Aphrodite is the Greek Goddess of love, lust, beauty, attraction, and desire. She’s described as a beautiful young woman with a perfect body that would catch any mans eye. Aphrodite’s main power was that she could have any man in the palm of her hand just by them looking at her. The symbols that are most commonly related to her include the Myrtle, the Dove, the Sparrow and the Swan. The word aphrodisiac, comes from Aphrodite, and is something that increases ones sexual desires.
There are two stories to how Aphrodite was born one is that she was the daughter of Zeus and Diane. Another is that Cronus castrated Uranus, and threw his gentiles into the sea, and then Aphrodite was born from the sea foam and arose from it on a giant scallop to the island Cyprus. Her name actually means “foam-born.”
She was born as an adult, and therefore, she had no childhood. Aphrodite, though she was beautiful and all the men wanted her, could also be described as vain, ill-tempered, and easily offended.
She’s one of few Gods that are actually married, but she’s often unfaithful to her husband, who is the God of fire, Hephaestus. Zeus thought Aphrodite was so beautiful that she would cause problems between the other Gods, so he forcefully married her to the unattractive Hephaestus. Hephaestus gave her the cestus, which was a girdle that made her even more irresistible to men. Aphrodite was very unhappy in her relationship with him, and that’s why she looked for love from others, mostly from Ares and Adonis.
Aphrodite, because of her many affairs, is known to have many children, but the more familiar ones include Eros, Rhodos, Herophilus, Hermaphroditus, Priapus, and Aneas.
The most famous legend of Aphrodite is the beginning of the Trojan War. Aphrodite and two other goddesses, Hera and Athena, were invited to the wedding of King Peleus and his sea nymph, Thetis. The goddess Eris, was so upset that she wasn’t invited that she threw a golden apple labeled, “to the fairest,” into the center of the floor. Aphrodite, Hera and Athena knew that each of them was the fairest, and fought over the apple. Because Zeus wouldn’t choose which goddess was the fairest, the Goddesses asked Paris, the Prince of Troy to choose the fairest of the three. Each goddess offered the prince a bribe for them to be the chosen one. The bribe he could not turn down was Aphrodite’s. She had offered him the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Troy. However, Helen was the wife of the Greek king Menelaus, so Paris’s abduction of Helen led to the Trojan War.
