OTHER ASPECTS OF APHRODITE
The last time I formally studied the Greek Goddess Aphrodite, or her Roman counterpart Venus, was over sixteen years ago. At that time, Aphrodite was discussed primarily as the Goddess of Love, Beauty, Fertility, and Sex/Pleasure. As Paul Friedrich writes in The Meaning of Aphrodite, the goddess is often reduced, in scholarship, to: “a fun girl and a patroness of prostitutes…” (2).
The Aphrodite myths (or fragments of these myths) that are most familiar are:
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"The Birth of Venus," Sandro
Botticelli, (c. 1486). Uffizi, Florence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_Venus |
1) BIRTH - The birth myth, in which Aphrodite emerges as a nude fully mature adult from the ocean, seeded by the castration of the sky god Uranus. This story is a link to the more general category of “Indo-European Dawn goddess” and highlights her symbolic value as a fertile, generative deity.
2) MARRIAGE - Her marriage to the Greek god Hephaestus, the brilliant craftsman and jewelry-maker of Olympus, who has a shriveled foot. He famously crafts a net of gold to catch his wife in her infidelities.
3) LOVERS – Aphrodite’s many lovers include Ares, god of war; Hermes, the messenger/trickster deity; Adonis, the handsome youth associated with the renewal of vegetation and rebirth; the mortal Anchises, who was an animal herder when he encountered Aphrodite; Dionysus, the god of wine, theatre and frenzy; Poseidon, the powerful deity of the sea; and finally, her first love, Nerites—the gorgeous sea deity who refused to live with Aphrodite in Olympus, and was changed into a seashell by the goddess as a punishment.
4) MAGIC GIRDLE - Aphrodite’s magic girdle or “cestus” (some say it was a belt) was crafted by her husband Hephaestus, and was borrowed by goddess Hera to help heal conflicted couples, including her own marriage to Zeus. Aphrodite’s cestus could inspire desire and passion; Aphrodite promises Hera in Homer’s The Iliad, Book 14, that if Hera wears it: “I think whatever is in your heart’s desire shall not go unaccomplished.”
5) THE TROJAN WAR - Aphrodite is featured in the Judgment of Paris, the prelude to the Trojan War. In a competition for a golden apple, Aphrodite is picked by Paris as “most beautiful,” over Hera or Athena. As part of the deal, Aphrodite promised Paris the gorgeous, married Helen of Sparta, who then becomes “of Troy.” Aphrodite fatefully sides with the Trojans throughout the war; in The Iliad, she is wounded by Diomedes in combat while trying to save her son Aeneas, and at another point, she intervenes to save Paris himself. She also fought alongside Ares.
6) IRE, JEALOUSY, STING - Aphrodite’s legendary temper and jealousy. Some examples include the stories of: Eros and Psyche, which features Aphrodite’s jealousy of mortal Psyche’s beauty; the fight with Persephone over custody of the young Adonis which ultimately had to be decided by Zeus; envy over Hippolytus’ allegiance to the goddess Artemis, famously dramatized in Euripides’ play Hippolytus; and what she did to Nerites (see “Lovers,” #3 Above.)
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| Oil Jar in the Shape of Aphrodite at Her Birth, Greek, 380–370 B.C. Terracotta, pigment, and gold,8 3/8 in. high Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Catharine Page Perkins Fund [Note use of shell] |
7) REWARDS LOYALTY – Aphrodite favors those who worship her. One example: When sculptor Pygmalion, who disdains women, creates a gorgeous female statue made of ivory, he finds himself falling in love. He prays to Aphrodite at her temple; the statue comes to life and is named Galatea. Pygmalion marries Galatea, lives happily, and credits Aphrodite for the miracle.
But there are other aspects of Aphrodite, and much we still do not know about how the goddess was perceived and worshipped in her own temples during different eras and locations. This is puzzling, because according to art historian Christine Mitchell Havelock in her art survey book The Aphrodite of Knidos and Her Successors, the goddess remained incredibly popular through different epochs: “Probably more ancient statues survive of the nude Aphrodite than of any other Greek divinity”(1).
In The Meaning of Aphrodite, written in 1978, Friedrich identifies a general scholarly “avoidance of Aphrodite,” and mentions several works by classicists in which she is treated as a minor deity or omitted altogether. Friedrich attributes this gap to “deep cultural and religious biases “ among scholars who attempt to comprehend and contextualize Aphrodite as a religious figure in antiquity (2).
When I attended the "Excavating Aphrodite” Symposium in April 2012 at the Getty Villa in Los Angeles as a general audience member, I was stunned to learn, from the expert archaeologists who shared research findings there, that most temples of Aphrodite still had not yet been fully excavated—and some not really at all. In the five years since, it is doubtful that major progress has been made, due to the financial, institutional, and cultural requirements for such major endeavors. (Here’s the most recent New York University report on excavations in Aphrodisias, Turkey, where Aphrodite was the city’s patron.)
GODDESS OF MILITARISM?
When I first studied Aphrodite, I was always a bit baffled by the pairing of Aphrodite and Ares. Like Aphrodite and Hephaestus, the coupling is categorized as an allegorical unity of opposites: Love and War (Aphrodite and Ares), Beauty and Ugliness (Aphrodite and Hephaestus), Immortal and Mortal (Aphrodite and Anchises), etc.
But is war really the opposite of love? What if there’s another reason Aphrodite was paired with Ares?
In the Getty Villa’s 2012 art exhibit “Aphrodite and the Gods of Love,” there was classical art displayed that suggested Aphrodite’s link to militarism (Click here for an example.). One Roman statue displayed, “The Venus of Capua,” is a copy of a Greek statue featuring Aphrodite posing semi-nude with a military shield (the shield is now missing).
In Monica S. Cyrino’s book Aphrodite (2010), Cyrino considers war-related ties to the deity’s cult, observing that while Aphrodite could never be studied as a full blown goddess of war (49), there is at least proof of “possible militaristic elements” in her shrines and cults, such as accounts of armed statues of Aphrodite, as described by the travel writer Pausanias in the Second Century C.E. in cults found in Cythera, Corinth, with the best evidence at Sparta (51). There, Aphrodite was worshipped as a female Ares, or an “Areia,” known as “Aphrodite Areia” (51). Cyrino notes that there are other places where Aphrodite and Ares were worshipped jointly (e.g., Greece and Crete), but Aphrodite is not as militaristically represented in those places as she is in Sparta (51).
Information from the “Worshipping Aphrodite” page of the online record of the Getty Museum’s 2012 “Aphrodite and the Gods of Love” exhibit is relevant: “Although she [Aphrodite] is often perceived as having no connection with military matters, ancient literary sources preserve references to an armed Aphrodite as a cult statue at a number of sites. None of these survive, but intriguing finds from the Etruscan port of Gravisca offer positive evidence.” Their page features two images of Aphrodite wearing a helmet, and holding a spear (now missing).
In at least one location, her militarism seems to have pre-dated other characteristics. Lisa R. Brody, in her 2001 essay “The Cult of Aphrodite at Aphrodisias in Caria” writes: “The Aphrodisian goddess was perhaps above aIl known as a goddess of warfare in her early phases of development, and this continued even after she became known as Aphrodite. It is in fact her enduring reputation as a military divinity that motivates Sulla to make his dedication at the sanctuary in the early first century B.C.” (101). Although located in modern day Turkey, Greek religious practices were thought to be replicated closely at Aphrodisias.
The Roman Venus is not exactly the same as the Greek Aphrodite, but there was a Roman deity known as “Venus Victrix [Victorious],” who was celebrated by Julius Caesar, Roman soldiers and other noted military giants such as Sulla and Pompey.
Were Aphrodite’s militaristic attributes subsumed? Were militaristic attributes acknowledged by specific cults, as part of local practices? Are the combat stories that involve Aphrodite from The Iliad (see #5 above, “The Trojan War”) indicative of a deeper military-related aspect of Aphrodite now obscured? Does her frequent pairing with Ares signal that she, too, was considered a deity of militarism? Certainly, the records of armed Aphrodite statues suggest that possibility. Or was their pairing instead indicative of a mixis (a mingling of deities), whose motto would be, as Cyrino writes: “Make love and war” (52)? Could it perhaps be related to Aphrodite’s role as the mother of Aeneas who fought many battles?
These are just a few of the questions I have about Aphrodite and militarism. I’m fortunate to have heard archaeologists working on excavating Aphrodite lecture on this topic.
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