Aphrodite means "born of
foam" (from the Greek aphros). She was created when the Titan Cronus threw
the mutilated genitals of his father, Uranus, into the sea, where they foamed
and boiled, and out of which, on the shores of Cyprus, appeared Aphrodite-a
beautiful, young woman, carried on a scallop shell. An alternative version maintains
that she was the daughter of Zeus and Dione, an avatar of the earth goddess.
Aphrodite can be taken as either the source or the
manifestation of the overwhelming and often destructive power of love.
Realizing that her beauty would bring trouble, Zeus married her to the ugly and
crippled Hephaestus, who, rather counterproductively, created for her a
magical, jeweled girdle that made her even more irresistible. Aphrodite had
affairs with gods and mortals indiscriminately. She enjoyed liaisons with the
mortal Trojan prince Anchises, resulting in the birth of Aeneas, and with the
god Hermes, resulting in the birth of Hermaphroditus. She also had a long
dalliance with Adonis. Her longest affair was with Ares (Mars), out of which
she gave birth to Eros, the armed god of sexual desire whose indiscriminate
arrows explain or express the capriciousness and painfulness of love.
by Viv Croot, 30 Second Mythology
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