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From Greek and Roman Mythology & Heroic Legend, by Professor H. Steuding, Translated from the German and Edited by Lionel D. Barnett. The Temple Primers, London: J. M. Dent; 1901; pp. 61-64.

[61]

Greek Religion from the Beginning of the Homeric Age :

I.  Ares and Aphrodite.   § 105.  Ares (compare ἃρείων, ἄριστος, ἀρετή) was originally the chief god of Thracian tribes that had forced their way into Thessaly, Boiotia, and Phokis, and was probably also like Hades a death-god dwelling in the depths of the earth. In his native land human sacrifices were offered to him. As befitted the character of his worshippers, he developed into the furious god of war, and in this quality alone he was allowed entrance into Greece. From his ancient by-name of Enyalios, which seemingly is connected with the wild cry of battle, arose his attendant the murderous war-goddess Enyo (Latin Bellona), and later were associated with him in the same way Deimos and Phobos, Eris the goddess of strife (Latin Discordia), and the Keres, the bringers of death in battle, figured as black women in bloody garb, who are strictly to be regarded as themselves souls of the dead. He represents however merely the power of war’s brute violence, and hence must give way before Athena and her favourites.

§ 106.  In Greece Ares is reckoned the son of Zeus and Hera; and in Thebes, the most important seat of his worship, his wife is Aphrodite. The latter’s place however was earlier held by the Erinys Tilphossa, a death-goddess and well-spirit, by whom Ares begot the dragon (his own image) that dwelt in a cavern by a spring near the historic city. Later epos, probably taking the Lemnian point of view, connects Aphrodite with Hephaistos as his wife and makes Ares her paramour. Her place was occupied by the nymph Aglauros in Athens, where he was worshipped on the Areios Pagos or ‘Hill of Ares’ as presiding over manslayers’ atonement and trial for bloodshed.

Art figures Ares as a man of youthful strength, in older times bearded and fully armed, later beardless and wearing only a helmet and chlamys. His symbol is the spear, in ritual the torch, which probably indicates the devastation wrought by war.

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§ 107.  Aphrodite in Greece is especially the goddess of love and of the beauty that provokes love. When in Homer she is scorned by her sister Athena for her unwarlike nature, Zeus himself gently smiling takes her under his protection with the words — “Not unto thee, my daughter, are given the works of war; rather do thou pursue the pleasant works of wedlock.” (Il. v. 428. f.). Hence Eros, the incarnate yearning of love, is regarded as her constant attendant, and, in the later conception, as her actual son. In her train are Peitho or Persuasion and the Charites, to whom she stands very near in other respects also, for in the Iliad Charis is the wife of Hephaistos, while in the Odyssey Aphrodite herself holds this place. Her parents are Zeus and Dione, in the same way as the embodiment of youthful bloom, Hebe, is daughter of Zeus and Hera. In Thebes she is associated with Ares the god of war and death, with whom she is connected in Homer also. Harmonia (‘Union’), who is closely allied to Aphrodite herself viewed as Pandemos (the love ‘bringing the people together’), and the war-god’s attendants Deimos or Terror and Phobos of Flight, are accounted her children.

§ 108.  These associations, based as they are on speculation, as well as her substitution for other goddesses, indicate that Aphrodite’s home is not Greece. As already in Homer she is termed ‘the Cyprian’ (Kypris), and her apparently oldest places of worship, Amathus and Idalion, lie in Cyprus, we should probably look for her true home on this island. From here her worship may have come to Kythera (Cerigo) and Sparta, as also to Corinth, Elis, Athens, and on the other side to Mount Eryx in Sicily. In Cyprus again she is probably but a local form of the Assyrian-Phoenician goddess of fruitfulness, Istar or Astarte, to whom she bears a peculiar likeness in her relations with the Semitic Adonis (‘Lord’) worshipped chiefly in the Syrian Byblos and in Cyprus itself. The latter was conceived as a beautiful youth beloved of Aphrodite, who in midsummer is wounded during the chase by a boar (the sun), speedily perishes, and then is doomed to 63 abide until the spring in the nether world, with Persephone who thus appears as his Greek counterpart.

§ 109.  To Cyprus also belongs originally the legend of Aphroditos or Hermaphroditos, a god of double sex, akin to Aphrodite herself, and representing nature’s powers of luxuriant increase; properly he seems to have borne the latter name only because he was represented as a rule in the shape of a hermes (§ 83). Through a mistaken interpretation of this name he was afterwards made into a son of Hermes and Aphrodite (compare Priapos, § 117). Similarly Aphrodite’s connection with Anchises the king of Dardanos in the Troad, to whom she comes on Mount Ida and bears Aineias, is probably of Oriental origin. Anchises again is perhaps akin to the comely Paris the son of Priamos, who awards to her the prize of beauty; in the same way she herself is doubtless connected with the beautiful Helena, whom she procures for Paris as reward. From Astarte she seems to have borrowed even her common by-name of worship, Urania (‘heavenly one’); the story of her relation to Uranos is plainly a mere fiction to explain this title, made up after her name Aphrodite had been wrongly interpreted as ‘foam-born.’ It is the same with her connection with the sea, on which the part played by her in Greece throws no light, and with her worship as Euploia (‘giver of fair passage’), Pontia (‘ocean-goddess’), and the like; in this quality the dolphin and swan are her appropriate attributes.

§ 110.  In Mykenai have been found figures of a naked goddess attended by doves. Though clearly modelled on the representations of the Asiatic goddess of fertility, they should probably be described as early images of Aphrodite. From the Homeric times she wears, like all other Greek goddesses, long garments; she holds fruit in her hands, and doves sit at her feet. From the fourth century onwards however she appears again as partly or wholly naked, as she is conceived as bathing or as Anadyomene (arising from the sea). The finest example of the half-naked goddess is the Aphrodite of Melos; Praxiteles represented her for her sanctuary at Knidos as 64 entirely nude. As emblems of fruitfulness the ram or goat as well as the dove are assigned to her.

§ 111.  Eros is on the other hand the male personification of love. As a god in the true sense of the word he was worshipped from ancient times, probably even by the pre-Hellenic population, at Thespiai in Boiotia, at Parion on the Hellespont, and at Leuktra in Lakonia. His cult at Thespiai centred round a primitive symbol, an unhewn stone; he himself was accounted there the son of Hermes the giver of fruitfulness by the infernal mother Artemis. In the Homeric poems he does not appear as a god, and Hesiod regards him only as a primal power creating the universe, although he certainly knew of his actual worship.

§ 112.  From Eros were later distinguished Himeros or passionate desire and Pothos or lover’s yearning, although these did not actually come to be regarded as divinities; and thus there gradually grew up a number of Erotes no longer distinguishable from one another. From the commencement of the fifth century B.C. Eros finds portrayal in art as a winged boy or a tender youth with a blossom and lyre, a fillet (ταινία) and crown in his hands, and often associated with Aphrodite, who is now looked upon as his mother. From the fourth century onwards he receives a bow and arrows or a torch as his attribute, the pain of love excited by him being regarded as a wound. Later the torch was viewed as a symbol of the light of life, and Eros like Aphrodite was brought into connection with death and the infernal world. An inverted and expiring torch was put into his hand, or he himself was figured as wearily sinking to sleep, and thus he was turned into the death-god Thanatos.

Finally, following Platonic conceptions, men expressed the love that at once blesses and racks the human soul by depicting Eros as either warmly embracing or cruelly torturing Psyche, the soul portrayed as a butterfly (§ 3) or a maiden with butterfly’s wings.





Next :
Olympian Deities :

IX.  The Religion of Dionysos.



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