Aphrodite, union untainted by sexual contact a
Aphrodite, who the Romans called Venus, is the goddess of love, beauty, desire, laughter, sex, and fertility. She was viewed as a flaky and ridiculous character, while others described her as a generous and benevolent goddess.
She had two different versions of her birth, one saying she was a child of a god and goddess, and another saying she emerged in the sea. Most of the stories told of the beautiful goddess were mainly focused on the topic of love and affairs. She married Hephaestus, the ugly god, that no one thought she would ever marry. While Hephaestus was in love with Aphrodite and her beauty, Aphrodite had a major love affair with Ares and others while married to others.
The goddess of love sought out for her revenge and was not so pleasant with her punishments. Aphrodite and other goddesses competed for the Golden Apple, which was for the most beautiful goddess of them all. Paris judged the competition and Aphrodite’s promise to him, led her to play a key role in the Trojan War. Her complicated love story with Adonis taught a moral lesson to all. Even though he was not biologically her child, she loved and cared for him just like he was one of her own.
Aphrodite, born from sea foam, was worshipped for beauty and love and aided in the start of the Trojan War, but also had many love affairs with both mortal and immortal men, even while she was married to Hephaestus. There are two main mythic versions of the origin of Aphrodite ( Allan and Maitland 62). One stated that she had sprung from the foam of the sea. This portrays her as Aphrodite Urania, the offspring of Uranus, the first sky god, and therefore a survivor from the earliest times.
In this version she also represented sacred love. When Cronus castrated his father, Uranus, he flung his parts into the sea. There his parts mixed with the sea foam, and from that union untainted by sexual contact a full grown Aphrodite appeared. The tides and winds of the sea carried her gently first to the island of Cythera and then to Cyprus where she was brought up by the Graces
