My gift to man is love,
not only erotic love,
but also of nature, of frendship, between
kin, of oneself.
My gift to man is beauty,
in the exotic, in the mundane,
with laughter, and with tears.
My gift to man is strife,
strife born of jealousy,
strife born of desire.
My gifts to man are many,
they bring pleasure,
they bring pain.
Aphrodite, the Olympian goddess of love, beauty,
and sexual pleasure.
the enchanting one, the one who is infinitely
desirable, but infinitely out of reach.
To her devotees, she is known as “the smile-loving,”
“the merciful,” and the “One who postpones
old age,”.
While to those who scorn her worship, she
is known as “the unholy one,” “the dark
one,” the doom of men, “the killer of
men.”
The goddess is identified by the romans with
the name, Venus.
According to Hesoid, Aphrodite was born from
the castrated genitals of uranus, which fell
into the sea, near the coast of Cythera.
She had risen from the foam of the waters,
on a shell, fully-grown, and more beautiful
than anything, or anyone in the universe.
However, According to Homer, Aphrodite was
the daughter of Zeus, and the Titaness Diona,
thus, the step sister to the other olympians,
Athena, Artemis, Ares, Hephaestus, Apollo,
Hermes, and Dionysus.
whichever the story is, the goddess of love
was the fairest of all the other goddesses.
She was a deity of flawless beauty.
lovely, enchanting, and often appearing nude,
having a symetrically perfect body.
Sometimes, the goddess is depicted alongside
her children, the erotes, who were capable
of sparking up passion in mortals and gods
alike, at her will.
Her symbols are, myrtles, roses, a dove, a
magical girdle, and a shell.
So lovely was the goddess of love that no
man or god could resist her.
only the three virgin goddesses, Artemis,
Athena, and Hestia, were immune to her charms,
tactics, and power.
Thus,when aphrodite arrived on olympus, her
beauty caused great confusion amongst the
other gods, as each of them wanted her for
himself.
So to bring back peace and order, zeus quickly
married her off to the least attractive olympian,
Hephaestus, god of the forge.
Although married to Hephaestus, Aphrodite
had affairs with all the Olympian gods, except
Hades (the reserved, aloof god), and zeus,
who was supposedly her father.
Her most famous lover, was the war god, Ares,
whom she bore as many as 8 children.
For Poseidon, she bore one daughter, Rhode.
And for hermes, she bore the Hermaphrodites.
The goddess also consorted with mortals, the
most famous of whom were, Anchises, and Adonis.
