Charites
[11] Alternate names to those given by Hesiod include: Damia ("Earth Mother"), Auxesia ("Spring Growth"), Cleta ("Renowned"), Phaenna ("Bright"), Hegemone ("Leader"), Peitho ("Persuasion"), Paregoros ("Consolation"), Pasithea ("Relaxation"), Charis ("Grace"), and Kale ("Beauty").
Also included in the list of the Charites are Eucleia ("Good Reputation"), Eupheme ("Acclamation"), Euthenia ("Prosperity"), and Philophrosyne ("Welcome").
The Lacedaemonians, however, say that the Graces are two, and that they were instituted by Lacedaemon, son of Taygete, who gave them the names of Cleta ("Sound" or "Renowned") and Phaenna ("Light" or "Bright").
Hesiod in the Theogony (though the authorship is doubtful, this poem is good evidence) says that the three Graces are daughters of Zeus and Eurynome, giving them the names of Aglaea, Euphrosyne and lovely Thalia.
[18] They attended Aphrodite by bathing and anointing her in Paphos before her seduction of Ankhises and after she left Olympus when her affair with Ares is found out.
[25] In the Iliad, as part of her plan to seduce Zeus to distract him from the Trojan War, she offers to arrange Hypnos's marriage to Pasithea, who is referred to as one of the younger Charites.
[3] In the Iliad, she is called Charis or Kale, and she welcomes Thetis into their shared home on Olympus so that the latter may ask for Hephaestus to forge armor for her son Achilles.
Notably, however, some scholars, such as Walter Burkert, support that the marriage of Hephaestus and Aphrodite as an invention of the Odyssey, since it is not represented within other Archaic or Classical era literature or arts, and it does not appear to have a connection to cult.
[29] The purpose of their cult appears to be similar to that of nymphs, primarily based around fertility and nature with a particular connection to springs and rivers.
He was said to have been sacrificing to the Charites on the island of Paros when he learned of his son's death in Athens and stopped the music and ripped off his garlands in grief.
[30] A temple was dedicated to the Charites near the Tiasa river in Amyclae, Laconia that was reportedly founded by the ancient King of Sparta, Lacedaemon.
[31] In Orkhomenos, the goddesses were worshipped at a very ancient site with a trio of stones, which is similar to other Boiotian cults to Eros and Herakles.
[18] The earliest representation of these goddesses was found in a temple of Apollo in Thermon dated to the seventh to sixth century BCE.
At the entrance of the Akropolis, there was a famous Classical era relief of the Charites and Hermes, and the popular belief was that the sculptor was Socrates, although this is very unlikely.
[1] Kenneth Clark describes the "complicated" pose of the Three Graces facing inwards with interlaced arms as "one of the last beautiful inventions of antique art".
He thought it was invented in the 1st century BCE, based on the proportions of the figures, and notes that none of the many survivals from antiquity are of "high quality".
One of the earliest known Roman representations of the Graces was a wall painting in Boscoreale dated to 40 BCE, which also depicted Aphrodite with Eros and Dionysus with Ariadne.
Also, Socrates was known to have destroyed his own work as he progressed deeper into his life of philosophy and search of the conscious due to his iconoclastic attitude towards art and the like.
Clark writes that "For some reason the nakedness of the Graces was free from moral opprobium, and in consequence they furnished the subject through which pagan beauty was first allowed to appear in the 15th century".
[35] Indeed, a large marble Graeco-Roman group, which was a key model in the Renaissance,[35] when it was in the Piccolomini Library, is now displayed in Siena Cathedral.
