Aphrodite

Reading notes

• The Homeric Hymns §5.1 Aphrodite

  Goddess of love and desire, born from the sea foam and dressed by the Seasons at Cyprus (Hymn 6). Hymn 5, the longest hymn to her, tells how Zeus made her fall in love with the mortal Anchises, who fathers her son Aeneas, so she could no longer boast of subduing every other god.

• The Iliad §2.807 Aphrodite

  Goddess of love and desire, mother of Aeneas by the mortal Anchises; a partisan of Troy who is wounded by Diomedes rescuing Aeneas in Book 5 and later helps rescue Paris from his duel with Menelaus in Book 3.

• The Odyssey §4.1 golden Aphrodite

  Goddess of love; Hermione is said to have her beauty, and later Helen blames Aphrodite for the 'ruin' of her abduction to Troy.

• The Odyssey §8.1 the Cytherean

  A cult-epithet of Aphrodite from Cythera; she retreats to Paphos on Cyprus after being freed from Hephaestus's snare.

• The Odyssey §18.185 fair-crowned Cythereia

  Aphrodite by her Cytherean cult-title; Athena uses her own beautifying technique to make Penelope radiant before the suitors.