English English. Plato, in his Symposium e, asserts that these two origins actually belong to separate entities: Aphrodite Ourania a transcendent, "Heavenly" Aphrodite and Aphrodite Pandemos Aphrodite common to "all the people". In the same light, Solon used taxes he levied on brothels to build a temple to Aphrodite Pandemos literally "Aphrodite of all the people". Pausanias reports that after the synoikismos, Theseus established a cult of Aphrodite Pandemos "Aphrodite of all the People" and Peitho on the southern slope of the Acropolis.
And, on his way back to Acropolis, he declared " Aphrodite Pandemos , " and that is " beauty for the people. According to Plato Symposium e , the two were entirely separate entities: Aphrodite Ourania and Aphrodite Pandemos. When Aphrodite Urania, the heaven-born, degrades herself to Pandemos , the Venus of the streets.
Among the Neoplatonists and, later, their Christian interpreters, Ourania is associated with spiritual love, and Pandemos with physical love desire. While he was hunting a wild boar, it buried its deep tusk into his groin and Adonis died in the arms of a grief-stricken Aphrodite. The goddess ordained that from his blood a flower, the anemone, should arise.
Here is allegorized the important recurrent theme of the Great Mother and her lover, who dies as vegetation dies and comes back to life again. This motif of death and resurrection becomes even clearer in the following variation. It was agreed that Adonis would spend one part of the year below with Persephone and one part in the upper world with Aphrodite.
Celebrations honoring the dead and risen Adonis share similarities with Easter celebrations for the dead and risen Christ. Cybele originally was a bisexual deity who was castrated. From the severed organ an almond tree arose.
Nana, daughter of a river-god, put a blossom from the tree to her bosom; it disappeared and she became pregnant. The beautiful Attis was born, and when he grew up, Cybele fell passionately in love with him.
But he loved another, and Cybele, because of her jealousy, drove him mad. Religious ceremonies in honor of Attis celebrated resurrection and new life through the castration and death of the subordinate male in the grip of the eternal, dominant female. Aphrodite of Melos Venus de Milo , late second century B.
Using all her wiles, Aphrodite seduced Anchises by tricking him into believing that she was a mortal. He came out of Chaos, and he attended Aphrodite after she was born from the sea-foam. He or a different Eros? Eros was a young, handsome god of love and desire in general, but by the fifth century B. Two of the speeches are particularly illuminating. The Speech of Aristophanes.
Since this speech is by the famous writer of Greek Old Comedy, not surprisingly, it is both amusing and wise. Aristophanes explains that originally there were not just two sexes but a third, an androgynous sex, both male and female. These creatures all three sexes were round; they had four hands and feet, one head with two faces exactly alike but each looking in opposite directions, a double set of genitals, and so on. They were very strong and they dared to attack the gods.
Zeus, in order to weaken them, decided to cut them in two. So all those who were originally of the androgynous sex became heterosexual beings, men who love women, and women who love men. Those of the female sex who were cut in half became lesbians and pursued women; those bisected from the male became male homosexuals who pursue males. Thus, like our ancestors, according to our own nature, we pursue our other half in a longing to become whole once again.
Eros is the yearning desire of lover and beloved to become one person not only in life but also in death. Aristophanes by his creative humor has given a serious explanation through mythic truth of why some persons are heterosexual while others are homosexual; he also articulates a compelling definition of love, reiterated throughout the ages: Eros inspires that lonely and passionate search for the one person who alone can satisfy our longing for wholeness and completion.
The Speech of Socrates. The great philosopher Socrates elucidates Platonic revelation about Eros. A new myth is told about the birth of Eros to explain his character.
This is the Eros who must inspire each of us to move from our love of physical beauty in the individual to a love of beauty in general, and to realize that beauty of the soul is more precious than that of the body. When two people have fallen in love with the beautiful soul of each other, they should proceed upward to pursue together a love of wisdom.
Platonic Eros is a love inspired in the beginning by the sexual attraction of physical beauty, which must be transmuted into a love of the beautiful pursuits of the mind and the soul. Platonic lovers of both sexes, driven by Eros, must be capable of making the goal of their love not sexual satisfaction at all nor the procreation of children, but spiritual gratification from the procreation of ideas in their intellectual quest for beauty, goodness, and wisdom.
The Greek Eros develops into the Roman Cupid, still a very familiar deity today. This mischievous little darling with a bow and arrows, who attends Venus, can inspire love of every kind, often very serious or even deadly, but usually not intellectual.
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