131-724: Aphrodisium or Aphrodision (Ancient Greek: Ἀφροδίσιον ) may refer to: anything of or related to Aphrodite , a Greek goddess Aphrodisium, a sanctuary of Aphrodite in the modern Port-Vendres , Spain Aphrodisium, the ancient port of Hippo Regius in Africa, now the Algerian city of Annaba Aphrodisium, an ancient port, now the Tunisian city of Mahdia Aphrodisium, an ancient city in Asia Minor, site of
262-535: A strophion ( στρόφιον ) known as the kestos himas ( κεστὸς ἱμάς ), a saltire-shaped undergarment (usually translated as the girdle of Aphrodite ), which accentuated her breasts and made her even more irresistible to men. Such strophia were commonly used in depictions of the Near Eastern goddesses Ishtar and Atargatis . Aphrodite is almost always accompanied by Eros , the god of lust and sexual desire. In his Theogony , Hesiod describes Eros as one of
393-588: A Semitic deity, may have been influenced by the Indo-European dawn goddess. Both Aphrodite and Eos were known for their erotic beauty and aggressive sexuality and both had relationships with mortal lovers. Both goddesses were associated with the colors red, white, and gold. Michael Janda etymologizes Aphrodite's name as an epithet of Eos meaning "she who rises from the foam [of the ocean]" and points to Hesiod's Theogony account of Aphrodite's birth as an archaic reflex of Indo-European myth. Aphrodite rising out of
524-670: A suicide note to Theseus telling him that she killed herself because Hippolytus attempted to rape her. Theseus prays to Poseidon to kill Hippolytus for his transgression. Poseidon sends a wild bull to scare Hippolytus's horses as he is riding by the sea in his chariot, causing the horses to bolt and smash the chariot against the cliffs, dragging Hippolytus to a bloody death across the rocky shoreline. The play concludes with Artemis vowing to kill Aphrodite's own mortal beloved (presumably Adonis) in revenge. Glaucus of Corinth angered Aphrodite by refusing to let his horses for chariot racing mate, since doing so would hinder their speed. During
655-474: A Babylonian custom where before marriage, girls had to offer themselves for sex, presumably within a temple, as required by rites of a goddess equivalent to Aphrodite in their culture. Herodotus records that a similar practice or custom took place within Cyprus, with girls offering themselves up for sex as required by the rites of Aphrodite. Ennius and Ovid corroborate each other on the idea that Aphrodite established
786-520: A Greek folk tale , originally independent of the Odyssey . In a much later interpolated detail, Ares put the young soldier Alectryon by the door to warn of Helios's arrival but Alectryon fell asleep on guard duty. Helios discovered the two and alerted Hephaestus; Ares in rage turned Alectryon into a rooster , which unfailingly crows to announce the sunrise. After exposing them, Hephaestus asks Zeus for his wedding gifts and dowry to be returned to him; by
917-446: A Hindu deity or a Hindu temple, who then work in the temple and function as spiritual guides, dancers, and prostitutes servicing male devotees in the temple. The Devadasis were originally seen as intercessors who allowed upper-caste men to have contact with the gods. Though they did develop sexual relations with other men, they were not looked upon with lust. Before Muslim rule in the 14th century, they could live an existence apart from
1048-562: A Near Eastern origin argued that Aphrodite originated as an aspect of the Greek dawn goddess Eos and that she was therefore ultimately derived from the Proto-Indo-European dawn goddess * H a éusōs (properly Greek Eos , Latin Aurora , Sanskrit Ushas ). Most modern scholars have now rejected the notion of a purely Indo-European Aphrodite, but it is possible that Aphrodite, originally
1179-468: A battle won by Attalus I Aphrodisium (Arcadia) , a town in ancient Arcadia, Greece Aphrodisium (Cyprus) , a town in ancient Cyprus Aphrodisium, a sacred grove near Psophis in Greece Aphrodisium (beetle) , genus of beetles See also [ edit ] Aphrodisius Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with
1310-797: A bride), and lifelong sexual rite. However, Frazer took his sources mostly from authors of Late Antiquity (i.e. 150–500 AD), not from the Classical or Hellenistic periods . This raises questions as to whether the phenomenon of temple sexual rites can be generalised to the whole of the ancient world, as earlier scholars typically did. In Hammurabi's code of laws , the rights and good name of female sacred sexual priestesses were protected. The same legislation that protected married women from slander applied to them and their children. They could inherit property from their fathers, collect income from land worked by their brothers, and dispose of property. These rights have been described as extraordinary, taking into account
1441-450: A different aspect of the same goddess or used by a different local cult. Thus she was also known as Cytherea ( Lady of Cythera ) and Cypris ( Lady of Cyprus ), because both locations claimed to be the place of her birth. Sappho 's Ode to Aphrodite is one of the earliest poems dedicated to the goddess and survives from the Archaic period nearly complete. In Greek mythology , Aphrodite
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#17330846060091572-511: A famous Greek poet, was commissioned to write a poem that was to be performed at Xenophon’s victory celebration in Corinth. The poet acknowledged that the slaves would serve Aphrodite as sacred prostitutes within her temple at Corinth. Another temple of Aphrodite was named Aphrodite Melainis, located near the city gates in an area known as “Craneion”. It is the resting place of Lais, who was a famous prostitute in Greek history. This suggests that there
1703-625: A festival on the anniversary of his death. In one version of the story, Aphrodite injured herself on a thorn from a rose bush and the rose, which had previously been white, was stained red by her blood. According to Lucian 's On the Syrian Goddess , each year during the festival of Adonis, the Adonis River in Lebanon (now known as the Abraham River ) ran red with blood. The myth of Adonis
1834-493: A fine, near invisible net. The next time Ares and Aphrodite had sex together, the net trapped them both. Hephaestus brought all the gods into the bedchamber to laugh at the captured adulterers, but Apollo , Hermes , and Poseidon had sympathy for Ares and Poseidon agreed to pay Hephaestus for Ares's release. Aphrodite returned to her temple in Cyprus, where she was attended by the Charites . This narrative probably originated as
1965-401: A handsome mortal shepherd who lived in the foothills beneath Mount Ida near the city of Troy . Aphrodite appears to Anchises in the form of a tall, beautiful, mortal virgin while he is alone in his home. Anchises sees her dressed in bright clothing and gleaming jewelry, with her breasts shining with divine radiance. He asks her if she is Aphrodite and promises to build her an altar on top of
2096-522: A highly contrived etymology, deriving Aphrodite from the compound habrodíaitos ( ἁβροδίαιτος ), "she who lives delicately", from habrós and díaita . The alteration from b to ph is explained as a "familiar" characteristic of Greek "obvious from the Macedonians ". In the Cypriot syllabary , a syllabic script used on the island of Cyprus from the eleventh until the fourth centuries BC, Aphrodite's name
2227-541: A probable reality, based on the abundance of ancient sources and chroniclers detailing its practices, although it has proved harder to differentiate between true prostitution and sacred sex without remuneration. Beginning in the late 20th century, a number of scholars have challenged the veracity of sacred prostitution as a concept, suggesting that the claims are based on mistranslations, misunderstandings or outright inventions of ancient authors. Authors have also interpreted evidence as secular prostitution administered in
2358-434: A public display of grief. In Hesiod's Works and Days , Zeus orders Aphrodite to make Pandora , the first woman, physically beautiful and sexually attractive, so that she may become "an evil men will love to embrace". Aphrodite "spills grace" over Pandora's head and equips her with "painful desire and knee-weakening anguish", thus making her the perfect vessel for evil to enter the world. Aphrodite's attendants, Peitho,
2489-576: A sanctuary built with multiple cells or rooms, which has been identified as a possible place of sacred prostitution in honor to Astarte. A similar institution might have been found in Gadir. Its posterior, renowned erotic dancers called puellae gaditanae in Roman sources (or cinaedi in the case of male dancers) might have been desecrated heirs of this practice, considering the role occupied by sex and dance on Phoenician culture. Another center of cult to Astarte
2620-511: A temple to Aphrodite Hathor at Philae . Statuettes of Aphrodite for personal devotion became common in Egypt starting in the early Ptolemaic times and extending until long after Egypt became a Roman province . The ancient Romans identified Aphrodite with their goddess Venus , who was originally a goddess of agricultural fertility, vegetation, and springtime. According to the Roman historian Livy , Aphrodite and Venus were officially identified in
2751-463: A variety of quick-growing plants, such as lettuce and fennel , or even quick-sprouting grains such as wheat and barley . The women would then climb ladders to the roofs of their houses, where they would place the gardens out under the heat of the summer sun. The plants would sprout in the sunlight but wither quickly in the heat. Then the women would mourn and lament loudly over the death of Adonis, tearing their clothes and beating their breasts in
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#17330846060092882-535: A woman's virginity or rinni in honor of a goddess or a once-in-a-lifetime prostitution, professional prostitutes or slaves owned by a temple or sanctuary, and temporary prostitution that occurs before a marriage or during certain rituals. Ancient Near Eastern societies along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers featured many shrines and temples or houses of heaven dedicated to various deities . The 5th-century BC historian Herodotus 's account and some other testimony from
3013-534: Is Philommeidḗs ( φιλομμειδής ), which means "smile-loving", but is sometimes mistranslated as "laughter-loving". This epithet occurs throughout both of the Homeric epics and the First Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite . Hesiod references it once in his Theogony in the context of Aphrodite's birth, but interprets it as "genital-loving" rather than "smile-loving". Monica Cyrino notes that the epithet may relate to
3144-758: Is set apart ). The Hebrew word keleb (dog) may also signify a male dancer or prostitute. The Mosaic Law as outlined in the Book of Deuteronomy was not universally observed in Israelite culture under the Davidic line in the Kingdom of Israel , as recorded in the Books of Kings . According to 2 Kings 22, the Kingdom of Judah had lost "the Book of the Law". During the reign of King Josiah , Hilkiah ,
3275-434: Is a great multitude of women coming and going; passages marked by line run every way through the crowd, by which the men pass and make their choice. Once a woman has taken her place there, she does not go away to her home before some stranger has cast money into her lap, and had intercourse with her outside the temple; but while he casts the money, he must say, "I invite you in the name of Mylitta ". It does not matter what sum
3406-403: Is associated with spiritual love, and Pandemos with physical love (desire). 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 . One of Aphrodite's most common literary epithets
3537-579: Is associated with the festival of the Adonia , which was celebrated by Greek women every year in midsummer. The festival, which was evidently already celebrated in Lesbos by Sappho's time, seems to have first become popular in Athens in the mid-fifth century BC. At the start of the festival, the women would plant a "garden of Adonis", a small garden planted inside a small basket or a shallow piece of broken pottery containing
3668-500: Is attested in the forms 𐠀𐠡𐠦𐠭𐠃𐠂 (a-po-ro-ta-o-i, read right-to-left), 𐠀𐠡𐠦𐠯𐠭𐠂 (a-po-ro-ti-ta-i, samewise), and finally 𐠀𐠡𐠦𐠯𐠪𐠈 (a-po-ro-ti-si-jo, " Aphrodisian ", "related to Aphrodite", in the context of a month). The cult of Aphrodite in Greece was imported from, or at least influenced by, the cult of Astarte in Phoenicia , which, in turn, was influenced by
3799-539: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Aphrodite Aphrodite ( / ˌ æ f r ə ˈ d aɪ t iː / , AF -rə- DY -tee ) is an ancient Greek goddess associated with love, lust, beauty, pleasure, passion, procreation, and as her syncretized Roman goddess counterpart Venus , desire, sex , fertility , prosperity, and victory. Aphrodite's major symbols include seashells, myrtles , roses, doves, sparrows, and swans. The cult of Aphrodite
3930-432: Is generally accepted to be of non-Greek (probably Semitic ) origin, but its exact derivation cannot be determined with confidence. Scholars in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, accepting Hesiod's "foam" etymology as genuine, analyzed the second part of Aphrodite's name as * -odítē "wanderer" or as * -dítē "bright". More recently, Michael Janda, also accepting Hesiod's etymology, has argued in favor of
4061-437: Is often seen as Aphrodite's son, but this is actually a comparatively late innovation. A scholion on Theocritus 's Idylls remarks that the sixth-century BC poet Sappho had described Eros as the son of Aphrodite and Uranus, but the first surviving reference to Eros as Aphrodite's son comes from Apollonius of Rhodes 's Argonautica , written in the third century BC, which makes him the son of Aphrodite and Ares. Later,
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4192-683: Is probably derived from the ancient Sumerian legend of Inanna and Dumuzid . The Greek name Ἄδωνις ( Adōnis , Greek pronunciation: [ádɔːnis] ) is derived from the Canaanite word ʼadōn , meaning "lord". The earliest known Greek reference to Adonis comes from a fragment of a poem by the Lesbian poet Sappho ( c. 630 – c. 570 BC ), in which a chorus of young girls asks Aphrodite what they can do to mourn Adonis's death. Aphrodite replies that they must beat their breasts and tear their tunics. Later references flesh out
4323-432: Is that which compels every woman of the land to sit in the temple of Aphrodite ( Ishtar ) and have intercourse with some stranger at least once in her life. Many women who are rich and proud and disdain to mingle with the rest, drive to the temple in covered carriages drawn by teams, and stand there with a great retinue of attendants. But most sit down in the sacred plot of Aphrodite, with crowns of cord on their heads; there
4454-503: Is the younger of the two goddesses: the common Aphrodite, born from the union of Zeus and Dione, and the inspiration of heterosexual desire and sexual promiscuity, the "lesser" of the two loves. Paphian (Παφία), was one of her epithets, after the Paphos in Cyprus where she had emerged from the sea at her birth. Among the Neoplatonists and, later, their Christian interpreters, Ourania
4585-553: Is unmarried and the wife of Hephaestus is Aglaea , the youngest of the three Charites . In Book Eight of the Odyssey , however, the blind singer Demodocus describes Aphrodite as the wife of Hephaestus and tells how she committed adultery with Ares during the Trojan War . The sun-god Helios saw Aphrodite and Ares having sex in Hephaestus's bed and warned Hephaestus, who fashioned
4716-528: Is uppercase. In addition, a determinative sign is written as a superscript. Determinatives are only written and never spoken. In spoken Sumerian homophones are distinguished by a numerical subscript. The Hittites practiced sacred prostitution as part of a cult of deities, including the worship of a mated pair of deities, a bull god and a lion goddess, while in later days it was the mother-goddess who became prominent, representing fertility, and (in Phoenicia)
4847-455: 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. Instead, their husbands started having sex with their Thracian slave-girls . In anger, the women of Lemnos murdered the entire male population of the island, as well as all
4978-492: The Church of Aphrodite , Wicca , and Hellenism . Hesiod derives the name Aphrodite from aphrós ( ἀφρός ) "sea-foam", interpreting the name as "risen from the foam", but most modern scholars regard this as a spurious folk etymology . Early-modern scholars of classical mythology attempted to argue that Aphrodite's name was of Greek or Indo-European origin, but these efforts have mostly been abandoned. Aphrodite's name
5109-549: The Garden of the Hesperides and instructed him to toss them in front of Atalanta as he raced her. Hippomenes obeyed Aphrodite's order and Atalanta, seeing the beautiful, golden fruits, bent down to pick up each one, allowing Hippomenes to outrun her. In the version of the story from Ovid's Metamorphoses , Hippomenes forgets to repay Aphrodite for her aid, so she causes the couple to become inflamed with lust while they are staying at
5240-563: The Hellenistic Period and Late Antiquity suggest that ancient societies encouraged the practice of sacred sexual rites not only in Babylonia and Cyprus , but throughout the Near East . The work of gender researchers like Daniel Arnaud, Julia Assante and Stephanie Budin has cast the whole tradition of scholarship that defined the concept of sacred prostitution into doubt. Budin regards
5371-950: The High Priest of Israel , discovered it in " the House of the Lord " and realized that the people have disobeyed, particularly regarding prostitution. The Greek term hierodoulos or hierodule has sometimes been taken to mean sacred holy woman , but it is more likely to refer to a former slave freed from slavery in order to be dedicated to a god. There were different levels of prostitutes within Ancient Greek society, but two categories are specifically related to sacred or temple prostitution. The first category are hetaires , also known as courtesans, typically more educated women that served within temples. The second category are known as hierodoules , slave women or female priests who worked within temples and served
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5502-453: The Phoenician cities of Aphaca and Heliopolis ( Baalbek ) continued to practise temple prostitution until the emperor Constantine put an end to the rite in the 4th century AD. People in some Indian states practice hierodulic prostitution, with similar customary forms such as basavi, and involves dedicating pre-pubescent and young adolescent girls from villages in a ritual marriage to
5633-620: The Theogony , Hesiod describes Dione as an Oceanid , but Apollodorus makes her the thirteenth Titan , child of Gaia and Uranus. Aphrodite is consistently portrayed as a nubile, infinitely desirable adult, having had no childhood. She is often depicted nude. In the Iliad , Aphrodite is the apparently unmarried consort of Ares , the god of war, and the wife of Hephaestus is a different goddess named Charis . Likewise, in Hesiod's Theogony , Aphrodite
5764-522: The Vedic deity Ushas . Modern scholars, due to the believed Near Eastern origins of Aphrodite's worship, have since proposed Semitic origins for the name. Some scholars, such as Fritz Hommel , have suggested that Aphrodite's name is a hellenized pronunciation of the name " Astarte "; other scholars, however, reject this as being linguistically untenable. Martin West reconstructs a Cyprian Canaanite form of
5895-439: The "East Building", such as vases and other vessels that seemed to be connected to religious rituals. The vessels were covered in motifs related to sacrilegious rituals, such as the sacral knot and the image of birds flying freely. The functions of the vessels would have been offering food or liquid in relation to the rituals. Combining these two factors, it is a possibility that sacred prostitution existed within this building. In
6026-552: The Charites, and the Horae, adorn Pandora with gold and jewelry. According to one myth, Aphrodite aided Hippomenes , a noble youth who wished to marry Atalanta , a maiden who was renowned throughout the land for her beauty, but who refused to marry any man unless he could outrun her in a footrace . Atalanta was an exceedingly swift runner and she beheaded all of the men who lost to her. Aphrodite gave Hippomenes three golden apples from
6157-567: The Etruscan site of Pyrgi , a center of worship of the eastern goddess Astarte , archaeologists identified a temple consecrated to her and built with at least 17 small rooms that may have served as quarters for temple prostitutes. Similarly, a temple dedicated to her equated goddess Atargatis in Dura-Europos , was found with nearly a dozen small rooms with low benches, which might have used either for sacred meals or sacred services of women jailed in
6288-754: The Greek-influenced and colonised world, "sacred prostitution" was known in Cyprus (Greek-settled since 1100 BC), Sicily (Hellenised since 750 BC), in the Kingdom of Pontus (8th century BC) and in Cappadocia (c. 330 BC hellenised). 2 Maccabees ( 2 Maccabees 6:4–5 ) describes sacred prostitution in the Second Temple under the reign of the Hellenistic ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes . A passage in Herodotus explains
6419-521: The Romans, who saw Venus as a mother goddess, seized on this idea of Eros as Aphrodite's son and popularized it, making it the predominant portrayal in works on mythology until the present day. 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"). The Charites had been worshipped as goddesses in Greece since
6550-574: The Temples of Aphrodite in the city of Corinth was well-known and well-spread. Greek writer-philosopher Strabo comments, "the Temple of Aphrodite was so rich that it owned a thousand temple-slaves, courtesans, whom both men and women had dedicated to the goddess". Within the same work, Strabo compares Corinth to the city of Comana, confirming the belief that temple prostitution was a notable characteristic of Corinth. Prostitutes performed sacred functions within
6681-507: The Thracian slaves. When Jason and his crew of Argonauts arrived on Lemnos, they mated with the sex-starved women under Aphrodite's approval and repopulated the island. From then on, the women of Lemnos never disrespected Aphrodite again. In Euripides 's tragedy Hippolytus , which was first performed at the City Dionysia in 428 BC, Theseus's son Hippolytus worships only Artemis ,
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#17330846060096812-513: The act might be unrelated to sacred prostitution. The Deukis are temple prostitutes in Nepal. The practice is banned but still exists. Wealthier families from the Kanari, Thakuri and Bista buy girls from poorer families to be dedicated to a temple and are not allowed to marry. The Maya maintained several phallic religious cults, possibly involving homosexual temple prostitution. Much evidence for
6943-454: The act of prostitution within the city of Cyprus. A temple of Kition also shows evidence of sacred prostitution. On a marble plaque, it lists sacred prostitutes among other professions (bakers, scribes, barbers) that were part of ritual personnel at some Cypriot temples. The temple of Aphaca may be another source of evidence for temple prostitution. The process is similar to regular prostitution, where male customers paid two or three obol in
7074-462: The ancient Near Eastern region of Sumer and the high priestesses of Inanna , the Sumerian goddess of sexual love, fertility, and warfare, later called Ishtar . The king would have sex with the priestess to represent the union of Dumuzid with Inanna . According to the noted Assyriologist Samuel Noah Kramer , the kings would further establish their legitimacy by taking part in a ritual sexual act in
7205-456: The beginning of Greek history, long before Aphrodite was introduced to the pantheon. Aphrodite's other set of attendants was the three Horae (the "Hours"), whom Hesiod identifies as the daughters of Zeus and Themis and names as Eunomia ("Good Order"), Dike ("Justice"), and Eirene ("Peace"). Aphrodite was also sometimes accompanied by Harmonia , her daughter by Ares, and Hebe , the daughter of Zeus and Hera. The fertility god Priapus
7336-432: The building, along with successive doors within the corridors. The successive doors suggested privacy, and within the time period, was associated with two functions: storage of valuable goods and protection of the private moments of its residents. Because the ground floors were found practically empty, the possibility that the building was used for prostitution increases. There were also religious embellishments found within
7467-471: The chariot race at the funeral games of King Pelias , Aphrodite drove his horses mad and they tore him apart. Polyphonte was a young woman who chose a virginal life with Artemis instead of marriage and children, as favoured by Aphrodite. Aphrodite cursed her, causing her to have children by a bear. The resulting bear-like offspring Agrius and Oreius were wild cannibals who incurred the hatred of Zeus for attacking traveling strangers. Ultimately, Ares (who
7598-413: The city. Arsinoe II introduced the cult of Adonis to Alexandria and many of the women there partook in it. The Tessarakonteres , a gigantic catamaran galley designed by Archimedes for Ptolemy IV Philopator , had a circular temple to Aphrodite on it with a marble statue of the goddess herself. In the second century BC, Ptolemy VIII Physcon and his wives Cleopatra II and Cleopatra III dedicated
7729-404: The concept of sacred prostitution as a myth, arguing taxatively that the practices described in the sources were misunderstandings of either non-remunerated ritual sex or non-sexual religious ceremonies, or possibly even invented as rhetorical devices. Through the twentieth century, scholars generally believed that a form of sacred marriage rite ( hieros gamos ) was staged between the kings in
7860-436: The context of religious worship , possibly as a form of fertility rite or divine marriage ( hieros gamos ). Scholars prefer the terms " sacred sex " or "sacred sexual rites" in cases where payment for services is not involved. The historicity of literal sacred prostitution, particularly in some places and periods, is a controversial topic within the academic world. Historically mainstream historiography has considered it
7991-779: The cult of the Mesopotamian goddess known as "Ishtar" to the East Semitic peoples and as " Inanna " to the Sumerians . Pausanias states that the first to establish a cult of Aphrodite were the Assyrians , followed by the Paphians of Cyprus and then the Phoenicians at Ascalon . The Phoenicians, in turn, taught her worship to the people of Cythera . Aphrodite took on Inanna-Ishtar's associations with sexuality and procreation. Furthermore, she
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#17330846060098122-422: The fact that, in many artistic depictions of Aphrodite, she is shown smiling. Other epithets of her include Mechanitis meaning skilled in inventing and Automata because, according to Servius , she was the source of spontaneous love. Common literary epithets of Aphrodite are Cypris and Cythereia , which derive from her associations with the islands of Cyprus and Cythera respectively. On Cyprus, Aphrodite
8253-508: The form of or in addition to dedications to Aphrodite in exchange for sex with a temple prostitute. In the temple of Aphaca specifically, the men would dedicate their payment to "Cyprian Aphrodite" before engaging in sex with a temple prostitute. The Roman emperor Constantine closed down a number of temples to Venus or similar deities in the 4th century AD, as the Christian church historian Eusebius proudly noted. Eusebius also writes that
8384-448: The four original primeval forces born at the beginning of time, but, after the birth of Aphrodite from the sea foam, he is joined by Himeros and, together, they become Aphrodite's constant companions. In early Greek art, Eros and Himeros are both shown as idealized handsome youths with wings. The Greek lyric poets regarded the power of Eros and Himeros as dangerous, compulsive, and impossible for anyone to resist. In modern times, Eros
8515-528: The girls were gifted to the temple from other members of society in return for success in particular endeavors. One example that shows the gifting of girls to the temple is the poem of Athenaeus , which explores an athlete Xenophon’s actions of gifting a group of courtesans to Aphrodite as a thanks-offering for his victory in a competition. Specifically in 464 BC, Xenophon was victorious in the Olympic Games and donated 100 slaves to Aphrodite’s temple. Pindar ,
8646-466: The goddess Ishtar often speak of them as running 320 km (200 mi), offering sacrifices, feasting with the sun-god Utu , and receiving a royal crown from An , all in a single day. Some modern historians argue in the same direction, though their posture has been disputed. According to Herodotus , the rites performed at these temples included sexual intercourse, or what scholars later called sacred sexual rites: The foulest Babylonian custom
8777-416: The goddess of love, worshipping Aphrodite through an act rather than a physical dedication. In the temple of Apollo at Bulla Regia , a woman was found buried with an inscription reading: "Adulteress. Prostitute. Seize [me], because I fled from Bulla Regia." It has been speculated she might have been a woman forced into sacred prostitution as a punishment for adultery. The act of sacred prostitution within
8908-471: The goddess of virginity, and refuses to engage in any form of sexual contact. Aphrodite is infuriated by his prideful behavior and, in the prologue to the play, she declares that, by honoring only Artemis and refusing to venerate her, Hippolytus has directly challenged her authority. Aphrodite therefore causes Hippolytus's stepmother, Phaedra , to fall in love with him, knowing Hippolytus will reject her. After being rejected, Phaedra commits suicide and leaves
9039-405: The goddess of virginity. Aphrodite tells Anchises that she is still a virgin and begs him to take her to his parents. Anchises immediately becomes overcome with mad lust for Aphrodite and swears that he will have sex with her. Anchises takes Aphrodite, with her eyes cast downwards, to his bed, which is covered in the furs of lions and bears. He then strips her naked and makes love to her. After
9170-470: The goddess to claim that Ourania and Pandemos are, in fact, separate goddesses. He asserts that Aphrodite Ourania is the celestial Aphrodite, born from the sea foam after Cronus castrated Uranus, and the older of the two goddesses. According to the Symposium , Aphrodite Ourania is the inspiration of male homosexual desire , specifically the ephebic eros , and pederasty . Aphrodite Pandemos , by contrast,
9301-409: The goddess who presided over human birth. It has been argued that sacred prostitution, worked by both males and females, was a custom of ancient Phoenicians . It would be dedicated to the deities Astarte and Adonis , and sometimes performed as a festival or social rite in the cities of Byblos , Afqa and Baalbek (later named Heliopolis ) as well as the nearby Syrian city of Palmyra . At
9432-571: The islands of Cyprus , Cythera , and Sicily . Aphrodite's Mesopotamian precursor Inanna-Ishtar was also closely associated with prostitution. Scholars in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries believed that the cult of Aphrodite may have involved ritual prostitution , an assumption based on ambiguous passages in certain ancient texts, particularly a fragment of a skolion by the Boeotian poet Pindar , which mentions prostitutes in Corinth in association with Aphrodite. Modern scholars now dismiss
9563-507: The lack of solid evidence has indicated that the word might refer to prostitutes who offered their services in the vicinity of temples, where they could attract a larger number of clients. The term might have originated as consecrated maidens employed in Canaanite and Phoenician temples, which became synonymous with harlotry for Biblical writers. In any case, the translation of sacred prostitute has continued, however, because it explains how
9694-560: The later legends of Hermaphroditus . Aphrodite's main festival, the Aphrodisia , was celebrated across Greece, but particularly in Athens and Corinth . In Athens, the Aphrodisia was celebrated on the fourth day of the month of Hekatombaion in honor of Aphrodite's role in the unification of Attica. During this festival, the priests of Aphrodite would purify the temple of Aphrodite Pandemos on
9825-493: The latter of these interpretations and claims the story of a birth from the foam as an Indo-European mytheme . Similarly, Krzysztof Tomasz Witczak proposes an Indo-European compound *abʰor- "very" and *dʰei- "to shine", also referring to Eos , and Daniel Kölligan has interpreted Aphrodite's name as "shining up from the mist/foam". Other scholars have argued that these hypotheses are unlikely, since Aphrodite's attributes are entirely different from those of both Eos and
9956-550: The lovemaking is complete, Aphrodite reveals her true divine form. Anchises is terrified, but Aphrodite consoles him and promises that she will bear him a son. She prophesies that their son will be the demigod Aeneas , who will be raised by the nymphs of the wilderness for five years before going to Troy to become a nobleman like his father. The story of Aeneas's conception is also mentioned in Hesiod's Theogony and in Book II of Homer's Iliad . The myth of Aphrodite and Adonis
10087-986: The men, with inheritance rights, wealth and influence, as well as living outside of the dangers of marriage. The system was criticised by British colonial government while defended by Brahmins, leading to a decline in support for the system and the devadasis soon turned to prostitution . Many scholars have stated that the Hindu scriptures do not mention the system. Human Rights Watch also reports claims that devadasis are forced into this service and, at least in some cases, to practise prostitution for upper-caste members. Various state governments in India enacted laws to ban this practice both prior to India's independence and more recently. They include Bombay Devdasi Act, 1934, Devdasi (Prevention of dedication) Madras Act, 1947, Karnataka Devdasi (Prohibition of dedication) Act, 1982, and Andhra Pradesh Devdasi (Prohibition of dedication) Act, 1988. However,
10218-408: The money is; the woman will never refuse, for that would be a sin, the money being by this act made sacred. So she follows the first man who casts it and rejects no one. After their intercourse, having discharged her sacred duty to the goddess, she goes away to her home; and thereafter there is no bribe however great that will get her. So then the women that are fair and tall are soon free to depart, but
10349-451: The most famous story, Zeus hastily married Aphrodite to Hephaestus in order to prevent the other gods from fighting over her. In another version of the myth, Hephaestus gave his mother Hera a golden throne, but when she sat on it, she became trapped and he refused to let her go until she agreed to give him Aphrodite's hand in marriage. Hephaestus was overjoyed to be married to the goddess of beauty, and forged her beautiful jewelry, including
10480-641: The mother of the entire Roman nation. Julius Caesar claimed to be directly descended from Aeneas's son Iulus and became a strong proponent of the cult of Venus. This precedent was later followed by his nephew Augustus and the later emperors claiming succession from him. This syncretism greatly impacted Greek worship of Aphrodite. During the Roman era, the cults of Aphrodite in many Greek cities began to emphasize her relationship with Troy and Aeneas. They also began to adopt distinctively Roman elements, portraying Aphrodite as more maternal, more militaristic, and more concerned with administrative bureaucracy. She
10611-460: The mountain if she will bless him and his family. Aphrodite lies and tells him that she is not a goddess, but the daughter of one of the noble families of Phrygia . She claims to be able to understand the Trojan language because she had a Trojan nurse as a child and says that she found herself on the mountainside after she was snatched up by Hermes while dancing in a celebration in honor of Artemis ,
10742-522: The name as either *ʿAprodît or *ʿAproḏît , and cautiously suggests the latter as being an epithet with the meaning "She of the Villages". Aren Wilson-Wright suggests the Phoenician form *ʾAprodīt as an elative epithet meaning "unique, excellent, sublime". A number of improbable non-Greek etymologies have also been suggested. One Semitic etymology compares Aphrodite to the Assyrian barīrītu ,
10873-602: The name of a female demon that appears in Middle Babylonian and Late Babylonian texts. Hammarström looks to Etruscan , comparing (e)prθni "lord", an Etruscan honorific loaned into Greek as πρύτανις . This would make the theonym in origin an honorific, "the lady". Most scholars reject this etymology as implausible, especially since Aphrodite's name actually appears in Etruscan in the borrowed form Apru (from Greek Aphrō , clipped form of Aphrodite ). The medieval Etymologicum Magnum ( c. 1150 ) offers
11004-628: The notion of ritual prostitution in Greece as a "historiographic myth" with no factual basis. During the Hellenistic period , the Greeks identified Aphrodite with the ancient Egyptian goddesses Hathor and Isis . Aphrodite was the patron goddess of the Lagid queens and Queen Arsinoe II was identified as her mortal incarnation. Aphrodite was worshipped in Alexandria and had numerous temples in and around
11135-467: The oldest strata of her worship and see it as an indication of her Near Eastern origins. Nineteenth-century classical scholars had a general aversion to the idea that ancient Greek religion was at all influenced by the cultures of the Near East, but, even Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker , who argued that Near Eastern influence on Greek culture was largely confined to material culture, admitted that Aphrodite
11266-563: The religious practices of the Aztec culture was destroyed during the Spanish conquest , and almost the only evidence for the practices of their religion is from Spanish accounts. The Franciscan Spanish Friar Bernardino de Sahagún learned their language and spent more than 50 years studying the culture. He wrote that they participated in religious festivals and rituals, as well as performing sexual acts as part of religious practice. This may be evidence for
11397-513: The repelling of the Persians. Athenaeus also alludes to the idea that many of Aphrodite’s temples and sanctuaries were occupied by temple prostitutes. These prostitutes were known to practise sexual rituals in different cities which included Corinth, Magnesia, and Samos. Some evidence of sacred prostitution was evident in Minoan Crete . The building in question is known as the "East Building", but
11528-611: The role of women at the time. All translations are sourced from the Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary . Akkadian terms were used in the Akkadian Empire, Assyria, and Babylonia. The terms themselves come from lexical profession lists on tablets dating back to the Early Dynastic period. Notes on the cuneiform : by convention Akkadian is italicised, spoken Sumerian is lowercase and cuneiform sign transliteration
11659-406: The sea a long time, and white foam arose from the immortal flesh; with it a girl grew." After Aphrodite was born from the sea-foam, she washed up to shore in the presence of the other gods. Hesiod's account of Aphrodite's birth following Uranus's castration is probably derived from The Song of Kumarbi , an ancient Hittite epic poem in which the god Kumarbi overthrows his father Anu , the god of
11790-466: The sea. In Homer 's Iliad , however, she is the daughter of Zeus and Dione . In his Symposium , Plato asserts that these two origins actually belong to separate entities; Aphrodite Urania (a transcendent "Heavenly" Aphrodite) and Aphrodite Pandemos (Aphrodite common to "all the people"). The epithet Aphrodite Areia (the "Warlike") reveals her contrasting nature in ancient Greek religion . Aphrodite had many other epithets, each emphasizing
11921-417: The sexual requests of visitors to the temple. While there may not be a direct connection between temples and prostitution, many prostitutes and courtesans worshipped Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Prostitutes would use their earnings to pay for dedications and ritualistic celebrations in honour of Aphrodite. Some prostitutes also viewed the action of sexual service and sexual pleasure as an act of devotion to
12052-532: The sky, and bites off his genitals, causing him to become pregnant and give birth to Anu's children, which include Ishtar and her brother Teshub , the Hittite storm god. In the Iliad , Aphrodite is described as the daughter of Zeus and Dione. Dione's name appears to be a feminine cognate to Dios and Dion , which are oblique forms of the name Zeus . Zeus and Dione shared a cult at Dodona in northwestern Greece. In
12183-602: The southwestern slope of the Acropolis with the blood of a sacrificed dove . Next, the altars would be anointed and the cult statues of Aphrodite Pandemos and Peitho would be escorted in a majestic procession to a place where they would be ritually bathed. Aphrodite was also honored in Athens as part of the Arrhephoria festival. The fourth day of every month was sacred to Aphrodite. Pausanias records that, in Sparta, Aphrodite
12314-410: The story with more details. According to the retelling of the story found in the poem Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC – 17/18 AD), Adonis was the son of Myrrha , who was cursed by Aphrodite with insatiable lust for her own father, King Cinyras of Cyprus , after Myrrha's mother bragged that her daughter was more beautiful than the goddess. Driven out after becoming pregnant, Myrrha
12445-641: The story, the boar was either sent by Ares, who was jealous that Aphrodite was spending so much time with Adonis, or by Artemis, who wanted revenge against Aphrodite for having killed her devoted follower Hippolytus . In another version, Apollo in fury changed himself into a boar and killed Adonis because Aphrodite had blinded his son Erymanthus when he stumbled upon Aphrodite naked as she was bathing after intercourse with Adonis. The story also provides an etiology for Aphrodite's associations with certain flowers. Reportedly, as she mourned Adonis's death, she caused anemones to grow wherever his blood fell and declared
12576-824: The temple for adultery. Pyrgi's sacred prostitutes were famous enough to be apparently mentioned in a lost fragment of Lucilius 's works. In northern Africa, the area of influence of the Phoenician colony of Carthage , this service was associated to the city of Sicca , a nearby city that received the name of Sicca Veneria for its temple of Astarte or Tanit (called Venus by Roman authors). Valerius Maximus describes how their women gained gifts by engaging in prostitution with visitors. Phoenicio-Punic settlements in Hispania , like Cancho Roano , Gadir , Castulo and La Quéjola, have suggested this practice through their archaeology and iconography. In particular, Cancho Roano features
12707-452: The temple of Cybele . The couple desecrate the temple by having sex in it, leading Cybele to turn them into lions as punishment. The myth of Pygmalion is first mentioned by the third-century BC Greek writer Philostephanus of Cyrene , but is first recounted in detail in Ovid's Metamorphoses . According to Ovid, Pygmalion was an exceedingly handsome sculptor from the island of Cyprus, who
12838-401: The temple of Aphrodite. They would often burn incense in honor of Aphrodite. Chameleon of Heracleia recorded in his book, On Pindar , that whenever the city of Corinth prayed to Aphrodite in manners of great importance, many prostitutes were invited to participate in the prayers and petitions. The girls involved in temple prostitution were typically slaves owned by the temple. However, some of
12969-458: The temple of the fertility goddess Ishtar every year on the tenth day of the New Year festival Akitu . However, no certain evidence has survived to prove that sexual intercourse was included, despite many popular descriptions of the habit. It is possible that these unions never occurred but were embellishments to the image of the king; hymns which praise Ancient Near Eastern kings for coupling with
13100-431: The temple under the patronage of fertility deities , not as an act of religious worship by itself. Sacred prostitution has many different characteristics depending on the region, class and the religious ideals of the period and the place, and consequently can have many different definitions. One definition that was developed was due to the common types of sacred prostitution that are recorded in Classical sources: sale of
13231-519: The third century BC when the cult of Venus Erycina was introduced to Rome from the Greek sanctuary of Aphrodite on Mount Eryx in Sicily. After this point, Romans adopted Aphrodite's iconography and myths and applied them to Venus. Because Aphrodite was the mother of the Trojan hero Aeneas in Greek mythology and Roman tradition claimed Aeneas as the founder of Rome, Venus became venerated as Venus Genetrix ,
13362-690: The time of the Trojan War , he is married to Charis / Aglaea , one of the Graces , apparently divorced from Aphrodite. 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 . The poets Pindar and Aeschylus refer to Ares as Aphrodite's husband. Later stories were invented to explain Aphrodite's marriage to Hephaestus. In
13493-431: The title Aphrodisium . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aphrodisium&oldid=1254070960 " Categories : Disambiguation pages Place name disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Articles containing Ancient Greek (to 1453)-language text Short description
13624-590: The tradition continues in certain regions of India, particularly the states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh . During the Kamakura period , many shrines and temples, which provided for miko , fell into bankruptcy. Some miko started travelling in search of livelihood and came to be known as aruki miko (歩き巫女 lit. walking shrine-maiden). While aruki miko primarily provided religious services, they were also widely associated with prostitution. However, no religious reasons for miko prostitution are known, and hence
13755-570: The uncomely have long to wait because they cannot fulfil the law; for some of them remain for three years, or four. There is a custom like this in some parts of Cyprus. The British anthropologist James Frazer accumulated citations to prove this in a chapter of his magnum opus The Golden Bough (1890–1915), and this has served as a starting point for several generations of scholars. Frazer and Henriques distinguished two major forms of sacred sexual rites: temporary rite of unwed girls (with variants such as dowry-sexual rite, or as public defloration of
13886-556: The version of her birth recounted by Hesiod in his Theogony , Cronus severed Uranus' genitals and threw them behind him into the sea. The foam from his genitals gave rise to Aphrodite (hence her name, which Hesiod interprets as "foam-arisen"), while the Giants , the Erinyes (furies), and the Meliae emerged from the drops of his blood. Hesiod states that the genitals "were carried over
14017-456: The waters after Cronus defeats Uranus as a mytheme would then be directly cognate to the Rigvedic myth of Indra defeating Vrtra , liberating Ushas . Another key similarity between Aphrodite and the Indo-European dawn goddess is her close kinship to the Greek sky deity, since both of the main claimants to her paternity (Zeus and Uranus) are sky deities. Aphrodite's most common cultic epithet
14148-609: The word kedeshah literally means set apart (in feminine form), from the Semitic root Q-D-Sh (קדש) meaning holy , consecrated or set apart . Nevertheless, zonah and qedeshah are not interchangeable terms: the former occurs 93 times in the Bible, whereas the latter is only used in three places, conveying different connotations. This double meaning has led to the belief that kedeshah were not ordinary prostitutes, but sacred harlots who worked out of fertility temples. However,
14279-416: The word can mean such disparate concepts as sacred and prostitute . As put by DeGrado, "neither the interpretation of the קדשה as a 'priestess-not-prostitute' (according to Westenholz) nor as a 'prostitute-not-priestess' (according to Gruber) adequately represents the semantic range of Hebrew word in biblical and post-biblical Hebrew." Male prostitutes were called kadesh or qadesh (literally: male who
14410-651: The year with Aphrodite, one third with Persephone, and one third with whomever he chose. Adonis chose to spend that time with Aphrodite. Then, one day, while Adonis was hunting, he was wounded by a wild boar and bled to death in Aphrodite's arms. 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. In different versions of
14541-585: Was Ourania , meaning "heavenly", but this epithet almost never occurs in literary texts, indicating a purely cultic significance. Another common name for Aphrodite was Pandemos ("For All the Folk"). In her role as Aphrodite Pandemos, Aphrodite was associated with Peithō ( Πείθω ), meaning "persuasion", and could be prayed to for aid in seduction. The character of Pausanias in Plato 's Symposium , takes differing cult-practices associated with different epithets of
14672-567: Was Cyprus , whose main temples were located in Paphos , Amathus and Kition . The epigraphy of the Kition temple describes personal economic activity on the temple, as sacred prostitution would have been taxed as any other occupation, and names possible practitioners as grm (male) and lmt (female). The Hebrew Bible uses two different words for prostitute, zonah (זונה) and kedeshah (or qedesha ) (קדשה). The word zonah simply meant an ordinary prostitute or loose woman . But
14803-642: Was Polyphonte's grandfather) and Hermes (who was originally dispatched by Zeus to kill them) transformed all Polyphonte, Agrius, and Oreius into birds of ill omen while the servant who begged for mercy was transformed into a woodpecker. According to Apollodorus , a jealous Aphrodite cursed Eos , the goddess of dawn, to be perpetually in love and have insatiable sexual desire because Eos once had lain with Aphrodite's sweetheart Ares. Sacred prostitution Sacred prostitution , temple prostitution , cult prostitution , and religious prostitution are purported rites consisting of paid intercourse performed in
14934-549: Was a connection with ritual prostitution within temples of Aphrodite. There is a report that was found of an epigram of Simonides commemorating the prayer of the prostitutes of Corinth on behalf of the salvation of the Greeks from the invading Achaemenid Empire in the Greco-Persian Wars of the early fifth century BCE. Both temple prostitutes and priestesses prayed to Aphrodite for help, and were honoured for their potent prayers, which Greek citizens believed contributed to
15065-506: Was a place of pilgrimage in the ancient world for centuries. Other versions of her myth have her born near the island of Cythera , hence another of her names, "Cytherea". Cythera 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 . According to
15196-470: Was also referred to as "the House of the Ladies" by the excavator of the building. Some believe that the architecture of this building seemed to reflect the grooming needs of women, but could also have been a brothel for high status individuals. The structure of the interior of the building seemed to suggest that the building was used for prostitution. Large clay vats typically used for bathing were found within
15327-563: Was also the patron goddess of prostitutes , an association which led early scholars to propose the concept of " sacred prostitution " in Greco-Roman culture, an idea which is now generally seen as erroneous. A major goddess in the Greek pantheon, Aphrodite featured prominently in ancient Greek literature . 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
15458-449: Was changed into a myrrh tree, but still gave birth to Adonis. Aphrodite found the baby and took him to the underworld to be fostered by Persephone . She returned for him once he was grown and discovered him to be strikingly handsome. Persephone wanted to keep Adonis, resulting in a custody battle between the two goddesses over whom should rightly possess Adonis. Zeus settled the dispute by decreeing that Adonis would spend one third of
15589-470: Was claimed as a divine guardian by many political magistrates. Appearances of Aphrodite in Greek literature also vastly proliferated, usually showing Aphrodite in a characteristically Roman manner. Aphrodite is usually said to have been born near her chief center of worship, Paphos , on the island of Cyprus , which is why she is sometimes called "Cyprian", especially in the poetic works of Sappho . The Sanctuary of Aphrodite Paphia , marking her birthplace,
15720-460: Was clearly of Phoenician origin. The significant influence of Near Eastern culture on early Greek religion in general, and on the cult of Aphrodite in particular, is now widely recognized as dating to a period of orientalization during the eighth century BC, when archaic Greece was on the fringes of the Neo-Assyrian Empire . Some early comparative mythologists opposed to the idea of
15851-579: Was horrified to see that the child had a massive, permanently erect penis , a potbelly , and a huge tongue. Aphrodite abandoned the infant to die in the wilderness, but a herdsman found him and raised him, later discovering that Priapus could use his massive penis to aid in the growth of plants. The First Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite ( Hymn 5 ), which was probably composed sometime in the mid-seventh century BC, describes how Zeus once became annoyed with Aphrodite for causing deities to fall in love with mortals, so he caused her to fall in love with Anchises ,
15982-457: Was killed by a wild boar . Along with Athena and Hera , Aphrodite was one of the three goddesses whose feud resulted in the beginning of the Trojan War and plays a major role throughout the Iliad . Aphrodite has been featured in Western art as a symbol of female beauty and has appeared in numerous works of Western literature . She is a major deity in modern Neopagan religions , including
16113-712: Was known as Ourania (Οὐρανία), which means "heavenly", a title corresponding to Inanna's role as the Queen of Heaven . Early artistic and literary portrayals of Aphrodite are extremely similar on Inanna-Ishtar. Like Inanna-Ishtar, Aphrodite was also a warrior goddess; the second-century AD Greek geographer Pausanias records that, in Sparta, Aphrodite was worshipped as Aphrodite Areia , which means "warlike". He also mentions that Aphrodite's most ancient cult statues in Sparta and on Cythera showed her bearing arms. Modern scholars note that Aphrodite's warrior-goddess aspects appear in
16244-407: Was largely derived from that of the Phoenician goddess Astarte , a cognate of the East Semitic goddess Ishtar , whose cult was based on the Sumerian cult of Inanna . Aphrodite's main cult centers were Cythera , Cyprus , Corinth , and Athens . Her main festival was the Aphrodisia , which was celebrated annually in midsummer. In Laconia , Aphrodite was worshipped as a warrior goddess. She
16375-461: Was married to Hephaestus , the god of fire, blacksmiths and metalworking. Aphrodite was frequently unfaithful to him and had many lovers; in the Odyssey , she is caught in the act of adultery with Ares , the god of war. In the First Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite , she seduces the mortal shepherd Anchises . Aphrodite was also the surrogate mother and lover of the mortal shepherd Adonis , who
16506-589: Was renowned throughout the ancient world for its many hetairai , who had a widespread reputation for being among the most skilled, but also the most expensive, prostitutes in the Greek world. Corinth also had a major temple to Aphrodite located on the Acrocorinth and was one of the main centers of her cult. Records of numerous dedications to Aphrodite made by successful courtesans have survived in poems and in pottery inscriptions. References to Aphrodite in association with prostitution are found in Corinth as well as on
16637-778: Was so sickened by the immorality of women that he refused to marry. He fell madly and passionately in love with the ivory cult statue he was carving of Aphrodite and longed to marry it. Because Pygmalion was extremely pious and devoted to Aphrodite, the goddess brought the statue to life. Pygmalion married the girl the statue became and they had a son named Paphos, after whom the capital of Cyprus received its name. Pseudo-Apollodorus later mentions "Metharme, daughter of Pygmalion, king of Cyprus". Aphrodite generously rewarded those who honored her, but also punished those who disrespected her, often quite brutally. A myth described in Apollonius of Rhodes's Argonautica and later summarized in
16768-776: Was sometimes called Eleemon ("the merciful"). In Athens, she was known as Aphrodite en kēpois (" Aphrodite of the Gardens "). At Cape Colias, a town along the Attic coast, she was venerated as Genetyllis "Mother". The Spartans worshipped her as Potnia "Mistress", Enoplios "Armed", Morpho "Shapely", Ambologera "She who Postpones Old Age". Across the Greek world, she was known under epithets such as Melainis in Corinth "Black or Dark One", Skotia "Dark One", Androphonos "Killer of Men", Anosia "Unholy", and Tymborychos "Gravedigger", all of which indicate her darker, more violent nature. A male version of Aphrodite known as Aphroditus
16899-506: Was usually considered to be Aphrodite's son by Dionysus , but he was sometimes also described as her son by Hermes, Adonis, or even Zeus. A scholion on Apollonius of Rhodes 's Argonautica 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. In another version, Hera cursed Aphrodite's unborn son because he had been fathered by Zeus. When Aphrodite gave birth, she
17030-684: Was worshipped as Aphrodite Areia , which means "warlike". This epithet stresses Aphrodite's connections to Ares, with whom she had extramarital relations. Pausanias also records that, in Sparta and on Cythera, a number of extremely ancient cult statues of Aphrodite portrayed her bearing arms. Other cult statues showed her bound in chains. Aphrodite was the patron goddess of prostitutes of all varieties, ranging from pornai (cheap street prostitutes typically owned as slaves by wealthy pimps ) to hetairai (expensive, well-educated hired companions, who were usually self-employed and sometimes provided sex to their customers). The city of Corinth
17161-480: Was worshipped in the city of Amathus on Cyprus. Aphroditus was depicted with the figure and dress of a woman, but had a beard , and was shown lifting his dress to reveal an erect phallus . This gesture was believed to be an apotropaic symbol , and was thought to convey good fortune upon the viewer. Eventually, the popularity of Aphroditus waned as the mainstream, fully feminine version of Aphrodite became more popular, but traces of his cult are preserved in
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