Aphrodite

Also known as: Cytherea · Family: gods · Role: goddess · First appears: Apollodorus, Library 1.3

🌐 Also appears in: The Iliad (as Venus) · The Odyssey (as Venus) · The Aeneid (as Venus) · The Metamorphoses of Ovid (as Venus) · Greek Tragedy — The Same Myth, Three Voices (as Aphrodite) · The Divine Comedy (as Venus)

Aphrodite, also known as Cytherea, became a goddess after emerging from the foam around Heaven’s severed flesh. She reached Cythera and then Cyprus, where she came forth as an awful and lovely goddess, with Eros and Desire accompanying her. “Her gods and men call Aphrodite, and the foam-born goddess and rich-crowned Cytherea,” while another account names Zeus and Dione as her parents.

After Zeus drove the Titans from heaven, Aphrodite aided Earth in bearing Typhoeus, fathered by Tartarus. When Phaethon was a young boy, she seized him and made him keeper of her shrine by night. At Ida, she joined with Anchises and bore Aeneas and Lyrus; she later aided Aeneas when Diomedes attacked, though Diomedes wounded her. “And Cytherea with the beautiful crown was joined in sweet love with the hero Anchises and bare Aeneas on the peaks of Ida with its many wooded glens.”

Aphrodite’s other children by Ares were Harmonia, Panic, and Fear. She caused Eos to remain perpetually in love after Eos had bedded with Ares, and Adonis was both her suitor and her charge: she hid him in a chest entrusted to Persephone, after which he divided the year between himself, Persephone, and Aphrodite. She also supplied golden apples to Melanion when he pursued the one he loved.

When Strife offered an apple as a prize of beauty, Aphrodite contended with Hera and Athena, and Paris awarded her Helen’s hand. She was associated with Geryones through the account of his birth, and with Phaethon as keeper of her shrine; Typhoeus was also said to have been born with her aid.