The Cult of Aphrodite
Polytheism is not a stable religion. It changes with the growth of civilization, and we do not know a time in which it was not constantly in a state of transition.
The myths which connect Aphrodite in one place with Adonis, in others with Mars, Hephæstos, Anchises and other gods or mortals, were originally several different developments of the same fundamental idea, the love story of the goddess of love. This is quite natural and ought to be expected, but when in the days of a more international communication these myths were told in different shapes in all localities, they in their combination served greatly to undermine the respect for the goddess and to degrade the conception of her even as early as in the time when the Homeric epics were composed. Nevertheless, since the sarcasm remained limited for a long time to the circle of heretics and scoffers, the noble conception of Aphrodite was preserved down to the latest days of paganism.
In other words Venus was originally the mother of mankind. She was at once the Queen of Heaven or Juno, the Magna Mater or Venus Genetrix, the educator and teacher or Pallas Athene, the eternal virgin or Diana, and the all-nourishing earth-goddess, Demeter or Ceres; and this view had better be stated inversely, that the original mother of mankind became differentiated in the course of history into these several activities of womanhood, as Juno, Venus, Diana, Ceres and Athene, which divinities were again reunited in Christianity in the form of Mary, the Queen of Heaven, the Mother of God, the Lady as an authority and guide in life, and the Eternal Virgin.
Aphrodite was worshiped in a prehistoric age, and the origin of her cult is plainly traceable to the Orient, especially to Phenicia and further back to Pamphylia, Syria, Canaan and Babylon. The Phenician Astarte was imported to the islands of the Ægean Sea, to Cythera, Paphos and Amathus. Hence even in the Hellenistic age she was still honored with the names Cytherea, Paphia and Amathusia.
From the Ægean islands the cult of Aphrodite spread rapidly to Sparta, Athens and other Greek centers. The barbaric origin of the Aphrodite cult is in evidence in the myth of Aphrodite’s birth as the foam-born, but it is difficult to say whom we shall deem responsible for the legend—perhaps the inhabitants of the islands. Certainly we cannot lay the burden of the invention of the story upon the Asiatics, at least not on the Syrians, for according to an account of Nigidius Figulus,11 the fish of the Euphrates found a large egg in the floods and pushed it ashore, where it was brooded upon by a dove until the Syrian goddess came forth from it.
An exquisitely graceful relief pictures the birth of Venus from the foam of the ocean. She appears as a young maiden covered with a diaphanous garment, and is being lifted out of the water by the Graces. The marble is preserved in the National Museum at Rome and was discovered by excavations in the grounds of the Villa Ludovisi in 1887.
The Oriental goddess was originally the queen of the starry heaven, either the moon or the morning star, and as such she was the same figure which in other places gave rise to the development of Artemis. We may emphasize here that like the Christian Mary the pagan female divinity was at the same time both the eternal virgin and the celestial mother. Mythology cannot stand the application of logical rationalism, and we must not try to make the traditional legends rigidly consistent.
While we recognize a strong Oriental influence in the Greek construction of the Aphrodite cult, we must acknowledge that in Greece we have a new and independent origin of the divine ideal of femininity. In Mesopotamia Istar was a very popular deity, and innumerable idols have been found in the shape of a naked woman, commonly called
“Beltis” or “Lady,” but this conception of the goddess of femininity cannot be regarded as the prototype of the Greek Aphrodite who at an early period assumed a definitely Greek figure and character. Without detracting from her universal significance as the cosmic principle of generation, the artistic conception of the Greek mind at once idealized her as the incarnation of loveliness and grace, and from Phidias down to the end of paganism she has retained this ideal.
In Cnidos Aphrodite was worshiped in three forms: as gift-giver (δωρῑτις), as goddess of the high places (ἀκραία) and as the lucky sailor (εὔπλοια), and we learn that bloody sacrifices were not permitted (Tac., Hist., II, 3), even on the main altar in Paphos.
Originally, Aphrodite was not only love, grace and beauty, but the mistress, the lady, the queen; and so she is represented in Cythera as fully armed. The same is true in Sparta and in Corinth where her temple was erected on the highest place of the city, called Acrocorinthus.
The sensual features of the Aphrodite cult were certainly not absent in ancient Hellas. We know that in Corinth there were large numbers of hierodules in the temple who helped to make the ceremonies gorgeous and impressive, but judging from the language used by Æschylus and Pindar they were highly respected and received public acknowledgment for their fervent prayers during the Persian wars.
In the early imperial time of Rome, the authority of Venus was promoted by the fact that she was the tutelary deity of Cæsar, who through the similarity of his name “Julius” with “Julus,” the son of Æneas, was encouraged to derive his legendary pedigree from Æneas, the mythical founder of the Latin race, the son of Anchises and Aphrodite.
With the rise of Christianity the worship of Venus naturally deteriorated very rapidly, and the fathers of the church referring to all the different versions of her love affairs maligned her in the eyes of the world by identifying the Venus Urania with the Venus Vulgaris, and their views have contributed a good deal to disfigure her picture in later centuries.
In the times of Cæsar she was still the great goddess whose domain was not limited to beauty and love nor even to the procreation of life, in which capacity she was called Venus Genetrix, but she was also Venus Victrix, or the goddess who in battle assures victory. Yea, more than all this, she was the goddess of life and immortality connected with the chthonian gods—the powers of death in the underworld. Her emblem, the pomegranate, is also found in the hands of Persephone, indicating a kinship between Aphrodite and the daughter of Demeter.
It is not accidental that Aphrodite as the goddess of love and generation is also the queen of the underworld. She begets life, she restores to life; she leads into Hades and back out of Hades into the world of life. It is for this reason that, according to Pausanias (II, 10, 4), her statue in the temple at Sicyon carries the chthonian symbols, the apple and the poppy, in her hands, and there her priestesses were bound by a vow of chastity.
The chthonian aspect of the Aphrodite cult appears in the legend of the death of Adonis with all its details of funeral lamentations and ceremonies and the great hope of his resurrection. Istar herself descends to the underworld, as we shall see further down (see pp. 85-95), and we know at least that in Cyprus a tomb of Aphrodite has been shown. 12