Aphrodite :: essays research papers

APHRODITE (a-fro-DYE-tee Roman name Venus) was the goddess of love, beauty and fertility. She was also a protectress of sailors. The poet Hesiod state that Aphrodite was born from sea-foam. Homer, on the other hand, said that she was the daughter of Zeus and Dione. When the Trojan prince Paris was asked to judge which of three Olympian goddesses was the most beautiful, he chose Aphrodite oer Hera and genus Athene. 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. IN homing pigeonIn his epic of the Trojan War, Homer tells how Aphrodite intervened in battle to excuse her son Aeneas, a Trojan ally. The Greek hero Diomedes, who had been on the scepter of killing Aeneas, attacked the goddess herself, wounding her on the wrist with his spear and causing the suppuration to flow. (Ichor is what immortals have in the place of blood.) Aphrodite promptly dropped Aeneas, who was rescued by Apollo, some other Olympian sponsor of the Trojans. In pain she sought out her comrade Ares, the god of war who stood nearby admiring the carnage, and borrowed his chariot so that she might disappear up to Olympus. There she goes crying to her mother Dione, who soothes her and cures her wound. Her father Zeus tells her to abjure war to the likes of Ares and Athena, while devoting herself to the business of marriage. Elsewhere in Homers Iliad , Aphrodite saves Paris when he is about to be killed in single combat by Menelaus. The goddess wraps him in a mist and spirits him away, setting him d consume in his own bedroom in Troy. She then appears to Helen in the guise of an elderly handmaid and tells her that Paris is waiting for her. Helen recognizes the godde ss in disguise and asks if she is being led formerly more to ruin. For Aphrodite had bewitched her into leaving her husband Menelaus to run off with Paris. She dares to extract that Aphrodite go to Paris herself. Suddenly furious, the goddess warns Helen not to go too far, lest she be abandoned to the hatred of Greeks and Trojans alike.