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The Goddess of Love

© Linda Casselman

Last time, in honour of Valentine's Day, the day for lovers, we began a look at the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite, and her Roman counterpart Venus.

We looked into the myth of her birth, which inspired Botticelli's famous painting of 1485-86, "The Birth of Venus". And we saw that this passionate and lively goddess had numerous love affairs, much to the chagrin of her crippled husband, the smith god Hephaistos. This time, let's look a little closer at two more of her famous lovers from mythology: the handsome young god Adonis and the mortal Anchises, father of Aeneas.

Realizing Aphrodite's volatile nature and to punish her for her wild behaviour, chief Olympian god Zeus made her fall in love with the mortal Trojan Anchises.

Her Roman counterpart, Venus, in this myth actually was attracted to Anchises of her own will. Together they conceived the hero of Virgil's epic poem the Aeneid, Aeneas the leader of the Trojans. Venus warned Anchises no to divulge that she, a goddess, was Aeneas' mother, but Anchises did not keep the secret, thus condemning himself to physical disability.

Aphrodite, in the Greek version, actually played a part in causing the legendary Trojan War. In a beauty contest with Athena and Hera judged by the Trojan Prince Paris, Aphrodite promised Paris the most beautiful mortal woman in the world, Helen, as his bride in order to ensure her place as the winner. The only problem was that Helen was already the wife of Menelaus, King of Sparta. And so the war was on to get her back.

Of Aphrodite's many lovers, her greatest love was probably the beautiful young sun god Adonis. Killed tragically by a wild boar, the handsome Adonis captured the hearts of both Aphrodite and Persephone, the queen of the underworld. Both goddesses fought bitterly over who would have the young god, so again Zeus stepped in to end the quarrel. He decreed that Adonis would spend one third of the year with himself, another third with Aphrodite, and the other third of the year with Persephone in the underworld. And so Adonis became a Greek version of the dying-and-rising god.

Aphrodite, goddess of love, beauty, and fertility is a passionate and often wild or unruly deity, characteristics that reflect the nature of love itself. Love is a natural instinct that is not easily controlled, much like the goddess herself.

So when you feel love sneaking up on you, let it; let it happen and feel the goddess smiling down upon you.

The copyright of the article The Goddess of Love in Mythology is owned by Wayne Kreger. Permission to republish The Goddess of Love in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.