Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays

Now love is Aphrodite, either represented by the goddess herself or by her son and viceregent, who seems almost identified with herself; “Naetait autre que la deesse elle-meme, douee du sexe masculin,” as Émeric-David well states it. “Love,” says Empedocles, in that great philosophical poem of which fragments only remain, “is not discoverable by the eye, but only by intellect; its elements are indeed innate in our mortal constitution, and we give it the names of Joy and Aphrodite; but in its highest universality no mortal hath fully comprehended it.”

Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus and Harmonia, according to some legends; while, according to others, Harmonia is her daughter by Ares, and the mother of Aphrodite is the child of Heaven and Earth. She is usually seen naked, unlike every other goddess save Artemis. Yet Praxiteles represented her veiled at Cos; others armed her as Venus Victrix; Phidias carved her in ivory and gold, her feet resting on a tortoise, as if to imply deliberation, not heedlessness. The conscious look of the Venus dea Medici implies modesty, since she is supposed to be standing before Paris with Hera and Athena. In Homer's hymn to her she is described as ordinarily cold and unimpressable, and only guiding others to love, till Zeus, by his sovereign interference, makes her mind to wander and she loves a mortal man. And though she regards Anchises simply as her husband, and calls herself his wedded wife, yet she is saddened by the thought of her fall, as much as Artemis when she loves Endymion. This is Homer when serious; but the story of her intrigue with Ares he puts into the mouth of a wandering minstrel in the Odyssey, as a relief from graver song, and half disavows it, as if knowing its irreverence.