Classical Mythology, 7th Edition - obinfonet: dia logou

APHRODITE AND EROS 199
NOTES
1. in the speech of Pausanias.
2. His mistress, the courtesan Phryne, was said to be his model, and some claim that
Aphrodite herself asked: "Where did Praxiteles see me naked?"
3. Aphrodite's union with Hermes produced Hermaphroditus, whose story is told at
the end of Chapter 12.
4. Many of Aphrodite's characteristics are Oriental in tone, and specific links can be
found that are clearly Phrygian, Syrian, and Semitic in origin.
5. Cf. the Assyro-Babylonian myth of Ishtar and Tammuz.
6. Catullus (63) makes the anguish, love, and remorse of Attis the stuff of great poetry.
7. Her worship was introduced into Rome in 204. Lucretius (De Renim Natura 2. 600-651)
presents a hostile but vivid account of its orgiastic nature. For Lucretius the very nature
of deity is that it exists forever tranquil and aloof, untouched by the human condition
and immune to human prayers. See also pp. 643-644.
8. James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. Abridged edition
(New York: Macmillan, 1922), p. 408. One might want to read Theocritus, Idyll 15, for
a picture of the worship of Adonis in a Hellenistic city.
9. Hestia, the first-born of Cronus, was the first to be swallowed and the last to be
brought up.
10. The name Aeneas is here derived from the Greek ainos, which means "dread."
11. There has been much discussion about the Symposium as a reflection of Athenian
views generally about homosexuality. One wonders how typical of the mores of Victorian
England would have been the speeches (however profound) of a select group
of friends at a dinner party given by Oscar Wilde, who actually does have several
things in common with the personality and style of the dramatist Agathon, the host
of the Symposium. (For more about homosexuality, see pp. 21-22).
12. This reference to the dispersion of the inhabitants of Mantinea (an Arcadian city) by
the Spartans in 385 B.c. is an anachronism since the dramatic date of the speech is
purportedly 416 B.C.
13. Literature, great and not so great, is permeated by this concept; particularly affecting
in American literature is Carson McCullers' Member of the Wedding.
14. It is difficult to find one word that expresses adequately the abstract conceptions personified.
The name Poros also suggests contrivance; Metis, wisdom or invention; and
Penia, need.
15. For more on this subject, see the perceptive discussion by Byrne Fone, Homophobia:
A History (New York: Metropolitan Books [Henry Holt], 2000), Chapter 1, "Inventing
Eros." An aspect of the art of Plato in his complex portrait of Socrates is illuminated
by Catherine Osborne, Eros Unveiled (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994);
in her chapter "Eros the Socratic Spirit," she concludes (p. 100): "The resemblance between
Diotima's picture of Eros and Plato's picture of Socrates is remarkable."
16. Cupid and Psyche may be compared thematically to Beauty and the Beast. See Graham
Anderson, Fairytale in the Ancient World (London and New York: Routledge, 2000),
pp. 61-77.