Aphrodite, Goddess of Love ♥

For a school project in the fifth grade my class put on a play about Greek mythology, and who else to act out Aphrodite but myself. Immediately I was excited mostly for the fact that I knew she was the Goddess of Love. However, that’s all I ever knew until I did some research of my own, and found out more then I could imagine. Aphrodite was not only the goddess of love but also “sex, pleasure and beauty” (Pirenne-Delforge). Coincidently her name, Aphrodite, has a meaning of “seduction and deception” (Pirenne-Delforge). According to Ancient Greek culture there are two beliefs from where Aphrodite came from. One claimed that she was “born from the severed genitals of the Sky god, Uranus”, while the other one stated she was the daughter of Zeus and Dione (Pirenne-Delforge). The meaning of her name really played into character because she had amazing beliefs such as love and marriage as one, but she believed in love so much as to let Gods fall in love with mortals, which was unacceptable (Pirenne-Delforge). Aphrodite herself also fell in love, but with a mortal, Anchises and had a child, Aeneas (Pirenne-Delforge). Aphrodite has been such an influential character not only to literature but art as well. With the now very well know sculpture inspired by Aphrodite “Aphrodite of Cnidus” it has “set the style for female nudity” (The Hellenistic Period). Being the Goddess of love was not always an easy task, but as we all know love makes us do crazy things!



♥ SOURCES ♥


Pirenne-Delforge, Vinciane. "Aphrodite." Encyclopedia of Religion. Ed. Lindsay Jones. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. 407-409. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 1 July 2010.


"The Hellenistic Period." Arts and Humanities Through the Eras. Ed. Edward Bleiberg. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 2005. 420-425. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 1 July 2010.



♥ PICTURE CITATION ♥


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