Aphrodite's Birth Place #2
by Augusta Stylianou
Title
Aphrodite's Birth Place #2
Artist
Augusta Stylianou
Medium
Photograph - Photograph-digital Art
Description
Aphrodite (Listeni/�frəˈdaɪti/ af-rə-DY-tee; Greek Ἀφροδίτη) is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation. Her Roman equivalent is the goddess Venus.
Historically, her cult in Greece was imported from, or influenced by, the cult of Astarte in Phoenicia.
According to Hesiod's Theogony, she was born when Cronus cut off Uranus' genitals and threw them into the sea, and from the sea foam (aphros) arose Aphrodite. Thus Aphrodite is of an older generation than Zeus.
Because of her beauty, other gods feared that jealousy would interrupt the peace among them and lead to war, and so Zeus married her to Hephaestus, who was not viewed as a threat. Aphrodite had many lovers, both gods like Ares, and men like Anchises. Aphrodite also became instrumental in the Eros and Psyche legend, and later was both Adonis' lover and his surrogate mother. Many lesser beings were said to be children of Aphrodite.
Aphrodite is also known as Cytherea (Lady of Cythera) and Cypris (Lady of Cyprus) after the two cult-sites, Cythera and Cyprus, which claimed her birth. Myrtles, doves, sparrows, horses, and swans are sacred to her. The Greeks further identified the Ancient Egyptian goddess Hathor with Aphrodite.[4] Aphrodite also has many other local names, such as Acidalia, Cytherea and Cerigo, used in specific areas of Greece. Each goddess demanded a slightly different cult but Greeks recognized in their overall similarities the one Aphrodite. Attic philosophers of the fourth century separated a celestial Aphrodite (Aprodite Urania) of transcendent principles with the common Aphrodite of the people (Aphrodite Pandemos)
Aphrodite is usually said to have been born near Paphos, on the island of Cyprus, for which reason she is called "Cyprian", especially in the poetic works of Sappho. Her chief center of worship was at Paphos, where the goddess of desire had been worshipped from the early Iron Age in the form of Ishtar and Astarte. However, other versions of her myth have her born near the island of Kythira (Cythera), for which reason she is called "Cytherea".[12] Kythira was a stopping place for trade and culture between Crete and the Peloponesus, so these stories may preserve traces of the migration of Aphrodite's cult from the Middle East to mainland Greece.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License
The original photo was taken by Alexandros Daskalakis and I changed it with the photoshop.
Uploaded
September 16th, 2012
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