Aphrodite .
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Aphrodite .
Notes
At first, the Greeks had some sort of goddess of love and sex and procreation like
Aphrodite. At some later point, during a period of cultural influence from Phoenicia,
the Greeks acquired a Phoenician love goddess. Both of these goddesses wound up
being called Aphrodite
By the time the Greeks started writing things down. But because of her dual origin,
two wildly different and irreconcilable stories of her birth were told by Homer and
Hesiod. Homer says Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus and Dione. Hesiod says
Aphrodite was born from the blood dripping onto the sea from the severed phallus of
Uranus.
All of the important gods and goddesses can be worshipped under different titles, or
epithets, representing different aspects of their characters. So, Aphrodite could be
worshipped as Aphrodite Urania or Aphrodite Pandemos (or under any of several other
titles).
Because Aphrodite was one of the Olympians, and because Homer and Hesiod were
the two basic sources for mythological genealogy, the existence of two distinct
pedigrees for Aphrodite created a problem. The notion that there were two Aphrodites
was a solution.
The first author to say in an extant work that there were two Aphrodites was Plato, in
the Symposium (composed ca. 385 B.C., give or take a decade).
Sources
Less plausibly, some say the relationships are
Children by Adonis
Beroe
The most plausible relationships are
Parents
Zeus . ()
Dione . ()
Siblings
Aphrodite . ()
Marriage To Hephaestus . ()
m.
Notes
Parents
without father . ()
Hera . ()
Marriage To Anchises . ()
r.
Notes
Parents
Capys . ()
Themiste . ()
Children by Anchises .
Lyrus . ()
Aeneas . ()
Hippodameia . ()
Marriage To Ares . ()
r.
Notes
Parents
Zeus . ()
Hera . ()
Children by Ares .
Deimos . ()
Phobos . ()
Harmonia . ()
Marriage To Hermes . ()
r.
Notes
Parents
Zeus . ()
Maia . ()
Children by Hermes .
Hermaphroditus . ()
Marriage To unknown . ()
r.
Notes
Children by unknown .
Priapus . ()
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