Aphrodite

Myrrha’s nurse stopped her from taking her own life. Myrrha was the daughter of Cinyras, king of Cyprus. She had refused many suitors because none seemed as noble as her father. Her desire for Cinyras grew stronger, despite her efforts to resist it. Some accounts connect this punishment with an insult to Aphrodite by Myrrha or by her mother. In another account, her mother claimed that Myrrha was more beautiful than Aphrodite, and the goddess took revenge.

The nurse devised a plan to bring Myrrha to Cinyras without revealing her identity. Myrrha entered his bed at night, while he did not know who she was. She came to him on several nights. One account says that the queen was away at a festival of Hera. Another says that the nurse made Cinyras too drunk to understand what he was doing. Myrrha became pregnant.

Cinyras eventually discovered that the woman was his daughter. He seized a sword and pursued her in fury. Myrrha fled from the kingdom. One account says that she travelled for nine months through Arabia to the land of the Sabaeans. When the time came for her to give birth, she called upon the gods. She believed that she was fit to live among neither the living nor the dead, and asked to be changed because she had become a source of pollution.

Her prayer was answered. She became a myrrh tree, whose resinous tears continued to flow as myrrh. With the help of the goddess Lucina, she gave birth to Adonis from her bark. In one account, Aphrodite regretted punishing Myrrha so harshly. In another, she was immediately captivated by Adonis. Aphrodite took the infant to Persephone, queen of the Underworld, for safekeeping. Persephone refused to surrender him after becoming attached to him. Zeus or the Muse Calliope settled the dispute by assigning a third of Adonis’s time to each goddess and a third to himself.

Aphrodite came to Anchises while he was tending cattle on Mount Ida. She had been made to fall in love with him as punishment for causing Zeus to desire mortal women. Disguised as a Phrygian princess, and dressed in a bright red robe, she entered the herdsman’s hut where Anchises slept. She claimed to be the daughter of the Phrygian king Otreus, brought to him as a bride by Hermes. Anchises suspected that she might be immortal, but accepted her story and welcomed her to his bed.

They slept together on a couch covered with bear and lion skins, while bees moved sleepily around them. At dawn, Aphrodite cast off her disguise and revealed her divine form. Anchises turned away in fear when he saw her. He understood that he had shared a bed with a goddess and begged her to spare his life. Aphrodite assured him that he had nothing to fear. She told him that she was pregnant and that their son would be called Aeneas.

Aphrodite said that Aeneas would be raised by mountain nymphs until she delivered him to Anchises. He would become a king and would be brought to Troy. Anchises, however, must never reveal that Aphrodite was his mother. In another account, he promised to keep their union secret. The warning concerned the danger of boasting about sex with a goddess.

Hyginus records that Anchises later broke this promise while drunk. Zeus then struck him dead with a thunderbolt. The better-known account in Virgil’s Aeneid gives a different ending. When Troy fell to the Greeks and the city burned, Aeneas persuaded his aged father to leave. Anchises carried the household gods, while Aeneas carried him on his shoulders, led his son by the hand, and was followed by his wife, Creusa.

When Cronus wounded Uranus, the blood from the wound mingled with the foam of the sea. The waters took on a rosy colour, and Aphrodite rose from their depths. She stood in a beautiful sea-shell, shaking her long fair tresses. Drops of water fell from her hair into the shell and became shining pearls.

Soft breezes carried her across the sea to Cythera. From there, she was taken to Cyprus, though another account has the west wind bearing her directly to that island. She came ashore lightly. Wherever her foot touched the dry sand, grass and flowers sprang up. The rigid ground became a green meadow, filled with colour and sweet scents, and the island was clothed in fresh growth.

Aphrodite then went to Paphos, in Cyprus. The Seasons, daughters of Themis, hastened to meet her. They clothed her in immortal raiment and adorned her. They welcomed her and escorted her to the gods. From that time, Cyprus and Cythera were sacred to Aphrodite, who was also called the Cyprian and Cytherea. Paphos became the principal seat of her worship.

At the wedding feast of Peleus and Thetis, Eris threw a golden apple at the feet of Hera, Athena and Aphrodite. It bore the words, “For the Fairest”. Eris had not been invited to the feast, and the goddesses quarrelled over the prize. They asked Zeus to judge them, but he refused. He sent them to Mount Ida, near Troy, where the Trojan prince Paris was tending his father’s sheep.

Paris, also called Alexander, had been sent away by his father Priam, king of Troy. Priam had been warned that the child would one day bring ruin to Troy. Though a prince, Paris lived as a shepherd. At the time, he was also living with the nymph Oenone. The sudden appearance of the goddesses astonished him. He had to decide which one deserved the apple.

Each goddess offered him a reward. Hera promised wide rule, wealth and the richest land on earth. Athena offered wisdom, fame as the wisest man and success in war. Aphrodite promised him the most beautiful woman in the world. Paris chose Aphrodite. She had offered him Helen, the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta. Aphrodite received the apple from Hera and Athena.

Paris then sailed to Sparta to claim his prize. In some accounts, Helen left with him for Troy. In others, she did not go willingly. Menelaus and his brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, gathered a fleet of a thousand ships and the finest warriors in Greece. They sailed to Troy and fought there over Helen for ten years.

Typhon attacked Olympus, hissing and shouting as he hurled flaming rocks and sent a great jet of fire from his mouth. The gods were seized by alarm and fled. Many changed themselves into animals before escaping to Egypt. Aphrodite and her son Eros went towards Syria and reached the river Euphrates.

Typhon suddenly appeared there. Aphrodite and Eros threw themselves into the Euphrates to escape him. In the river, they changed their forms into fish. They hid beneath the water and so avoided the danger posed by Typhon. Aphrodite took the form of a fish, and Eros changed as well.

The flight formed part of the wider attack on the gods. Apollo became a crow, Dionysus a goat, Hera a white cow, Artemis a cat, Ares a boar, and Hermes an ibis. Zeus alone among the gods confronted Typhon in some accounts, while Athena remained and urged Zeus to recover his courage in another. Zeus then struck Typhon with a thunderbolt, and in one account followed it with an adamantine sickle. Aphrodite and Eros, however, escaped by taking the forms of fish in the Euphrates.

The Argo passed the Sirens’ island, Anthemousa. Orpheus stood on the poop and played his lyre, raising a song against their voices. The Sirens sang from the shore beneath a red rock, and their music reached the Argonauts despite Orpheus’ effort. The gulls, seals, fish, wind, and clouds seemed to pause and listen. Their song overcame Butes, who leapt from the Argo and swam towards them.

Aphrodite saw him from the highest peak of Ida. She pitied his youth and beauty, left her golden throne, and flew to the Sirens’ island. She took Butes from the sea before he drowned. One account says that she carried him away and settled him at Lilybaeum. Another says that she lifted him while he slept, wrapped him in golden mist, and bore him to the peak of Lilybaeum. There she became his lover, and he slept for many years.

The Sirens saw that their prey had been taken from them. In one account, they continued their part in the journey’s dangers only as the singers whose call had drawn Butes from the ship. In another, they shrieked with envy and rage, leapt from the shore, and became rocks. The Argo then continued towards the straits by Lilybaeum and Sicily. Charybdis waited there, and Scylla guarded the passage beyond it. The ship survived these dangers with further help from the gods and reached the land of the Phaeacians, ruled by Alcinoos.