Classical Mythology, 7th Edition - obinfonet: dia logou

172 THE MYTHS OF CREATION: THE GODS
The Birth of Aphrodite. Ca. 460 B.C.: marble, height (at corner) 33 in. In this three-sided relief
(known as The Ludovisi Throne) Aphrodite is shown in the center panel rising from
the sea and being clothed by two attendants, who stand on a pebbly beach. On the left
panel (not shown) a naked musician plays the double flute, and on the right panel (not
shown) a veiled woman burns incense. (Rome, Museo Nazionale délie Terme.)
In general Aphrodite is the goddess of beauty, love, and marriage. Her worship
was universal in the ancient world, but its facets were varied. At Corinth,
temple harlots were kept in Aphrodite's honor; at Athens, this same goddess
was the staid and respectable deity of marriage and married love. The seductive
allurement of this goddess was very great; she herself possessed a magic
girdle with irresistible powers of enticement. In the Iliad (14. 197-221) Hera borrows
it with great effect upon her husband, Zeus.
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Aphrodite ofMelos (Venus de Milo). Late second century B.C.: marble, height 80 in. This is
the best known representation of Aphrodite in the Hellenistic age, after Praxiteles had
poularized statues of the unclothed female body with his Aphrodite ofCnidus (mid-fourth
century B.c.): before Praxiteles, Greek convention had limited nudity in statues, with few
exceptions, to the male form. Praxiteles' statue survives only in copies dismissed as "lamentable
objects" by Martin Robertson. Unlike them, the Aphrodite of Melos is unrestored
and half draped. It has aroused passionate criticism, favorable and unfavorable. Its sculptor
was probably a Greek from Phrygian Antioch, whose name ended in " . . . andros."
(Paris, Louvre.)