Aphrodite (/ˌæfrəˈdaɪtiː/ ⓘ, AF-rə-DY-tee)[a] is an ancient Greek goddess associated with love, lust, beauty, pleasure, passion, procreation, and as her syncretized Roman counterpart Venus, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity, and victory.

In Hesiod's Theogony, Aphrodite is born off the coast of Cythera from the foam (ἀφρός, aphrós) produced by Uranus's genitals, which his son Cronus had severed and thrown into the sea.

[45] The significant influence of Near Eastern culture on early Greek religion in general, and on the cult of Aphrodite in particular,[46] is now widely recognized as dating to a period of orientalization during the eighth century BC,[46] when archaic Greece was on the fringes of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.

A representation of Ourania with her foot resting on a tortoise came to be seen as emblematic of discretion in conjugal love; it was the subject of a chryselephantine sculpture by Phidias for Elis, known only from a parenthetical comment by the geographer Pausanias.

[97] Cythera was a stopping place for trade and culture between Crete and the Peloponesus,[98] so these stories may preserve traces of the migration of Aphrodite's cult from the Middle East to mainland Greece.

[120] After exposing them, Hephaestus asks Zeus for his wedding gifts and dowry to be returned to him;[121] by the time of the Trojan War, he is married to Charis/Aglaea, one of the Graces, apparently divorced from Aphrodite.

[112][122] Afterwards, it was generally Ares who was regarded as the husband or official consort of the goddess; on the François Vase, the two arrive at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis on the same chariot, as do Zeus with Hera and Poseidon with Amphitrite.

[138] Later, the Romans, who saw Venus as a mother goddess, seized on this idea of Eros as Aphrodite's son and popularized it,[138] making it the predominant portrayal in works on mythology until the present day.

[138] Aphrodite's main attendants were the three Charites, whom Hesiod identifies as the daughters of Zeus and Eurynome and names as Aglaea ("Splendor"), Euphrosyne ("Good Cheer"), and Thalia ("Abundance").

[112] Aphrodite's other set of attendants was the three Horae (the "Hours"),[112] whom Hesiod identifies as the daughters of Zeus and Themis and names as Eunomia ("Good Order"), Dike ("Justice"), and Eirene ("Peace").

[142] A scholion on Apollonius of Rhodes's Argonautica[144] states that, while Aphrodite was pregnant with Priapus, Hera envied her and applied an evil potion to her belly while she was sleeping to ensure that the child would be hideous.

[162] In a semi-mocking work, the Dialogues of the Gods, the satirical author Lucian comedically relates how a frustrated Aphrodite complains to the moon goddess Selene about her son Eros making Persephone fall in love with Adonis and now she has to share him with her.

[167] In Hesiod's Works and Days, Zeus orders Aphrodite to make Pandora, the first woman, physically beautiful and sexually attractive,[168] so that she may become "an evil men will love to embrace".

[169] Aphrodite "spills grace" over Pandora's head[168] and equips her with "painful desire and knee-weakening anguish", thus making her the perfect vessel for evil to enter the world.

[172][174] In the version of the story from Ovid's Metamorphoses, Hippomenes forgets to repay Aphrodite for her aid,[175][172] so she causes the couple to become inflamed with lust while they are staying at the temple of Cybele.

[184] A myth described in Apollonius of Rhodes's Argonautica and later summarized in the Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus tells how, when the women of the island of Lemnos refused to sacrifice to Aphrodite, the goddess cursed them to stink horribly so that their husbands would never have sex with them.

[195] According to Diodorus Siculus, when the Rhodian sea nymphe Halia's six sons by Poseidon arrogantly refused to let Aphrodite land upon their shore, the goddess cursed them with insanity.

[211] According to Hyginus, Orpheus's mother Calliope of the Muses at the behest of Zeus, judged the dispute between the goddesses Aphrodite and Persephone over Adonis and decided that both shall possess him half of the year.

[213][214] The myth of the Judgement of Paris is mentioned briefly in the Iliad,[215] but is described in depth in an epitome of the Cypria, a lost poem of the Epic Cycle,[216] which records that all the gods and goddesses as well as various mortals were invited to the marriage of Peleus and Thetis (the eventual parents of Achilles).

[231] In Book XIV of the Iliad, during the Dios Apate episode, Aphrodite lends her kestos himas to Hera for the purpose of seducing Zeus and distracting him from the combat while Poseidon aids the Greek forces on the beach.

Rich-throned immortal Aphrodite, scheming daughter of Zeus, I pray you, with pain and sickness, Queen, crush not my heart, but come, if ever in the past you heard my voice from afar and hearkened, and left your father's halls and came, with gold chariot yoked; and pretty sparrows brought you swiftly across the dark earth fluttering wings from heaven through the air.

[267] The throne shows Aphrodite rising from the sea, clad in a diaphanous garment, which is drenched with seawater and clinging to her body, revealing her upturned breasts and the outline of her navel.

[268] Scenes with Aphrodite appear in works of classical Greek pottery,[269] including a famous white-ground kylix by the Pistoxenos Painter dating the between c. 470 and 460 BC, showing her riding on a swan or goose.

[296][297] In 1863, Alexandre Cabanel won widespread critical acclaim at the Paris Salon for his painting The Birth of Venus, which the French emperor Napoleon III immediately purchased for his own personal art collection.

B. Atkinson praised it, declaring that "Mr Leighton, instead of adopting corrupt Roman notions regarding Venus such as Rubens embodied, has wisely reverted to the Greek idea of Aphrodite, a goddess worshipped, and by artists painted, as the perfection of female grace and beauty.

[301] In 1879, William Adolphe Bouguereau exhibited at the Paris Salon his own Birth of Venus,[298] which imitated the classical tradition of contrapposto and was met with widespread critical acclaim, rivalling the popularity of Cabanel's version from nearly two decades prior.

[327][better source needed] The statuette portrays Aphrodite on the point of untying the laces of the sandal on her left foot, under which a small Eros squats, touching the sole of her shoe with his right hand.

Aphrodite, almost completely naked, wears only a sort of costume, consisting of a corset held up by two pairs of straps and two short sleeves on the upper part of her arm, from which a long chain leads to her hips and forms a star-shaped motif at the level of her navel.

Traces of the red paint are evident on the tree trunk, on the short curly hair gathered back in a bun and on the lips of the Goddess, as well as on the heads of Priapus and the Eros.

An interesting insight into the female ornaments of Roman times, the statuette, probably imported from the area of Alexandria, reproduces with a few modifications the statuary type of Aphrodite untying her sandal, known from copies in bronze and terracotta.For extensive research and a bibliography on the subject, see: de Franciscis 1963, p. 78, tav.