Genesis 12, 20 and 26 tell the same story in different situations, the first two focussing on Sara, the wife of Abraham, and the last on Rebekah. The Holy Ghost has a short memory or has a poor imagination, being so short of plots.

Aphrodite—Venus

Aphrodite—Venus

Aphrodite, in contrast to the local invention, Athena, is an outsider in Olympus. She belongs, as her titles tell, to the southern and eastern islands of the Greek archipelago. Living in islands her way was ever on the sea. She is Cythereia, she of Cythêra, and Cypria, she of Cyprus, where at Paphos she had her great sanctuary.

Love comes at his hour, comes with the flowers in spring, leaving the land of his birth, Kypros, beautiful isle. Love comes scattering seed for man upon earth.
Theognis

Aphrodite is constantly attended by the Horæ, the seasons, and she, like Hera, is herself a seasonal goddess. She is not virginal in the conventional sense, but she is a korê, a maiden, in her eternal youth and radiance. Perhaps the best title for her is Nymphê, Bride. The ancients saw that virginity was not a virtue to be lost once and for all, but a grace to be annually renewed in the spring. Aphrodite is a bride of the pre-patriarchal order, she is not a wife, she can never tolerate permanent patriarchal wedlock. Her will is turned toward love rather than marriage. When she was admitted to the patriarchal Olympus, a foolish and futile attempt was made to marry her off to the craftsman, Hephaistos. Hephaistos in Homer is always contemptible, but it shows the Achaians had conquered asfar as the volcanic island of Lemnos, whose craftsman god they incorporated. As bride of Hephaistos, Aphrodite is also called Charis, Grace—physical charm and beauty incarnate.

In the Iliad, she has only a single prowess, that of one human passion—lusty love. The Homeric Hymn gives her a greater importance. When she was seeking the shepherd Anchises:

To many fountained Ida she came, mother of wild beasts, and made straight for the steading through the mountain, while behind her came fawning the beasts, grey wolves and lions fiery eyed and bears and swift pards, insatiate pursuers of the roe deer. Glad was she at the sight of them and sent desire into their breasts, and they went coupling two by two in the shadowy dells.

She is not merely the goddess of human sexual coupling, but is the earth mother giving all things on the wide earth the impulse of life. She is Lady, too, of the upper air, the sea and land. On a vase painting in the British Museum, she is seated sedately on a swan winging through the air. She is the Venus Genetrix of the Roman Epicurean poet and philosopher, Lucretius.

Three of the local Pelasgian Korai, or Maidens, who became goddesses in Olympus, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite appear together in a myth, the Judgment of Paris. At the wedding of Peleus the gods and goddesses assembled, and Eris, goddess of Strife, threw among them a golden apple inscribed, “Let the fair one take it”. The three goddesses, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, snatched at the apple in their rivalry, and straightway went to Paris, Priam’s son, the young shepherd prince for judgment.

Harrison noticed that three out of four illustrations of the Judgement of Paris on Greek vases had no judge, no Paris. Moreover, not one had a golden apple. In the fifth and sixth centuries BC, to which these vases belong, the apple was unknown, and the figure of Paris incidental. Commonly, the vases showed the three goddesses walking in procession behind Hermes, in one case coverd by one cloak shared among all three. Other vases barely differentiate them. It seems the three goddesses are the three Graces or Charities, bearing gifts, dominion, wisdom, love, the sêmeia or tokens of the goddesses who bring them. Any young man has to make this choice when chosing a wife.

Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.

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