Yup. She is a Goddess of Love, but the thing is she embodies ALL forms of love including some of the nastier bits like infidelity. After all it's ike La Roux once said, what is love without lust?
Aphrodite seems to be easily rattled when her identity as the most beautiful of all the beautiful is questioned. Even the Greek Gods can be super insecure.
That's part of why they're such a brilliant narrative. They all act like real people, taken to the extreme because their powers and effective immortality allows them to be so.
That's why Zues was smart enough to stay away from that shit. You know he likes him some fine ladies but he knows to NEVER involve himself where vanity is concerned.
One of the most popular myths is that she was also the goddess of war in her initial existence but slowly got whittled down to just Love and Beauty with the war aspect getting taken by Ares and Athena mostly. Which is why she could get really violent and unforgiving, because she used to be War. Also explained her attraction for Ares.
For the most part Ares is pretty chill in Greek mythology, the god of war just gets a bad rep because of how he's portrayed in the media. Mind you he's not a good guy either.
@@idoitforthememes6011 I actually even recall that some sources depict Ares as sort of bumbling and idiotic as well to reflect either the Greek or Roman distaste for war at the time those depictions came to be (don't remember which). It has been some years since I studied mythology, though, so I'm not sure if that's quite right.
@@idoitforthememes6011 From what I recall, he was a bit of a butt monkey, as the Greeks saw him as the virgin to Athena's Chad. And it was the opposite with Mars and Minerva, because Romans thought he was badass. I do recall him being the one who got Sisyphus in trouble by complaining that no one was dying in battle when Tartarus got tied up. Not sure what to make of the implication that the hopelessly finite existence of the human experience can be chalked up to it having to be that way because a war god's fun would be ruined otherwise.
One of my favorite ways to describe it is "while yes Aphrodite does have a big domain over love and beauty, she represents ALL aspects of that, the kindness and compassion of love as well as the heartbreak and pain of unrequited love etc.." and it also makes sense when you think of her as a bit more of a goddess of beauty since you could technically argue that eros is the god of love
If her daughters take a romantic interest, without missing a beat she swoops down and sleeps with that man out of curiosity and then tells that daughter how he did after the fact
Well, when she came to Greece she was actually a goddes of war. She has a really interesting history regarding how she came to be. The greeks believed that there were 3 versions of Aphrodite and those 3 embodied each of her aspects.
Aphrodite switching from kind and gentle to a short-tempered narcissist at the drop of a hat is kind of accurate given that she is the goddess of love.
@@mattmorehouse9685 what I meant was that love is not purely good. It can make you be better than what you were without it or worse than what you were without it. With her being the goddess of love, it makes it kind of make sense that she be both, idk. Kinda cool actually
Aphrodite is quite generous when it comes to aiding mortals. She helped Hippomenes win his race with Atalanta in exchange for just praying at her temple.
I would've loved to have seen a woman who was so beautiful that the god of beauty herself was jealous. Imagine if someone was the god of pizza and they were jealous of the pizzeria down the street. That pizzeria must be good as hell.
I remember the Myth of Aphrodite and Psyche from school. The basic story is that Aphrodite was jealous of Psyche's beauty, so she sent Eros to make her fall in love with a monster but Eros fell in love with her instead.
Just a little reminder that Greek gods are also extremely salty and jealous. A perfect example would be the myth about Arachne - a talented and arrogant seamstress who was so good at her craft that she challenged Athena to weave a better carpet than her. While arrogant, Arachne still was very talented and she won the challenge, and Athena just said “no fuck you” and turned her into a spider.
i dont think arachne was arrogant. ppl were just praising her for being the best weaver there is and the goddess caught ear of this and bcs of their pride as gods, the latter challenged arachne and lost. in conclusion, she didnt accept the outcome and cursed arachne to weave forever as an arachnid.
Actually that is a highly improbable representation. Another story states that Athena turned her into a spider, because she wove a nude,kinda pornographic tapestry of the Greek gods which Athena took offence to.
I like to think that while yes, Arahne let her pride in weaving get past herself she was not all to blame. I think a more realistic one would be that Arachne tied with Athena but Athena was offended by the tapestry that Arachne made and Arachne's claim of being better than Athena. This enraged Athena who also let her own pride as a Goddess get past herself so neither really was in the right here.
@@ashinjoy9368 they needed to depict the gods and Athena showed them blessing mortals while Arachne showed them assholes who did shit stuff which was like half their myths ex Zeus being who he is and among other stuff Athena got mad at the blatant disrespect thought "fuck you I am a goddess and ya lose so go be a new creature I made its creepy" thank you for coming to my TED talk everybody hope you liked it
Yeah well arachne wasn't exactly the smartest either she basically wove porn of athena's dad and uncle banging everything that moved sure its true but still,nobody wants to see that shit she was stupid enough to challenge a god not just any god,but the goddess who gave her the power of weaving in the first place although i agree Athena overreacted a little(a lot) but compared to other dieties Arachne got lucky
@@aurea. Hi, Hellenistic pagan here. There is no evidence of Aphrodite efforts to break Lady Hestia's chasity. There is only two myths that Queen Hestia is in: When Her father, Kronos, shallowed Her and When Piprus tried to sexually assault Her after Rhea threw an absolute baller of a party. A donkey hayed, waking Lady Hestia up and She summoned the Gods (including Aphrodite and Hades) to defend Her.
I really like this information on the Greek gods. I feel like they take on the whole aspect of their responsibility. Like beauty, it can be a vain thing as well as nice. It only makes sense that to be the goddess of love and beauty is to be cursed with the double edged sword of good and evil. Also the Roman gods, which are closely related to the Greek gods, tend to be more warlike since the people's who envisioned them were very warlike.
Your prettier than aphrodite is an insult I've assimilated into my bag for a solid 2 years now and it's great when I see the confusion on people's faces Also if we want to get technical, it's techiniacaly thetis and pelus fault for not inviting eris to there wedding which caused her to huck the apple at athena, aphrodite, and hera, which caused the beauty contest
I remember when the daughter finally told someone about her obsession with her father, which happened to be her maid, the maid was disgusted and hooked her up with her dad to see if she would somehow "feel better". When the dad found out it was his daughter he was sleeping with (because dark room advantage), he chased her out and she turned out to be pregnant with her brother. In pain, she was turned into a tree and wound up having a baby boy, Adonis, who Aphrodite thought was the most beautiful man she had ever seen and fell in love with him, so she handed him off to Persephone to raise (though other versions say it was nymphs). When he got older, he went into the real world and that was when she started hitting on him . . . Drama . . . Drama . . . Drama . . . A boar killed him by stabbing Adonis in the crotch with his husks and then to Aphrodite that he wanted to kiss the beautiful man's thigh. Aphrodite then started screeching and hitting her chest in agony and it became an actual thing ancient Greek women would do while planting lots of Adonis flowers during a certain time of year. The end.
And she made a woman fall in love with a bull. And that, kid's, is where the minotaur came from! (It was more a request by Poseidon, but...you know the drill).
@@zanyzoma3400 The gist of this is that one of Poseidon's sons was competing for the rule of Crete with his brothers, so in order to impress everyone and to get himself chosen as king, he asked Poseidon to gift him this beautiful white bull to show off to everyone. In return he promised he would sacrifice it so that Poseidon would get the bull back. Minos, now king, decided to keep the bull and sacrificed a regular bull. As you can imagine, that pissed off Poseidon, who asked Aphrodite to make Minos' wife fall in love with the bull. The bull actually rebuffed her initially, but after asking Daedalus to make her a cow suit with holes in the right places, she and said bull had a kid, which happened to be the minotaur.
@@claudiu-mihaipuiu1221 Oh right, so that's why King Minos imprisoned Daedelus and his son Icarus, where they made wings by attaching feathers with wax, and then they flew to freedom, but Icarus, contrary to his father's warning, flew too close to the sun, which melted the wax on his wings, causing him to fall to his death.
Ok the whole golden apple thing wasn't just Aphrodite fault. First Hera bribed Paris with the continent of Euraisia as his kingdom and Athena bribed him with unbeatable battle strategies. Both of which would've ended in more bloodshed than Aphrodite's choice. Second Zeus told Paris to choose between the goddesses and Eris was the one who presented the challenge in the first place. So the Trojan war isn't entirely Aphrodite's fault. More like 20%.
It goes up to at least 40% when you realize that Athena’s battle tactics would’ve most likely been for the defense of Troy rather than offensive like Ares was more known for. From what I’ve read, the Trojans seemed to fear destruction more than anything else, so defense would’ve been perfect for them. On top of that, she would’ve given him wisdom to prevent any prophesied ruin, and wisdom in general was among the things that the Ancient Greeks treasured the most. The Trojan horse tactic she gave to Odysseus to invade Troy could possibly have been an ambush tactic that’s just as effective when fighting defense. Aphrodite offering him the love of a married woman was doomed from the start and Hera, while she might not have done that, would’ve have an equal chance of making Troy as great as the real-life Macedonian Empire or having their hides handed to them. Unfortunately, we’ll never know because Zeus apparently- according to Hesiod- rigged the game from the very beginning.
@@justin2308 With the whole Athena thing. I'm pretty sure with a strategy goddess on your side a guy like a Paris, who started a war for some pussy, would've been willing to try to conquer Greece for probably less. Hera, maybe you got a point, but she has known to honor those who are loyal to her. Maybe she would've kept her word until hubris gotten the better of Paris. I see what you mean, but 10% of the blame goes to Paris for being a dumbass, 10% for Zeus for thinking it was a good idea, 30% for Aphrodite and 50% for Eris because we all know why.
To be fair, the other two godesses (i think it was Hera and Minerva) also tried to bribe the judge and the judge (Paris) only became the judge, because Zeus couldn't be bothered to decide himself
Can't bkame Zeus, I'd be scared of choosing such thing in front of three highly dangerous woman who could and did cause a massive war because of the results of that contest
@@nicolasmouzakis650 well, I think Zeus is way more powerful and the war was started by the humans, not by the gods. You know, Paris "stole" Helena because he was bribed from Aphrodite that he would "receive" Helena if she won, the other two godesses had nothing to do with it and the war was only started because the greeks wanted Paris to give Helena back.
This is why I stan Hekate. As far as I know, Hekate is not only a powerful goddess/titan but she’s also one of the most merciful (if not the most reasonable) goddess in the Pantheon. And I will be forever mad at how often she is overlooked and underrated in the media. In this essay I will
Because she doesn't have any myths, fool. The only one is her cameo when she aided Demeter in her search of Persephone. Aphrodite, as the goddess of one of the most basic and powerful emotions, is going to have multiple myths.
There are no negative aspects in love, at least not in true love. The negative aspects are apart from it, and it indicates that that love is not perfect yet.
Heres a fun fact a lot of people dont know about Aphrodite: she is the reason we have Pisces in our western zodiac. When Gaia sent Typhon to attack the gods, Aphrodite and her son were hidden away by either a pair of fish or turned to fishes themselves (depends on the myth but the fish in question is a koi fish). She "owed herSafety to the shape of the fish" and had them put in the stars as Pisces which is also why there are two fish instead of one.
A lot of these stories about Aphrodite are what inspired a dnd character of mine, he was the son of Aphrodite that was abandoned by her because he got more attention then her, he has the ability to use love as a weapon (kind like the Aphrodite abilities in the game Hades), he died as he lived, devoutly hating anything to do with love
Honestly Aphrodite's behavior makes sense to me. Love and Beauty are wonderful, but what are the consequences? Jealousy of anyone compared to you, Vanity from constant praise and coddling, Wrath onto the people who you perceive as upshowing you and step on everyone in order to achieve what you need. When you love someone, you feel at times and spiral into a well of terrible and nasty thoughts, unregulated it goes awry. Aphrodite is the goddess of Love and Beauty, the good and the bad.
I really like the Daniel Black interpretation of Aphrodite being a hyper manipulative, vindictive woman who will betray you for no reason other than it is in her nature to do so. She is the person who will pretend to be a damsel in distress to get what she wants only to turn the hero into her oppressor so she can manipulate another man into "saving" her. Over and over again.
@Joe Charlemagne Well, as far as I remember, she was created by people castrating themselves and throwing it into the water. Makes sense for her to be a d*ck 😂
"...and that's how the Trojan War started." You mean the war that ended with that giant wooden horse? The one that Odysseyus took a chunk of his lifetime trying to go home from?
How about the time when a girl boasted she was more beautiful than her so she made the women of Lymnos, the entire island the girl was from, *smell so bad* their men left and remarried. And when they came back with their new wives, the old ones killed the men and sent the new wives back. The Argonauts arrived on the island years later, and after all this time without any men, they were more than welcomed.
Silver lining for that girl Aphrodite cursed: Freud somehow forgot about her and used Electra as the namesake for the other one of his Sweet Home Alabama complexes.
Apparently the namesake of Oedipus complex was less about Oedipus himself (as he killed himself over his actions) but rather tbe fascination with the play in the public sphere
@@hiimcrazyfordrwho Interesting point. I seem to recall learning in school that Freud interpreted Oedipus as subconsciously wanting to marry his mother despite hating the thought on the surface, but I guess I could see the meta interpretation being a thing as well.
@@jaschabull2365 Considering Freud said just about every reaction, from being obsessed with your complex to denying it thoughroughly meant, yes indeed, you had that complex, I think he might've had a complex defense mechanism. Or was trying to scrounge up more customers.
Unlike Belle Delphine, I would drink Aphrodite's bath water if it would make me a demi god. I mean a god bathed in it, it has to give me some kind of super power, right?
Video Idea:Even Even More Zeus Pickup Techniques Zeus:Hey Look At That Piece Of Art Hades:ZEUS WHY DO YOU KEEP DOING THIS Zeus:Because I Like It Hades Hey Hottie Kratos' Mother:(Confused) Zeus:(Transforms Into A Turtle)
