Aphrodite

Here are the notes I took from one of my classics classes. I will continue to add more information as time allows, this is from Dr. Marchand's teachings.

Ἀφροδίτη

            Goddess of lust, sex, human sexuality and fertility, and everything associated with it.  She is associated with eros, which is not the same as romantic love; it is sexual desire, attraction, and in fact, the effects of eros and of Aphrodite are often described in ancient sources in rather unpleasant terms.  She has two husbands – as fits her personality (sometimes Ares, sometimes Hephaistos, and she is the only goddess who has myths about her infidelity).  Again, of course this is not moralizing or saying that it is occasionally ok for women to be unfaithful (it wasn’t!), but it is simply describing the nature of desire.  She is consistently shown nude, something not appropriate for other goddesses.   In the Iliad, Aphrodite is the child of Zeus and a figure named Dione – Dione is a feminine form of the name Zeus – like “Zeusette” – so this is simply a way of trying to make her part of the extended family of Zeus, but in the Theogony, we get a different version of her, and one which rings truer: there she is an older god even than Zeus, and as such, she is one of the few gods who has some power over Zeus; even Zeus is subject to the force of eros.