Aphrodite

Aphrodite, the Roman Venus, is the goddess of love, desire, and beauty, and the irresistible power of attraction that joins lovers and quickens all living things. In Hesiod she is born from the sea-foam that gathered where the severed Ouranos fell — older than the Olympians themselves.

Plato's Symposium famously distinguishes two Aphrodites and so two loves: a common Aphrodite of bodily desire, and a heavenly Aphrodite (Ourania) of the love that ascends toward Beauty itself. In this higher form she is bound up with philosophical erōs, the upward longing of the soul. The cosmologists, recalling her sea-birth and her bond with Ares, saw in her the principle of cosmic harmony and union, the love that holds the elements together.

Epithets

• Urania Οὐρανία — the heavenly, of celestial love
• Pandemos Πάνδημος — of all the people, of common love
• Cythereia Κυθέρεια — of Cythera
• Kypris Κύπρις — of Cyprus
• Anadyomene Ἀναδυομένη — rising from the sea
• Philommeides Φιλομμειδής — the laughter-loving
• Euploia Εὔπλοια — granter of fair voyages
• Venus Genetrix Lat. — ancestral mother of the Romans