Aphrodite in Hesiods Theogony

1
Aphrodite in Hesiods Theogony

• More NATURE (GAIA) than CULTURE (Demeter)
• Aphrodite in Homer
• - Daughter of Zeus and Dione (feminine formation
  of Zeus - sky god)
• - One of the Olympians
• - Power here is more tame

2
Map of Eastern Mediterranean World
3
Paphos Aphrodites chief cultic center on Cyprus
is named after the child of PYGMALION (sculptor)
and GALATEA (statue)
4

• The power of eros turns
• cold ivory into living flesh

5
However the power of Aphrodite/eros can go too
farthe granddaughter of Paphos, MYRRHA, falls
in love with her own father, Cinyras (king of
Cyprus) and is turned into a myrrh tree to escape
his revenge.
6
The positive and creative eros of Pygmalion turns
into the negative and destructive eros in his
great granddaughter, Myrrha and her son, Adonis

• Myrrha falls in love with her father, Cinyras
• Adonis a precocious lover, seduces both Olympian
  Aphrodite and the queen of the Underworld,
  Persephone

7
Adonis dies driven through by a boar, and fails
the test of manhood (he gets killed in the hunt).
The precocious lover, born from the hot,
aphrodisiac myrrh tree, will die in the cold and
wet lettuce (which induces frigidity).
8
Adonis

• ORIGINS DEATH
• Myrrh/hot spice (seduction) Lettuce/cold wet
  plant (sterility)
• Product of Incest (father/daughter) Love of
  goddess of Love Fatal
• Loved by Aphrodite (goddess of seduction,
  procreation) Persephone (goddess of the World of
  the Dead)
• Characterized by Precocious Sexual
  Potency Precocious Sexual Impotence

9

• Athena one of the three virgin goddesses

10
Artemis (Diana) patron goddess of young
(marriageable) girls
11
Hestia Hearth symbol of the home

• The hearth is the center of the oikos
• Just as the hearth cannot move so Hestia (she
  cannot follow a potential husband and leave her
  place at the center of the house)
• Hestia symbolizes the integrity of the home and,
  like all virgins , she will stay in her parents
  place.

12
Venus and AnchisesSir William Blake Richmond
13
Ganymede son of Tros (founder of Troy) abducted
by Zeus to be his lover
14

• The forever youthful goddess of Dawn, Eos,
• and her immortal, yet forever aging lover,
• Tithonus