48 Fun Facts About Aphrodite

Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty and what?

Pleasure and procreation were her business: the Greek word aphrodisios, 'belonging to Aphrodite', came to mean the pleasures of sex, and it gave English the word aphrodisiac.

Which flower was said to have turned from white to red when Aphrodite bled on it, running to the dying Adonis?

The rose: in one telling she tore her foot on its thorns as she ran, and her blood dyed the white petals for good. The red anemone, by contrast, was said to have sprung from Adonis's own blood.

In Hesiod's Theogony, Aphrodite is born from sea foam produced by what?

Uranus's severed genitals: his son Cronus cut them off with a sickle and flung them into the sea, and she rose from the froth. Greeks heard aphros, 'foam', in her name, though scholars doubt that is where it comes from.

In Homer's Iliad, Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus and which goddess?

Dione, whose name is simply a feminine form of Zeus's own, was worshipped beside him at his oracle of Dodona. In the Iliad the wounded Aphrodite runs to her mother's lap to be comforted and healed.

In the Odyssey, the goddess of beauty is the unfaithful wife of which god?

Hephaestus, the lame smith of the gods, is her husband in the Odyssey. The Iliad tells it differently: there his wife is a goddess called Charis, and Aphrodite appears to have no husband at all.

Which mortal princess drew so many worshippers away from Aphrodite that the jealous goddess set her a string of impossible tasks?

Psyche won in the end: the goddess's own son, sent to make her love the vilest of men, fell for her himself, and after her last task in the underworld she was made immortal. The tale comes from the Roman novelist Apuleius.

How did Aphrodite's husband catch her in bed with her lover, in the Odyssey?

With an invisible net of fine chains, which he forged himself and hung over the bed. Tipped off by the sun god Helios, he sprang the trap and then called the other gods in to laugh at the pair.

After catching Aphrodite with Ares, what did her husband demand from Zeus?

His bride price back: in the Odyssey he vows to hold the lovers until Zeus returns every gift he paid for her. Poseidon wins their release by pledging that Ares will pay an adulterer's fine.

Aphrodite's mortal lover Adonis was killed by which animal?

A wild boar gored him out hunting, though Aphrodite had warned him off dangerous game. In some tellings a jealous Ares sent the beast; in others it was the anger of Artemis that set it on him.

Zeus ended a custody fight over the infant Adonis by splitting his year between Aphrodite and which goddess?

Persephone had been given the baby to look after and refused to hand him back. In the best-known telling Zeus gave each goddess a third of the year, and Adonis chose to spend his own third with Aphrodite too.

Zeus made Aphrodite fall for which mortal herdsman, the father Aeneas would one day carry out of burning Troy?

Anchises was Zeus's revenge on her for making so many gods fall for mortals. She came to him on Mount Ida disguised as a Phrygian princess, and afterwards warned him never to boast of it.

Which son of Theseus scorned Aphrodite for Artemis, and was destroyed when the goddess made his stepmother fall for him?

Hippolytus had sworn himself to the virgin huntress and wanted nothing to do with love. In Euripides's play the rejected Phaedra kills herself and leaves a note accusing him, and his father's curse does the rest.

Which Roman leader claimed descent from Aphrodite through her son Aeneas, and built the goddess a temple in his new forum?

Julius Caesar's clan, the Julii, traced their name to Iulus, son of Aeneas. Before the battle of Pharsalus he vowed Venus a temple, and in 46 BC he dedicated it to her as Genetrix, 'the Mother' of his line.

What did Aphrodite promise Paris in exchange for judging her the fairest goddess?

The world's most beautiful woman was Helen, already the wife of King Menelaus of Sparta, so collecting the prize started the Trojan War. Hera had offered Paris a great kingdom, and Athena success in war.

Which uninvited goddess threw a golden apple marked 'for the fairest' among the guests at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis?

Eris, the goddess of strife, was the one deity left off the guest list. Hera, Athena and Aphrodite each claimed her apple, Zeus passed the judging to the Trojan prince Paris, and the quarrel ended in war.

In the Iliad, which Greek hero spears Aphrodite in the wrist and goes on to wound Ares as well?

Diomedes, urged on by Athena, cuts her wrist as she carries her son Aeneas from the field. She flees to Olympus in Ares's own chariot, where Zeus tells her that her business is love, not war.

Aphrodite brought to life the ivory statue carved by which Cypriot sculptor?

Pygmalion had sworn off women, then fell in love with his own carving. In Ovid's telling he prayed at the goddess's festival for a bride like his ivory girl, went home, kissed the statue and felt its lips grow warm.

Aphrodite's gift of golden apples let Hippomenes win a footrace, and a bride, against which swift huntress?

Atalanta would marry only a man who could outrun her, and the losers paid with their lives. Hippomenes tossed the three apples aside one by one, and each time she left the track to pick one up.

When the women of Lemnos neglected her rites, how did Aphrodite drive their husbands into the arms of Thracian captives?

They stank horribly, in the best-known telling, so their husbands took up with women captured in Thrace. The wives then killed every man on the island, all but the king, whom his daughter Hypsipyle hid.

Aphrodite is almost always accompanied by which winged god, in later myth her own son?

Eros is her son in most later tellings, and her constant companion. Hesiod has it the other way round: there he is one of the first powers in the cosmos, already on hand to escort her when she rises from the sea.

In Athens, officials purified Aphrodite's shrine before her festival procession by sacrificing which bird, sacred to the goddess?

A dove: an Athenian decree of the 280s BC tells the city's officials to supply one for the purification, then to wash the statues and whitewash the altars. The dove was the best known of her sacred birds.

Aphrodite's epithets Cytherea and Cypris come from the two islands that both claimed what?

To be her birthplace: in Hesiod the newborn goddess drifts past Cythera, off the southern Peloponnese, and comes ashore on Cyprus, far to the east. Poets used both names for her ever after.

Scholars trace Aphrodite's cult back through the Phoenician goddess Astarte to which Mesopotamian goddess of love and war?

Ishtar, the Sumerians' Inanna, ruled sexual love and war alike. Aphrodite's lover Adonis came west with her: he began as the consort of Ishtar-Astarte, and his name is simply the Phoenician adon, 'lord'.

In Plato's Symposium, what title does the 'heavenly' Aphrodite carry, as opposed to Pandemos?

Urania, 'heavenly', is for Plato's speaker the elder Aphrodite, who inspires love of the mind, while Pandemos, 'of all the people', stirs mere bodily desire. In real worship both were ordinary titles of one goddess.

Which Greek city, famous for its expensive courtesans, had a major temple of Aphrodite on its acropolis?

Corinth's temple, the geographer Strabo wrote, owned more than a thousand courtesans dedicated to the goddess. Ship captains spent so freely on them, he adds, that a proverb warned the voyage to Corinth was not for every man.

Which sister goddesses were Aphrodite's handmaids, bathing and anointing her at her temple in Paphos on Cyprus?

The Graces, goddesses of charm and beauty, bathe her in divine oil at Paphos in a Homeric hymn before she sets out to seduce a mortal, and were said to weave her robes as well. There were usually three of them.

In the Iliad, Hera borrows which love charm of Aphrodite's, embroidered with desire, to seduce Zeus away from the war?

Girdle is the usual English for the kestos himas, an embroidered band that held love and desire. Hera got it with a lie about mending a quarrel, then used it on Zeus on Mount Ida while the Greeks rallied.

What wedding gift, given to Aphrodite's daughter when she married Cadmus of Thebes, brought ruin on everyone who later owned it?

A necklace: in the usual telling the goddess's wronged husband forged it for Harmonia, her daughter by Ares, as revenge for the affair. It passed down the royal house of Thebes, and each owner came to grief.

The fertility god Priapus was usually said to be Aphrodite's son by which god?

Dionysus was the usual father: the historian Diodorus reasoned that wine leaves men inclined to the pleasures of love. Hera, the story goes, cursed the child in the womb, so that he was born grotesque.

The gods turned Adonis's pregnant mother into which tree, whose fragrant resin was said to be her tears?

A myrrh tree: she is the Myrrha of Ovid's poem, and she was fleeing her own father's drawn sword when the gods transformed her. Months later the trunk split open and the baby Adonis came out.

In one telling, Aphrodite made the charioteer Glaucus's horses tear him apart because he refused to do what?

Let his mares mate: Glaucus, a son of Sisyphus, kept them from breeding to save their speed for racing. The slighted goddess drove the team mad, and they tore him apart at the funeral games of Pelias.

Which sister of Helen, cursed like her by Aphrodite to be a faithless wife, took a lover and murdered her husband Agamemnon?

Clytemnestra took Aegisthus as her lover while Agamemnon was away at Troy, and killed the king on his return. The poet Stesichorus blamed her father Tyndareus, who forgot Aphrodite while sacrificing to the other gods.

To help Jason win the Golden Fleece, Hera asked Aphrodite to make which enchantress fall in love with him?

Medea was struck by an arrow from Aphrodite's son, as Apollonius tells it in the Argonautica. The goddess had to bribe the boy to shoot, promising him a golden ball that had been a toy of the infant Zeus.

Offered two Praxiteles Aphrodites at one price, Kos chose which one, now forgotten?

The clothed one, which Kos thought the only decent choice, as Pliny tells it. The rejected nude went to Knidos, where travellers sailed in just to see it and a king offered to pay off the city's debts in exchange for it.

Apelles reportedly painted Aphrodite rising from the sea after Phryne did what?

Wade in naked: Athenaeus says she let down her hair and walked into the sea before the crowds at the festival of Eleusis. The painting hung on the island of Kos until the emperor Augustus carried it off to Rome.

Botticelli's The Birth of Venus shows the goddess standing in what?

A giant scallop shell carries her to land, blown by the wind god Zephyrus, while a figure on the shore holds out a flowered cloak. Botticelli painted it on canvas at a time when wood panel was still the custom.

Botticelli's The Birth of Venus hangs in which gallery?

The Uffizi, Florence, takes its name from the offices that Vasari began in 1560 for the Medici government. The family's art collection filled the top floor, and Botticelli's Primavera hangs there too.

The Venus de Milo, an Aphrodite unearthed in 1820, takes its name from what?

The island where it was found is Milos, Melos to the ancient Greeks, in the Aegean. The French ambassador bought the statue almost at once and gave it to King Louis XVIII, who passed it to the Louvre in 1821.

What is famously missing from the Venus de Milo?

Both arms are missing, and the Louvre broke with the custom of the day by showing her unrestored. A marble hand holding an apple, found beside the statue, may be a piece of one.

Which day of the week takes its name, via a Germanic goddess, from Venus's Latin 'dies Veneris'?

Friday is Frigg's day: Germanic peoples matched the Roman love goddess with their own Frigg when they translated the Latin day name. French vendredi and Spanish viernes keep Venus herself.

Which month was sacred to Venus in Rome, its name traditionally linked to a Latin verb meaning 'to open'?

April was tied to aperire, 'to open', by a folk etymology. The name may really come from Apru, an Etruscan borrowing of Aphrodite, which would make the month hers twice over.

In 217 BC Rome vowed a temple to the Venus of Eryx in Sicily, hoping for her help against which enemy?

Carthage: Hannibal was laying Italy waste, and after the disaster at Lake Trasimene the Sibylline Books told Rome to vow the Sicilian goddess a temple. It was dedicated on the Capitol two years later.

Which archaic Greek poet's Ode to Aphrodite survives nearly complete?

Sappho calls on the goddess to come as she has before, in a chariot drawn by sparrows, and help her win a girl she desires. Almost everything else she wrote is lost, or survives only in quotations and scraps of papyrus.

Aphrodite's sons Phobos and Deimos, Fear and Dread, lend their names to the two moons of which planet?

Mars is the Roman name for Ares, the boys' father. When the astronomer Asaph Hall found the planet's two small moons in 1877, he named them for the war god's sons.

Which Roman emperor tore down a shrine of Aphrodite in Jerusalem to build a church over the tomb of Jesus?

Constantine had the shrine torn down and even its soil carted away, his biographer Eusebius says, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre rose on the spot. Jerome dates the pagan shrine to Hadrian's time.

Which metal, which alchemists linked with Venus, takes its name from Aphrodite's island of Cyprus?

Copper was aes Cyprium, 'metal of Cyprus', to the Romans, whose supply came almost entirely from the island's mines. The phrase wore down to cuprum, which is why the chemical symbol is Cu.

Which tree was sacred to Aphrodite and chosen by Venus in Phaedrus's fable?

The myrtle: in the fable of Phaedrus, Jupiter takes the oak and Apollo the laurel. Minerva asks why they all chose trees that bear nothing, and picks the olive for its fruit.

Manet's Olympia, the scandal of the 1865 Salon, was a modern reworking of which Renaissance painter's Venus of Urbino?

Titian's reclining goddess was thought perfectly respectable, since a nude passed without fuss so long as she was dressed up as myth. Manet's was plainly a modern Parisian, and critics took her for a prostitute.