AFRODITE. — Greek goddess of love. Various scholars derive her name from the Indo-Germanic languages and see in A. a Thessalian goddess who later spread to Boeotia, Arcadia, and Cyprus, but the proposed etymologies are unconvincing. It is now commonly held, though not universally accepted, that A. is an Eastern divinity and that the name derives from that of Astoret, the Semitic goddess of fertility. According to Herodotus and some modern scholars, A. came from Ascalon to Cyprus, then to Cythera and Greece, whereas others maintain that she had already been received in the Mycenaean period. The oldest representation of A. has been thought to be found on a small gold sheet from Mycenae, bearing a nude female figure with strongly accentuated sexual features and doves. But even if it represents a divinity, it does not follow that the Mycenaeans worshipped her, since the representation is isolated and the sheet served a purely decorative purpose. It is an artistic motif from Asia Minor that does not imply acceptance of the cult.
In Homer A. is a Greek divinity, daughter of Zeus and Dione. For Hesiod she was generated from the sea foam, fertilized by Uranus: that is, he interprets the epithet Urania, frequently applied to A., an epithet in which some have wished to see evidence of a goddess of the sky, while others, more rightly, see evidence of a foreign divinity. It is difficult to determine which of the two genealogies is older; some favor the Hesiodic one, as cruder and less consonant with Greek ideas. The myth places A.’s birth in Cyprus.
The characteristics of A. that we find in Homer remain with her throughout the Greek world. We must, however, distinguish between A. in worship and A. in art. In worship she was less important than the other great Olympian divinities: no city, apart from those of Cyprus, had her as its protectress. In this respect, as in other features of the cult, Cyprus shows Semitic influence. In art, by contrast, A. enjoyed immense diffusion, until she became the favorite and most frequently represented divinity. Artists admired in her beauty, grace, and feminine perfection. Scenes of bathing and dressing are frequent subjects in vase painting and on mirrors, but they had no repercussions in worship, just as the numerous Hellenistic statues did not, in which A. is no longer the goddess but a most beautiful and often somewhat vulgar woman who arouses the imagination and the senses.
In worship A. is the goddess of love, and the Oriental « Great Mother » undoubtedly contributed to this aspect of hers; under her influence A. herself becomes a lover, but her favorites are not Greek and do not emerge in Greek myth. Sacred prostitution is also of Eastern origin; it was rare in Greece but common in the East. In Greece it was practiced at Corinth, where the sanctuary of Aphrodite Urania had as many as 2,000 hierodules, whose earnings went into the temple treasury, and at Paphos, where, however, the cult has Semitic characteristics.
At Rome A. was identified with Venus, and in Etruria with Turan. Attempts have been made to see survivals of the cult of A. in the legend of St. Pelagia, but the evidence adduced is far from exact or convincing.