-magical properties. Venus' statues, and her worshipers, wore myrtle crowns at her festivals. Before its adoption into Venus' cults, myrtle was used in the purification rites of Cloacina, the Etruscan-Roman goddess of Rome's main sewer; later, Cloacina's association with Venus' sacred plant made her Venus Cloacina. Likewise, Roman folk-etymology transformed the ancient, obscure goddess Murcia into "Venus of the Myrtles, whom we now call Murcia".
Myrtle was thought a particularly potent aphrodisiac. The female pudendum, particularly the clitoris, was known as murtos (myrtle). As goddess of love and sex, Venus played an essential role at Roman prenuptial rites and wedding nights, so myrtle and roses were used in bridal bouquets. Marriage itself was not a seduction but a lawful condition, under Juno's authority; so myrtle was excluded from the bridal crown. Venus was also a patron of the ordinary, everyday wine drunk by most Roman men and women; the seductive powers of wine were well known. In the rites to Bona Dea, a goddess of female chastity, Venus, myrtle and anything male were not only excluded, but unmentionable. The rites allowed women to drink the strongest, sacrificial wine, otherwise reserved for the Roman gods and Roman men; the women euphemistically referred to it as "honey". Under these special circumstances, they could get virtuously, religiously drunk on strong wine, safe from Venus' temptations. Outside of this context, ordinary wine (that is, Venus' wine) tinctured with myrtle oil was thought particularly suitable for women.
Roman generals given an ovation, a lesser form of Roman triumph, wore a myrtle crown, perhaps to purify themselves and their armies of blood-guilt. The ovation ceremony was assimilated to Venus Victrix ("Victorious Venus"), who was held to have granted and purified its relatively "easy" victory.

Cult history and temples

The first known temple to Venus was vowed to Venus Obsequens ("Indulgent Venus") by Q. Fabius Gurges in the heat of a battle against the Samnites. It was dedicated in 295 BC, at a site near the Aventine Hill, and was supposedly funded by fines imposed on Roman women for sexual misdemeanours. Its rites and character were probably influenced by or based on Greek Aphrodite's cults, which were already diffused in various forms throughout Italian Magna Graeca. Its dedication date connects Venus Obsequens to the Vinalia rustica festival.
In 217 BC, in the early stages of the Second Punic War with Carthage, Rome suffered a disastrous defeat at the battle of Lake Trasimene. The Sibylline oracle suggested that if the Venus Erycina ("Venus of Eryx"), patron goddess of Carthage's Sicillian allies, could be persuaded to change her allegiance, Carthage might be defeated. Rome laid siege to Eryx, offered its goddess a magnificent temple as reward for her defection, captured her image and brought it to Rome. It was installed in a temple on the Capitoline Hill, as one of Rome's twelve Dii consentes. Shorn of her more overtly Carthaginian characteristics, this "foreign Venus" became Rome's Venus Genetrix ("Venus the Mother"), As far as the Romans were concerned, this was the homecoming of an ancestral goddess to her people. Roman tradition made Venus the mother and protector of the Trojan prince Aeneas, ancestor of the Roman people. Soon after, Rome's defeat of Carthage confirmed Venus's goodwill to Rome, her links to its mythical Trojan past, and her support of its political and military hegemony.
The Capitoline cult to Venus seems to have been reserved to higher status Romans. A separate cult to Venus Erycina as a fertility deity, was established in 181 BC, in a traditionally plebeian district just outside Rome's sacred boundary, near the Colline Gate. The temple, cult and goddess probably retained much of the original's character and rites. Likewise, a shrine to Venus Verticordia ("Venus the changer of hearts"), established in 114 BC but with links to an ancient cult of Venus-Fortuna, was "bound to the peculiar milieu of the Aventine and the Circus Maximus" - a strongly plebeian context for Venus's cult, in contrast to her aristocratic cultivation as a Stoic and Epicurian "all-goddess".
Towards the end of the Roman Republic, some leading Romans laid personal claims to Venus' favour. The general and dictator Sulla adopted Felix ("Lucky") as a surname, acknowledging his debt to heaven-sent good fortune and his particular debt to Venus Felix, for his extraordinarily fortunate political and military career. His protégé Pompey competed for Venus' support, dedicating (in 55 BC) a large temple to Venus Victrix as part of his lavishly appointed new theatre, and celebrating his triumph of 54 BC with coins that showed her crowned with triumphal laurels.
Pompey's erstwhile friend, ally, and later opponent Julius Caesar went still further. He claimed the favours of Venus Victrix in his military success and Venus Genetrix as a personal, divine ancestress – apparently a long-standing family tradition among the Julii. When Caesar was assassinated, his heir, Augustus, adopted both claims as evidence of his inherent fitness for office, and divine approval of his rule. Augustus' new temple to Mars Ultor, divine father of Rome's legendary founder Romulus, would have underlined the point, with the image of avenging Mars "almost certainly" accompanied by that of his divine consort Venus, and possibly a statue of the deceased and deified Caesar.
Vitruvius recommends that any new temple to Venus be sited according to rules laid down by the Etruscan haruspices, and built "near to the gate" of the city, where it would be less likely to contaminate "the matrons and youth with the influence of lust". He finds the Corinthian style, slender, elegant, enriched with ornamental leaves and surmounted by volutes, appropriate to Venus' character and disposition. Vitruvius recommends the widest possible spacing between the temple columns, producing a light and airy space, and he offers Venus's temple in Caesar's forum as an example of how not to do it; the densely spaced, thickset columns darken the interior, hide the temple doors and crowd the walkways, so that matrons who wish to honour the goddess must enter her temple in single file, rather than arm-in arm.
In 135 AD the Emperor Hadrian inaugurated a temple to Venus and Roma Aeterna (Eternal Rome) on Rome's Velian Hill, underlining the Imperial unity of Rome and its provinces, and making Venus the protective genetrix of the entire Roman state, its people and fortunes. It was the largest temple in Ancient Rome.

Festivals

Venus was offered official (state-sponsored) cult in certain festivals of the Roman calendar. Her sacred month was April (Latin Mensis Aprilis) which Roman etymologists understood to derive from aperire, "to open," with reference to the springtime blossoming of trees and flowers.
Veneralia (April 1) was held in honour of Venus Verticordia ("Venus the Changer of Hearts"), and Fortuna Virilis (Virile or strong Good Fortune), whose cult was probably by far the older of the two. Venus Verticordia was invented in 220 BC, in response to advice from a Sibylline oracle during Rome's Punic Wars, when a series of prodigies was taken to signify divine displeasure at sexual offenses among Romans of every category and class, including several men and three Vestal Virgins. Her statue was dedicated by a young woman, chosen as the most pudica (sexually pure) in Rome by a committee of Roman matrons. At first, this statue was probably housed in the temple of Fortuna Virilis, perhaps as divine reinforcement against the perceived moral and religious failings of its cult. In 114 BC Venus Verticordia was given her own temple. She was meant to persuade Romans of both sexes and every class, whether married or unmarried, to cherish the traditional sexual proprieties and morality known to please the gods and benefit the State. During her rites, her image was taken from her temple to the men's baths, where it was undressed and washed in warm water by her female attendants, then garlanded with myrtle. Women and men asked Venus Verticordia's help in affairs of the heart, sex, betrothal and marriage. For Ovid, Venus's acceptance of the epithet and its attendant responsibilities represented a change of heart in the goddess herself.
Vinalia urbana (April 23), a wine festival shared by Venus and Jupiter, king of the gods. Venus was patron of "profane" wine, for everyday human use. Jupiter was patron of the strongest, purest, sacrificial grade wine, and controlled the weather on which the autumn grape-harvest would depend. At this festival, men and women alike drank the new vintage of ordinary, non-sacral wine in honour of Venus, whose powers had provided humankind with this gift. Upper-class women gathered at Venus's Capitoline temple, where a libation of the previous year's vintage, sacred to Jupiter, was poured into a nearby ditch. Common girls (vulgares puellae) and prostitutes gathered at Venus' temple just outside the Colline gate, where they offered her myrtle, mint, and rushes concealed in rose-bunches and asked her for "beauty and popular favour", and to be made "charming and witty".
Vinalia Rustica (August 19), originally a rustic Latin festival of wine, vegetable growth and fertility. This was almost certainly Venus' oldest festival and was associated with her earliest known form, Venus Obsequens. Kitchen gardens and market-gardens, and presumably vineyards were dedicated to her. Roman opinions differed on whose festival it was. Varro insists that the day was sacred to Jupiter, whose control of the weather governed the ripening of the grapes; but the sacrificial victim, a female lamb (agna), may be evidence that it once belonged to Venus alone.
A festival of Venus Genetrix (September 26) was held under state auspices from 46 BC at her Temple in the Forum of Caesar, in fulfillment of a vow by Julius Caesar, who claimed her personal favour as his divine patron, and ancestral goddess of the Julian clan. Caesar dedicated the temple during his unprecedented and extraordinarily lavish quadruple triumph. At the same time, he was pontifex maximus and Rome's senior magistrate; the festival is thought to mark the unprecedented promotion of a personal, family cult to one of the Roman state. Caesar's heir, Augustus, made much of these personal and family associations with Venus as an Imperial deity. The festival's rites are not known.

Epithets

Like other major Roman deities, Venus was given a number of epithets that referred to her different cult aspects, roles, and her functional similarities to other deities. Her "original powers seem to have been extended largely by the fondness of the Romans for folk-etymology, and by the prevalence of the religious idea nomen-omen which sanctioned any identifications made in this way."
Venus Acidalia, in Virgil's Aeneid (1.715-722, as mater acidalia). Servius speculates this as reference to a "Fountain of Acidalia" (fons acidalia) where the Graces (Venus' daughters) were said to bathe; but he also connects it to the Greek word for "arrow", whence "love's arrows" and love's "cares and pangs". Ovid uses acidalia only in the latter sense. It is likely a literary conceit, not a cultic epithet.
Venus Caelestis (Celestial or Heavenly Venus), used from the 2nd century AD for Venus as an aspect of a syncretised supreme goddess. Venus Caelestis is the earliest known Roman recipient of a taurobolium (a form of bull sacrifice), performed at her shrine in Pozzuoli on 5 October 134. This form of the goddess, and the taurobolium, are associated with the "Syrian Goddess", understood as a late equivalent to Astarte, or the Roman Magna Mater, the latter being another supposedly Trojan "Mother of the Romans"
Venus Calva ("Venus the bald one"), a legendary form of Venus, attested only by post-Classical Roman writings which offer several traditions to explain this appearance and epithet. In one, it commemorates the virtuous offer by Roman matrons of their own hair to make bowstrings during a siege of Rome. In another, king Ancus Marcius' wife and other Roman women lost their hair during an epidemic; in hope of its restoration, unafflicted women sacrificed their own hair to Venus.
Venus Cloacina ("Venus the Purifier"); a fusion of Venus with the Etruscan water goddess Cloacina, who had an ancient shrine above the outfall of the Cloaca Maxima, originally a stream, later covered over to function as Rome's main sewer. The shrine contained a statue of Venus, whose rites were probably meant to purify the culvert's polluted waters and noxious airs. Pliny the Elder, remarking Venus as a goddess of union and reconciliation, identifies the shrine with a legendary episode in Rome's earliest history, when the warring Romans and Sabines, carrying branches of myrtle, met there to make peace.
Venus Erycina ("Venus of Eryx"), captured from Sicily and worshiped in Romanised form by the elite, and respectable matrons, at a temple on the Capitoline Hill. A later temple, outside the Porta Collina and Rome's sacred boundary, may have preserved some Erycinian features of her cult. It was considered suitable for "common girls" and prostitutes.
Venus Frutis honoured by all the Latins with a federal cult at the temple named Frutinal in Lavinium. Inscriptions found at Lavinium attest the presence of federal cults, without giving precise details.
Venus Felix ("Lucky Venus"), probably a traditional epithet, later adopted by the dictator Sulla. It was Venus's cult title at Hadrian's temple to Venus Felix et Roma Aeterna on the Via Sacra. This epithet is also used for a specific sculpture at the Vatican Museums.
Venus Genetrix ("Venus the Mother"), as a goddess of motherhood and domesticity, with a festival on September 26, a personal ancestress of the Julian lineage and, more broadly, the divine ancestress of the Roman people. Julius Caesar dedicated a Temple of Venus Genetrix in 46 BC. This name has attached to an iconological type of statue of Aphrodite/Venus.
Venus Heliopolitana ("Venus of Heliopolis Syriaca"), worshipped at Baalbek. A form of Ashtart who formed a third of the Heliopolitan Triad, in which she was the consort of Jupiter (Baʿal) and mother of Mercury (Adon).^{[citation needed]}
Venus Kallipygos ("Venus with the beautiful buttocks"), worshiped at Syracuse.
Venus Libertina ("Venus the Freedwoman"), probably arising through the semantic similarity and cultural inks between libertina (as "a free woman") and lubentina (possibly meaning "pleasurable" or "passionate"). Further titles or variants acquired by Venus through the same process, or through orthographic variance, include Libentia, Lubentina, and Lubentini. Venus Libitina links Venus to a patron-goddess of funerals and undertakers, Libitina; a temple was dedicated to Venus Libitina in Libitina's grove on the Esquiline Hill, "hardly later than 300 BC." 
Venus Murcia ("Venus of the Myrtle"), merging Venus with the little-known deity Murcia (or Murcus, or Murtia). Murcia was associated with Rome's Mons Murcia (the Aventine's lesser height), and had a shrine in the Circus Maximus. Some sources associate her with the myrtle-tree. Christian writers described her as a goddess of sloth and laziness.
Venus Obsequens ("Indulgent Venus"), Venus' first attested Roman epithet. It was used in the dedication of her first Roman temple, on August 19 in 295 BC during the Third Samnite War by Quintus Fabius Maximus Gurges. It was sited somewhere near the Aventine Hill and Circus Maximus, and played a central role in the Vinalia Rustica. It was supposedly funded by fines imposed on women found guilty of adultery.
Venus Physica: Venus as a universal, natural creative force that informs the physical world. She is addressed as "Alma Venus" ("Mother Venus") by Lucretius in the introductory lines of his vivid, poetic exposition of Epicurean physics and philosophy, De Rerum Natura. She seems to have been a favourite of Lucretius' patron, Memmius. Pompeii's protective goddess was Venus Physica Pompeiana, who had a distinctive, local form as a goddess of the sea, and trade. When Sulla captured Pompeii from the Samnites, he resettled it with his veterans and renamed it for his own family and divine protector Venus, as Colonia Veneria Cornelia (for Sulla's claims of Venus' favour, see Venus Felix above).
Venus Urania ("Heavenly Venus"), used as the title of a book by Basilius von Ramdohr, a relief by Pompeo Marchesi, and a painting by Christian Griepenkerl. (cf. Aphrodite Urania.)
Venus Verticordia ("Venus the Changer of Hearts"). See Veneralia in this article and main article, Veneralia.
Venus Victrix ("Venus the Victorious"), a Romanised aspect of the armed Aphrodite that Greeks had inherited from the East, where the goddess Ishtar "remained a goddess of war, and Venus could bring victory to a Sulla or a Caesar." Pompey, Sulla's protégé, vied with his patron and with Caesar for public recognition as her protégé. In 55 BC he dedicated a temple to her at the top of his theater in the Campus Martius. She had a shrine on the Capitoline Hill, and festivals on August 12 and October 9. A sacrifice was annually dedicated to her on the latter date. In neo-classical art, her epithet as Victrix is often used in the sense of 'Venus Victorious over men's hearts' or in the context of the Judgement of Paris (e.g. Canova's Venus Victrix, a half-nude reclining portrait of Pauline Bonaparte).

Mythology and literature

As with most major gods and goddesses in Roman mythology, the literary concept of Venus is mantled in whole-cloth borrowings from the literary Greek mythology of her counterpart, Aphrodite. In some Latin mythology Cupid was the son of Venus and Mars, the god of war. At other times, or in parallel myths and theologies, Venus was understood to be the consort of Vulcan. Virgil, in compliment to his patron Augustus and the gens Julia, embellished an existing connection between Venus, whom Julius Caesar had adopted as his protectress, and Aeneas. Vergil's Aeneas is guided to Latium by Venus in her heavenly form, the morning star, shining brightly before him in the daylight sky; much later, she lifts Caesar's soul to heaven. In Ovid's Fasti Venus came to Rome because she "preferred to be worshipped in the city of her own offspring". In Vergil's poetic account of Octavian's victory at the sea-battle of Actium, the future emperor is allied with Venus, Neptune and Minerva. Octavian's opponents, Antony, Cleopatra and the Egyptians, assisted by bizarre and unhelpful Egyptian deities such as "barking" Anubis, lose the battle.
In the interpretatio romana of the Germanic pantheon during the early centuries AD, Venus became identified with the Germanic goddess Frijjo, giving rise to the loan translation "Friday" for dies Veneris.

In art

Classical art

Roman and Hellenistic art produced many variations on the goddess, often based on the Praxitlean type Aphrodite of Cnidus. Many female nudes from this period of sculpture whose subjects are unknown are in modern art history conventionally called 'Venus'es, even if they originally may have portrayed a mortal woman rather than operated as a cult statue of the goddess.
Examples include:

• Venus de Milo (130 BC)
• Venus de' Medici
• Capitoline Venus
• Esquiline Venus
• Venus Felix
• Venus of Arles
• Venus Anadyomene
• Venus, Pan and Eros
• Venus Genetrix
• Venus of Capua
• Venus Kallipygos
• Venus Pudica

Medieval art

Venus became a popular subject of painting and sculpture during the Renaissance period in Europe. As a "classical" figure for whom nudity was her natural state, it was socially acceptable to depict her unclothed. As the goddess of sexuality, a degree of erotic beauty in her presentation was justified, which appealed to many artists and their patrons. Over time, venus came to refer to any artistic depiction in post-classical art of a nude woman, even when there was no indication that the subject was the goddess.

• The Birth of Venus (Botticelli) (c. 1485)
• Sleeping Venus (c. 1501)
• Venus of Urbino (1538)
• Venus with a Mirror (c. 1555)
• Rokeby Venus
• Olympia (1863)
• The Birth of Venus (Cabanel) (1863)
• The Birth of Venus (Bouguereau) (1879)
• Venus of Cherchell, Gsell museum in Algeria
• Venus Victrix, and Venus Italica by Antonio Canova

In the field of prehistoric art, since the discovery in 1908 of the so-called "Venus of Willendorf" small Neolithic sculptures of rounded female forms have been conventionally referred to as Venus figurines. Although the name of the actual deity is not known, the knowing contrast between the obese and fertile cult figures and the classical conception of Venus has raised resistance to the terminology.

Medieval and modern music

In Wagner's opera Tannhäuser, which draws on the medieval German legend of the knight and poet Tannhäuser, Venus lives beneath the Venusberg mountain. Tannhäuser breaks his knightly vows by spending a year there with Venus, under her enchantment. When he emerges, he has to seek penance for his sins.
The Dutch band Shocking Blue had a number one hit on the Billboard Top Ten in 1970 with the song titled "Venus", which was also a hit when covered by Bananarama in 1986. The song "Venus" by the band Television from the 1978 album Marquee Moon references the Venus de Milo. There is also a song named "Venus" written, produced and sung by Lady Gaga, as well as a song named "Birth of Venus Illegitima" by the Swedish symphonic metal Therion, on the album Vovin, and the song "Venus as a Boy" by the Icelandic artist Björk. Another reference to Venus is from Billy Idol's album "Cyberpunk" , in track # 16 titled "Venus".

 

Bronze figurine of Venus, Lyon (Roman Lugdunum)

Marie-Lan Nguyen (2010)

 Early fifth-century BC statue of Aphrodite from Cyprus, showing her wearing a cylinder crown and holding a dove 

Anonymous (Idalium) - Ophelia2

Remains of the Temple of Venus Genetrix in the Forum of Caesar, Rome. 

Carole Raddato from FRANKFURT, Germany - The Forum of Caesar (built near the Forum Romanum in Rome in 46 BC) and the Temple of Venus Genetrix, Imperial Forums, Rome

 Aphrodite Ourania, draped rather than nude, with her foot resting on a tortoise (Musée du Louvre) 

Rama and one more author - Own work

 Fresco with a seated Venus, restored as a personification of Rome in the so-called ”Dea Barberini” (“Barberini goddess”); Roman artwork, dated first half of the 4th century AD, from a room near the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Laterano 

Marie-Lan Nguyen (2006)

Ancient Greek herm of Aphroditus, a male form of Aphrodite,[40][41][42] currently held in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm
Francette Pacteau - Formations of Fantasy, The Impossible Referent: representations of the androgyne; p. 72
Hermaphroditos statue (herm), Greece. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.

 Imperial image of Venus suggesting influence from Syria or Palestine, or from the cult of Isis

Anonymous (Roman Empire) - Walters Art Museum

 Ruins of the temple of Aphrodite at Aphrodisias 

Carole Raddato from FRANKFURT, Germany - The Temple of Aphrodite, built in the Ionic order in stages during the Roman period (from 1st century BC to 2nd century AD) and later converted into a Christian basilica, Aphrodisias, Caria, Turkey

 Venus being seduced by Mars, fresco from Pompeii, 1st century AD 

Sailko - Own work

 Greek relief from Aphrodisias, depicting a Roman-influenced Aphrodite sitting on a throne holding an infant while the shepherd Anchises stands beside her. Carlos Delgado; CC-BY-SA. 

Carlos Delgado

 Julius Caesar, with Venus holding Victoria on reverse, from February or March 44 BC 

Classical Numismatic Group, Inc.

 Early fourth-century BC Attic pottery vessel in the shape of Aphrodite inside a shell from the Phanagoria cemetery in the Taman Peninsula
Joanbanjo - Own work

Crispina, wife of Commodus, with enthroned Venus Felix holding Victory on reverse
Classical Numismatic Group, Inc. 

Petra tou Romiou ("The rock of the Greek"), Aphrodite's legendary birthplace in Paphos, Cyprus

 Venus and Mars, with Cupid attending, in a wall painting from Pompeii 

Olivierw - Own work

 Venus and Anchises (1889 or 1890) by William Blake Richmond

 Venus riding a quadriga of elephants, fresco from Pompeii, 1st century AD 

WolfgangRieger - Filippo Coarelli (ed.): Pompeji. Hirmer, München 2002

 Attic red-figure aryballos by Aison (c. 410 BC) showing Aphrodite consorting with Adonis, who is seated and playing the lyre, while Eros stands behind him 

Aison - Jastrow (2006)

 Statue of nude Venus of the Capitoline type, Roman, 2nd century AD, from Campo Iemini, housed in the British Museum 

Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg) - Own work

 Pygmalion and Galatea (1717) by Jean Raoux, showing Aphrodite bringing the statue to life

Medieval representation of Venus, sitting on a rainbow, with her devotees who offer their hearts to her, 15th century.
Anonymous 

The so-called "Venus in a bikini", from the house of Julia Felix, Pompeii, Italy actually depicts her Greek counterpart Aphrodite as she is about to untie her sandal, with a small Eros squatting beneath her left arm, 1st-century AD

Berthold Werner

 The Birth of Venus, by Sandro Botticelli c. 1485–1486.

 Wall painting from Pompeii of Venus rising from the sea on a scallop shell, believed to be a copy of the Aphrodite Anadyomene by Apelles of Kos

unknown ancient Rome artist, photo of Stephen Haynes

 Venus, Mars, and Vulcan, by Tintoretto

circa 1551

Phryne at the Poseidonia in Eleusis (c. 1889) by Henryk Siemiradzki, showing the scene of the courtesan Phryne stripping naked at Eleusis, which allegedly inspired both Apelles's painting and the Aphrodite of Knidos by Praxiteles

 Venus Anadyomene (ca. 1525) by Titian

 The Ludovisi Throne (possibly c. 460 BC) is believed to be a classical Greek bas-relief, although it has also been alleged to be a 19th-century forgery.

Marie-Lan Nguyen (September 2009)

So-called “Ludovisi Throne”: main panel, Aphrodite attended by two handmaidens as she rises ouf the surf. Thasos marble, Greek artwork, ca. 460 BC (authenticity disputed).

 Venus with a Mirror (ca. 1555) by Titian

 Attic white-ground red-figured kylix of Aphrodite riding a swan (c. 46-470) found at Kameiros (Rhodes)
Pistoxenos Painter - Marie-Lan Nguyen (2007)

 Venus by Frans Floris, Hallwyl Museum
Frans de Vriendt "Floris" (Konstnär, 1518-1570) Antwerpen, Belgien - Jens Mohr

 Red-figure vase painting of Aphrodite and Phaon (c. 420-400 BC)
Manner of the Meidias Painter - Marie-Lan Nguyen (2008)
Phaon and Aphrodite, woman and Eros (?); kalos inscription ("Phaon kalos"). Side A of an Attic red-figure calyx-krater.

 Venus looking in the mirror, with Cupid attending, painting ca. 1650 - 1700, by Peter Paul Rubens
Jean-Pol GRANDMONT (2013)
Venus and Cupid holding a mirror, oil on canvas after Titian made by Peter Paul Rubens, belonging to the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, photographed at the exhibition "Rubens et son Temps" (Rubens and his Time) at the Louvre-Lens museum.

Red-figure vase painting of Aphrodite and Phaon (c. 420-400 BC)
Manner of the Meidias Painter - Marie-Lan Nguyen (2008)
Phaon and Aphrodite, woman and Eros (?); kalos inscription ("Phaon kalos"). Side A of an Attic red-figure calyx-krater.

Mars Being Disarmed by Venus (1822–25) by Jacques-Louis David

Own work Photo: Szilas, in the Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique

Apuleian vase painting of Zeus plotting with Aphrodite to seduce Leda while Eros sits on her arm (c. 330 BC)
Dave & Margie Hill / Kleerup from Centennial, CO, USA - Getty Villa - Collection Uploaded by Marcus Cyron
Vessel with Leda and the Swan (Greek, Apulia 330 BC) - Zeus and Aphrodite (with Eros) make their plans 

Birth of Venus (1863) by Alexandre Cabanel

Aphrodite Leaning Against a Pillar (third century BC)

J. Paul Getty Museum

Tannhäuser in the Venusberg (1901) by John Collier

 Aphrodite Kallipygos ("Aphrodite of the Beautiful Buttocks")

Venus Kallipygos in Naples National Archaeological Museum

Russian Venus (1926) by Boris Kustodiev

 Aphrodite Binding Her Hair (second century BC)
Claire H. - originally posted to Flickr as Marble Statue of Aphrodite Anadyomene (Hair-Binding)
Greek Greek Marble Statue of Aphrodite Anadyomene, Hellenistic, 2nd century B.C. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Yor city.

 Venus of Urbino (c. 1534) by Titian

 Aphrodite Heyl (second century BC) 

Anonymous - Ophelia2

 The Toilet of Venus (c. 1612-1615) by Peter Paul Rubens

 

Venus de Milo on display at the Louvre 

Livioandronico2013 - Own work

Aphrodite (Venus) Greek Goddess - Art Picture by KamillYonsiya

Greek sculpture group of Aphrodite, Eros, and Pan (c. 100 BC) 

Tilemahos Efthimiadis from Athens, Greece - Group of Aphrodite, Pan and Eros. About 100 BC Uploaded by Marcus Cyron

The Death of Adonis (c. 1614) by Peter Paul Rubens

The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

 Aphrodite of Milos (c. 100 BC), Louvre 

I, Sailko

Aphrodite (Venus) Greek Goddess - Art Picture by jjlovely

Aphrodite of Menophantos (first century BC) 

Menophantos (signed) - Jastrow (2006)

Venus of the Lotus Card by Briar Avalokiteshvara Goddess Dharma Greeting Card

 The Lely Venus (c. second century AD) 

Unknown - Marie-Lan Nguyen (2011) 

So-called “Lely's Venus”: Aphrodite surprised as she bathes. Roman copy of the Imperial era after an Hellenistic original.

Artist: Katerina Alivizatou

 Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time (c. 1545) by Bronzino

 The Birth of Venus: Princess Leia Edition

 Venus and Adonis (1554) by Titian

Roman Goddess Venus (Greek Goddess Aphrodite) - YouTube

YouTube

Venus, Adonis and Cupid (c. 1595) by Annibale Carracci

 Aphrodite: The Origin of the Goddess of Love (Venus) - Greek ...

YouTube

Aphrodite: The Origin of the Goddess of Love (Venus) - Greek Mythology Ep.09 See U in History

Rokeby Venus (c. 1647–51) by Diego Velázquez

 Goddess of Love

Venus and Cupid Lamenting the Dead Adonis (1656) by Cornelis Holsteyn

 Venus 

 Mars and Venus Surprised by Vulcan (1827) by Alexandre Charles Guillemot

 Ares_&_Aphrodite

 Venus Anadyomene (1848) by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

The Birth Of Venus by Vasilis Bottas

Venus Disrobing for the Bath (1867) by Frederic Leighton

APHRODITE -  by ISIKO

 Venus Verticordia (1868) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

 The Birth of Venus (c. 1879) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Illustration by Édouard Zier for Pierre Louÿs's 1896 erotic novel Aphrodite: mœurs antiques