Aphrodite Thesis

Aphrodite was the Olympian goddess of love beauty , pleasure and desire. She’s the daughter of Zeus and Dione , the mother goddess worshipped at the oracles of duodena. Theirs also myths that she was arose from the sea on a giant scallop, after Cronus castrated Uranus and tossed his severed genitals into the sea. Also said that she was born near the island of Cythera.

Apart from her natural beauty she had a magical grille that compelled everyone to desire her.After her birth, Zeus was afraid that the gods would fight over Aphrodite's hand in marriage so he married her off to the smith god Hephaestus the steadiest of the gods. He could hardly believe his good luck and used all his skills to make the most lavish jewels for her. He made her
a girdle of finely wrought gold and wove magic into the filigree work. That was not very wise of him, for when she wore her magic girdle no one could resist her, and she was all too irresistible already. She loved gaiety and glamour and was not at all pleased at being the wife of sooty, hard-working Hephaestus. However she had an affair with her brother Ares , god of war. When Hephaestus found out about the affair he devised a plan and managed to humiliate his wife and her lover to the other Olympians,

She was depicted as a beautiful woman often accompanied by the winged godling Eros(love). Her attributes included a dove , apple , scallop shell and mirror. In classical sculptures and fresco she was usually depicted nude.

When the Trojan prince Paris was asked to judge which of three Olympian goddesses was the most beautiful, he chose Aphrodite over Hera and Athena.
The latter two had hoped to bribe him with power and victory in battle, but Aphrodite offered the love of the most beautiful woman in the world.This was Helen of Sparta, who became infamous as Helen of Troy when Paris subsequently eloped with her. In the ensuing Trojan War, Hera and Athena were implacable enemies of Troy while Aphrodite was loyal to Paris and the Trojans.Aphrodite lived on Mount Olympus with the other supreme deities and was married to the homely craftsman-god, Hephaestus. Aphrodite involved herself on several noteworthy occasions with the affairs of mortal heroes. When Jason asked permission of the king of Colchis to remove the Golden Fleece from the grove in which it hung, the king was clearly unwilling. So the goddess Hera, who sponsored Jason's quest, asked Aphrodite to intervene. The love goddess made the king's daughter Medea fall in love with Jason, and Medea proved instrumental in Jason's
success

Aphrodite loved and was loved by many gods and mortals.
Among her mortal lovers, the most famous was perhaps Adonis Some of her sons are Eros, Anteros Hymenaios and Aeneas (with her Trojan lover Anchises). She is accompanied by the Graces. Of Aphrodite’s mortal lovers, the most important were the Trojan shepherd Anchises by whom she became the mother of Aeneas and the handsome youth Adonis (in origin a Semitic nature deity and the consort of Ishtar-Astarte), who was killed by a boar while hunting and was lamented by women at the festival of Adonia.
Her festival is the Aphrodisiac which was celebrated in various centers of Greece and especially in Athens and Corinth. Her priestesses were not prostitutes but women who represented the goddess and sexual intercourse with them was considered just one of the methods of worship. Aphrodite was originally an old-Asian goddess, similar to the Mesopotamian Ishtar and the Syro-Palestinian goddess Ashtart. Her attributes are a.o. the dolphin, the dove, the swan, the pomegranate and the lime tree.
In Roman mythology Venusis the goddess of love and beauty and cupids love's
messenger.

The cult of Adonis underworld features, and Aphrodite was also connected with the dead at Delphi.Aphrodite’s main centres of worship were at Paphos and Amathus on Cyprus and on the island of Cythera a Minoan colony, where in prehistoric times her cult probably originated. On the Greek mainland, Corinth was the chief centre of her worship. Her close association with Eros, the Graces (Charites), and the Horae (Seasons) emphasized her role as a promoter of fertility. She was honoured by the Roman poet Lucretius as Genetrix, the creative element in the world. Her epithets Urania (Heavenly Dweller) and Pandemos (Of All the People) were ironically taken by the philosopher Plato (in the Symposium) to refer to intellectual and common love; rather, the title Urania was honorific and applied to certain Asian deities, while Pandemos referred to her standing within the city-state.