Aphrodite: Some Notes

APHRODITE: SOME NOTES APHRODITE etymology: from ‘aphros’, ‘foam’ according to Hesiod Theogony, but this is a very ancient popular etymology, and in fact does not linguistically explain the "-dite" part of the name. Her sacred bird is a dove or swans which drive her heavenly chariot. ORIGINS Certainly Eastern (Asiatic) Herodotus, in his Histories, says that her oldest place of worship as Aphrodite Ourania was at Askalon in Palastine (on the coast). She is also known in various other places as Inanna (Sumerian), Ishtar (Babylon), Astarte (western Middle East, Rome), and Mylitta. MARRIAGE HEPHAESTUS (Vulcan), the son of Hera and (?) Zeus, brother of Ares (Mars). AFFAIRS • • • • ARES, son of Zeus and Hera, her brother-in-law children: EROS (Cupid), DEIMOS (`terror'), PHOBOS (`fear'), HARMONIA. HERMES, son of Zeus and Maia, her brother-in-law child: Hermaphroditus (half male, half female) DIONYSUS, son of Zeus and Semele of Thebes, her brother-in-law child: Priapus POSEIDON child: Eryx (who is also a mountain at the west end of Sicily, where there was a famous temple of the Semitic Aphrodite PLACES: • • • • Cyprus, the island, from which she is named Kypris Paphos a city on the Island of Cyprus (M.I. Finley, Atlas of Classical Archaeology (1977), p. 189. Knidos a seaport in southwest Turkey (Asia Minor) Kythera an island between the Peloponnese and Crete that belonged to the partans; here her consort was Ares! VICTIMS • • • Hippolytus, son of Theseus, king of Athens, and Hippolyte the Amazon queen (Euripides' play Hippolytus). Tyndareus, king of Sparta, and his daughters, who were condemned to betray all their marriages with adultery. The most famous daughter was Helen of Troy, but also her sister Clytamnestra, who married Agamemnon of Mycenae (Aeschylus, Agamemnon; Sophocles, Electra, Euripides Electra). Minos, king of Knossos in Crete: his wife Pasiphae (mother of Ariadne and Phaedra) was made to fall in love with a bull, from which came the Minotaur (the Bull of Minos). FRIENDS: • • • Anchises, a Trojan prince (son of Capys, son of Assaracus, son of Tros), which produced AENEAS the first `Founder' of Rome and ancestor of the Julian Family (Julius Caesar, the Emperor Augustus). Adonis, killed by a boar (son of Myrrha) TAMMUZ, or Dumuzi, who is in the Sumerian king list as the predecessor of GILGAMESH as king of Erech (Uruk). He would thus belong ca. 3000/2800 B.C. Gilgamesh mentions his fate in the epic.