Aphrodite
The Greek goddess of love and desire, whom Hesiod has rising from the foam of the sea. Greek artists showed her with her son Eros beside her; the scallop shell she stands on and her doves are best known from Roman poets, a fresco at Pompeii and Botticelli.
Meaning
Aphrodite (af-ruh-DY-tee, as Dictionary.com respells it) is the goddess who, in the Homeric Hymn sung in her honour, “stirs up sweet passion in the gods and subdues the tribes of mortal men”; only Athena, Artemis and Hestia are beyond her power. The Romans identified her with Venus. In Greek art she is recognised less by one object than by the company she keeps. On the east frieze of the Parthenon she sits beside Artemis, and little Eros leans on her knees holding a parasol to keep the sun off her skin; his figure is lost and is known from a plaster cast made in 1787 for the comte de Choiseul-Gouffier, the Acropolis Museum says. The Metropolitan Museum of Art notes that pictures of Aphrodite with the baby Eros, her son by Ares in Greek myth, became popular in the Hellenistic period as never before. Pausanias saw a seated gold-and-ivory image of her at Sicyon wearing a polos, a tall crown, and holding a poppy in one hand and an apple in the other. Hellenic polytheists, who have revived the worship of the twelve Olympian gods in Greece and the United States, honour her today, Religion News Service reported in 2017.
Origin and history
Two different births are told for her. In Hesiod’s Theogony, Cronos cut off the members of his father Heaven and threw them into the sea; a white foam spread around them, “and in it there grew a maiden”. She drifted first to Cythera and then to Cyprus, where grass grew up beneath her feet as she came ashore. Hesiod explains her names from the story: Aphrodite, the foam-born, because she grew in the foam, Cytherea for Cythera and Cyprogenes for Cyprus. Homer gives her ordinary parents. In the Iliad, wounded in battle, she falls on the knees of Dione, “that was her mother”, while the Odyssey calls her “Aphrodite, daughter of Zeus”. The Parthenon’s east pediment may show the two together: the Acropolis Museum says a reclining pair of goddesses is usually identified as Dione and her daughter Aphrodite, though some scholars see Earth and Sea.
The short sixth Homeric Hymn joins the two ideas: the west wind carries her over the waves “in soft foam” to Cyprus, where the Hours dress her in gold and lead her to the gods. Pausanias saw the same arrival worked in gold on the base of the great statue of Zeus at Olympia, with Eros receiving Aphrodite as she rises from the sea and Persuasion crowning her.
Homer married her to Hephaestus. In the Odyssey the singer Demodocus tells how the smith caught her in bed with Ares in bonds he had forged and called the gods to look, and how she then went to Paphos in Cyprus, “where is her precinct and fragrant altar”, to be bathed by the Graces.
The shell and the doves
Neither the scallop shell nor the dove comes from Hesiod or the Homeric Hymns, which bring her ashore on foam. The shell belongs to Roman and Renaissance pictures. In the House of Venus in the Shell at Pompeii, the back wall of the garden is painted with Venus, protectress of the city, lying in a large shell between two cupids, the Pompeii Archaeological Park says. Botticelli’s Birth of Venus in the Uffizi shows the goddess “born of the sea spray”, standing on a giant scallop shell as she is blown ashore on Cyprus; the gallery says the subject was perhaps suggested by the poet Agnolo Poliziano.
The doves come from Latin poetry too. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the daughters of Anius are changed into “the snow-white doves”, the birds of Venus; Henry Riley’s note to his translation says the dove was consecrated to her. In Apuleius’s Golden Ass, Venus rides to heaven in a chariot that her husband Vulcan made for her, drawn by four white pigeons while sparrows fly round it. Ovid gives her swans as well: elsewhere in the Metamorphoses she harnesses her swans to fly to Cyprus.
Read next
- Next in Greek gods and their symbolsHephaestusThe Greek god of fire and metalwork, the lame smith of the gods. Greek vase painters show him with a hammer and tongs, or riding a donkey back to Mount Olympus with Dionysus.
- In Egyptian gods and their symbolsHathorThe Egyptian goddess of the sky, of women, love, music and drink, first worshipped as a cow. Her symbols are the cow’s horns with the sun disc between them, the sistrum rattle and the menat necklace, and her face with cow’s ears crowns the columns of her temples.
See also
Goddesses of love, Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Athena.
Sources
- Aphrodite (Dictionary.com), Dictionary.com, “Aphrodite” (Random House Unabridged Dictionary and The American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy), Dictionary.com, entry and pronunciation
- Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica (tr. Hugh G. Evelyn-White), Hesiod, Theogony; Shield of Heracles; The Homeric Hymns, translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White (Loeb Classical Library, 1914), Project Gutenberg eBook #348, Project Gutenberg, Theogony, ll. 176–206; Homeric Hymn V, ll. 1–32; Homeric Hymn VI, ll. 1–18
- The Iliad of Homer (tr. Lang, Leaf and Myers), Homer, The Iliad, translated by Andrew Lang, Walter Leaf and Ernest Myers (1883), Project Gutenberg eBook #3059, Project Gutenberg, Book V
- The Odyssey of Homer (tr. Butcher and Lang), Homer, The Odyssey, translated by S. H. Butcher and Andrew Lang (1879), Project Gutenberg eBook #1728, Project Gutenberg, Book VIII
- Parthenon, east frieze, block VI (Acropolis Museum), Acropolis Museum, “Parthenon. East frieze. Block 6 (VI)”, collection entry, Acropolis Museum, description of the block
- Parthenon, east pediment, Dione and Aphrodite (Acropolis Museum), Acropolis Museum, “Parthenon. East pediment. Dione and Aphrodite. Replica”, collection entry, Acropolis Museum, description
- Statuette of Aphrodite and Eros, 12.232.11 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), Terracotta statuette of Aphrodite and Eros, 3rd century BC, accession 12.232.11, catalogue entry, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, catalogue description
- Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.10.5 (tr. W. H. S. Jones), Pausanias, Description of Greece, translated by W. H. S. Jones and H. A. Ormerod (Loeb, 1918), 2.10.5, Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University, Paus. 2.10.5 (the image in the sanctuary of Aphrodite at Sicyon, 2.10.4)
- Pausanias, Description of Greece 5.11.8 (tr. W. H. S. Jones), Pausanias, Description of Greece, translated by W. H. S. Jones and H. A. Ormerod (Loeb, 1918), 5.11.8, Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University, Paus. 5.11.8
- House of Venus in the Shell (Pompeii Archaeological Park), Parco Archeologico di Pompei, “House of Venus in the Shell”, site entry, Parco Archeologico di Pompei, site description
- The Birth of Venus by Botticelli (Uffizi Galleries), Gallerie degli Uffizi, “The Birth of Venus”, Sandro Botticelli, about 1485, collection entry, Gallerie degli Uffizi, artwork description
- The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books VIII–XV (tr. Henry T. Riley), Ovid, Metamorphoses, translated by Henry T. Riley (1851), Project Gutenberg eBook #26073, Project Gutenberg, Book XIII, ll. 623–718 and Riley’s note 60; Book X
- Apuleius, The Golden Asse (tr. William Adlington), Apuleius, The Golden Asse, translated by William Adlington (1566), Project Gutenberg eBook #1666, Project Gutenberg, Book V (the tale of Cupid and Psyches)
- Spiritual seekers reconstruct ancient Greek polytheism (Religion News Service, 7 March 2017), Religion News Service, “Spiritual seekers reconstruct ancient Greek polytheism”, 7 March 2017, Religion News Service, article text
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves or lines.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 8, 2026. How we research
Added .