Aphrodite阿佛洛狄忒

Origins

There are two accounts. In Hesiod, Cronus castrated the sky-god Uranus and threw the flesh into the sea; she rose from the foam and drifted to Cyprus — which makes her a generation older than Zeus. In Homer she is simply the daughter of Zeus and Dione.

Sacred symbols

Scallop shellDoveRoseThe magic girdle

Myths

The golden apple

Strife threw down a golden apple inscribed "for the fairest," and Hera, Athena and Aphrodite all claimed it. The judge, Paris, chose her because she promised him the most beautiful woman alive — Helen. The Trojan War followed.

Adonis

She loved the beautiful youth Adonis, but a boar gored him to death while he was hunting. Where her tears fell on his blood, anemones bloomed.

Pygmalion

The sculptor Pygmalion fell in love with an ivory girl he had carved himself. Moved by his devotion, Aphrodite gave the statue warmth and breath.

Relationships with the other gods

• RivalryZeus

  A taste of her own medicine

  Aphrodite kept making the gods fall for mortals and then laughing at them — Zeus included. So he did the same to her, filling her with desire for the Trojan herdsman Anchises, to whom she bore Aeneas.

• RivalryHera

  The apple and the magic girdle

  Paris gave the golden apple to Aphrodite, and Hera held the grudge for the whole Trojan War. Yet she could swallow her pride when she needed something: to draw Zeus's attention from the battle she borrowed Aphrodite's irresistible girdle, and lulled her husband to sleep.

• RivalryAthena

  Wisdom against beauty

  For the golden apple Athena offered Paris wisdom and victory; Aphrodite offered him a woman — and won. Athena collected on the battlefield: first she urged Diomedes to stab Aphrodite's hand and sneered that she must have scratched it on a brooch, and later simply knocked her flat with her fist.

• DesireAres

  Lovers in the golden net

  Love and War were the most famous lovers on Olympus, meeting whenever Hephaestus was away. Their children were Phobos (Fear), Deimos (Dread) and Harmonia (Harmony) — what comes of love joined to war is terror, and also concord.

• DesireHephaestus

  The worst-matched marriage

  The most beautiful goddess was married to the ugliest god. When the Sun told him about Ares, he forged a golden net too fine to see, caught the pair in bed, and threw the doors open for the gods to look. The gods all came to enjoy it; the goddesses stayed home out of modesty.

• DesireHermes

  A joke beside the net

  Looking at the pair in the net, Apollo teased Hermes: would he be willing to lie there beside her, tied up like that? Hermes said he would, with three times the chains and every god watching. In time he got his wish, and their child was named Hermaphroditus — both parents' names in one.

• RivalryArtemis

  Beyond Aphrodite's reach

  Aphrodite can master every god and mortal except three goddesses: Athena, Artemis and Hestia. Young Hippolytus honoured only the huntress and scorned love, so Aphrodite made his stepmother fall in love with him and brought about his terrible death. Artemis could not save him; she could only swear revenge.