Page:Greek and Roman Mythology.djvu/95

THE GREEK GODS 81 closely akin to Aphrodite. The latter of his names was probably given him only because representations of him were usually in the form of Hermae. Through a mistaken explanation of this name, he was afterwards supposed to be a son of Hermes and Aphrodite (cf, Priapus). The legend of Aphrodite's union with Anchises, king of Dar- danus in Troas, whom she approached on Mount Ida and to whom she afterwards bore Aeneas, is likewise of ori- ental origin. Possibly Anchises and the son of Priam, the handsome Paris, who awards her the prize for beauty, may be as nearly identical as are Aphrodite and the beau- tiful Helen, whom she gives Paris as a reward for his decision. 108. Even the customary appellation of the goddess in worship, Urania ('the heavenly'), seems to have been borrowed from Astarte. For the idea that Aphrodite was a daughter of Uranus was evidently first invented in explanation of that appellation, and was based upon a false explanation of her epithet 'foam-born.' Similarly, her relation to the sea cannot be explained from her sig- nificance in Greece, nor can her worship as Euploia ('bestower of a prosperous voyage'), Pontia ('sea god- dess '), and the like, in which capacity the dolphin and the swan are her symbolic attributes. 109. In earlier times Aphrodite, like all the other goddesses, was represented clothed ; but after the fourth century B.C. she appears also half-nude, or entirely so, since she was conceived of as bathing, or as Anadyomene ('emerging from the sea'). The most beautiful example of a semi-nude Aphrodite is the famous Aphrodite of Melos. Praxiteles represented her as entirely undressed in the statue made for her sanctuary in Cnidus. As