50 Fun Facts About Aphrodite

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

In Laconia, oddly, she was also worshipped as a warrior goddess.

What is Aphrodite's Roman counterpart called?

The Roman goddess had started out as a deity of gardens, vegetation and springtime.

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

Cronus castrated his father and threw the parts into the sea; the Greek word for foam is aphros.

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

Plato decided the two birth stories belonged to two different Aphrodites, a heavenly one and a common one.

Aphrodite was married to which god of fire and metalworking?

In the Iliad, though, she seems to be unmarried and the smith god's wife is a goddess called Charis.

With which god did Aphrodite carry on her most famous affair?

Later poets such as Pindar and Aeschylus simply treat the war god as her husband.

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

Helios tipped him off; he then invited the other gods in to laugh at the trapped pair.

Which god agreed to pay the smith god for the release of the trapped lovers?

Apollo and Hermes were sympathetic too, though Hermes reportedly said he'd happily swap places with Ares.

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

Depending on the version the beast was sent by a jealous Ares or by Artemis; anemones grew where his blood fell.

Aphrodite fought a custody battle over the infant Adonis with which underworld goddess?

Zeus ruled that he spend a third of the year with each and a third as he pleased.

Zeus made Aphrodite fall in love with which mortal shepherd near Troy, father of her son Aeneas?

It was Zeus's revenge for all the gods she had made fall for mortals.

Because Aphrodite bore Aeneas, the Romans honoured Venus Genetrix as what?

Rome's most famous general claimed descent from Aeneas's son Iulus and pushed her cult hard.

Which Roman leader claimed to be directly descended from Aphrodite through Aeneas's son Iulus?

Venus Genetrix got a temple in his new forum.

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

That woman was Helen, already married to Menelaus, and the Trojan War followed.

Who threw the golden apple 'for the fairest' that Aphrodite, Hera and Athena all claimed?

She was the only god not invited to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis.

In Book 5 of the Iliad, which Greek hero wounds Aphrodite in the wrist as she rescues her son?

He calls her a 'weakling' goddess; she borrows Ares's chariot to flee back to Olympus and complain to her mother.

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

He had sworn off women entirely before falling for his own carving.

Aphrodite helped Hippomenes win Atalanta's footrace by giving him what to throw?

Atalanta had beheaded every previous suitor who lost to her.

When the women of Lemnos refused to sacrifice to her, Aphrodite cursed them how?

Their husbands turned to Thracian slave women, and the wives murdered every man on the island.

Aphrodite is almost always accompanied by which winged god of desire?

Hesiod makes him a primeval force older than the gods, who only later joins her retinue.

Aphrodite's main festival, held every midsummer, was called what?

In Athens the priests purified her temple with the blood of a sacrificed dove.

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

Cythera is an island south of the Peloponnese; Cyprus lies far to the east.

Aphrodite's cult may derive from Astarte, a Phoenician goddess cognate with which Mesopotamian deity?

That chain runs back to the Sumerian Inanna, whose lover Dumuzid is the likely model for Adonis.

Aphrodite's common Homeric epithet Philommeides means what?

It is often mistranslated as 'laughter-loving'.

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

The 'common' one, born of Zeus and Dione, was the goddess of everyday desire.

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

The old idea that this involved 'sacred prostitution' is now generally regarded as wrong.

Which day of every month was sacred to Aphrodite?

The rose and the myrtle were her sacred plants.

Aphrodite's magical undergarment, forged by her husband, is usually translated as her what?

Hera borrows it in the Iliad to seduce Zeus and distract him from the war.

Which of Aphrodite's children by Ares was the goddess of harmony?

Her brothers Phobos and Deimos, fear and terror, rode with their father into battle.

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

Jealous Hera smeared a potion on the pregnant goddess to make the child hideous.

Adonis's mother Myrrha, cursed by Aphrodite with lust for her own father, was turned into what?

The curse was punishment for her mother boasting that Myrrha was lovelier than the goddess.

Aphrodite made the charioteer Glaucus's horses tear him apart because he had refused to do what?

He thought breeding would slow his racing horses.

Aphrodite made the daughters of Tyndareus, including Helen, unfaithful wives because he had done what?

Helen, Clytemnestra and Timandra all deserted their husbands as a result.

Aphrodite turned Melos, who killed himself in grief over Adonis, into which fruit, her most important emblem?

His wife Pelia became a dove, another of the goddess's symbols.

Which sculptor's Aphrodite of Knidos was the first full-sized statue to show the goddess completely nude?

Pliny the Elder called it the greatest sculpture ever made; it was meant to be viewed from all sides.

Watching which courtesan bathe reportedly inspired Apelles to paint Aphrodite rising from the sea?

The lost painting, the Anadyomene, was regarded as his most famous work by Pliny's day.

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

The wind god Zephyrus blows her ashore from the left.

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

His other giant mythological canvas, the Primavera, hangs there too.

The Venus de Milo was discovered in 1820 on which Greek island?

It has been on show in the Louvre since 1821 and became a cornerstone of the collection after Napoleon's looted art went home.

What is famously missing from the Venus de Milo?

Their original position is still uncertain; a lost inscription attributes the work to Alexandros of Antioch.

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

The Romans equated Venus with the Germanic Frijjo, hence Friday.

Which month was sacred to Venus in Rome, its name understood as 'to open'?

Her festival the Veneralia fell on the first of it.

Livy says Aphrodite and Venus were identified when a cult came to Rome from a sanctuary on which Sicilian mountain?

Venus Erycina got a temple on the Capitoline soon after.

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

It is one of the earliest poems dedicated to the goddess.

Aphrodite's warlike aspect, worshipped in Laconia, carried which epithet?

The Spartans, characteristically, armed their love goddess.

Aphrodite's title Ourania, 'heavenly', corresponds to which title of the Sumerian Inanna?

Both goddesses were linked to the planet Venus as well.

Coptic Christians reinterpreted Aphrodite's birth as a metaphor for what?

A 6th-century stele shows a newly baptised woman wearing the goddess's conch shell.

Aphrodite's name is attested in which ancient script used on Cyprus from the 11th to the 4th centuries BC?

One form, a-po-ro-ti-si-jo, names a month 'of Aphrodite'.

Which of these was NOT among Aphrodite's major symbols?

Seashells, myrtle and roses complete the set; the owl belongs to Athena.

Manet's 1865 painting Olympia parodied which academic painter's Birth of Venus?

Cabanel's reclining nude had been the sensation of the 1863 Salon.