Aphrodite in Hesiod’s Theogony
More NATURE (GAIA)
than
CULTURE (Demeter)
Aphrodite in Homer
- Daughter of Zeus and Dione (feminine formation of “Zeus” - sky god)
- One of the Olympians
- Power here is more “tame”
Map of Eastern Mediterranean World
Paphos: Aphrodite’s chief cultic center on Cyprus is named after
the child of PYGMALION (sculptor) and GALATEA (statue)
The power of eros: turns
cold ivory into living flesh
However… the power of Aphrodite/eros can go too far:
the granddaughter of Paphos, MYRRHA, falls in love with her own father,
Cinyras (king of Cyprus) and is turned into a myrrh tree to escape his revenge.
The positive and creative eros of Pygmalion turns into the negative
and destructive eros in his great granddaughter, Myrrha and her
son, Adonis
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•
Myrrha: falls in love with her father, Cinyras
Adonis: a precocious lover, seduces both Olympian Aphrodite and the
queen of the Underworld, Persephone
Adonis dies driven through by a boar, and fails the test of manhood (he gets
killed in the hunt). The precocious lover, born from the hot, aphrodisiac
myrrh tree, will die in the cold and wet lettuce (which induces frigidity).
Adonis
ORIGINS
DEATH
Myrrh/hot spice (seduction)
Product of Incest (father/daughter)
Lettuce/cold wet plant (sterility)
Love of goddess of Love: Fatal
Loved by: Aphrodite (goddess of seduction, procreation)
the
Persephone (goddess of the World of
Dead)
Characterized by: Precocious Sexual Potency
Precocious Sexual Impotence
Athena: one of the three “virgin” goddesses
Artemis (Diana) patron goddess of young (marriageable) girls
Hestia: “Hearth” symbol of the home
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•
•
The hearth is the center of the oikos
Just as the hearth cannot move so Hestia (she cannot follow a potential
husband and leave her place at the center of the house)
Hestia symbolizes the integrity of the home and, like all virgins , she will
stay in her parents’ place.
Venus and Anchises
Sir William Blake Richmond
Ganymede: son of Tros (founder of Troy) abducted by Zeus to be his lover
The forever youthful goddess of Dawn, Eos,
and her immortal, yet forever aging lover,
Tithonus