Aphrodite (/�fr?'da?ti/ (About this sound listen) af-r?-DY-tee; Greek: ?f??d?t?

Aphrod�te) is the ancient Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation.
She is identified with the planet Venus, which is named after the Roman goddess
Venus, with whom Aphrodite was extensively syncretized. Aphrodite's major symbols
include myrtles, roses, doves, sparrows, and swans.

The cult of Aphrodite was largely derived from that of the Phoenician goddess
Astarte, a cognate of the East Semitic goddess Ishtar, whose cult was based on the
Sumerian cult of Inanna. Aphrodite's main cult centers were Cythera, Cyprus,
Corinth, and Athens. Her main festival was the Aphrodisia, which was celebrated
annually in midsummer. In Laconia, Aphrodite was worshipped as a warrior goddess.
She was also the patron goddess of prostitutes, an association which led early
scholars to propose the concept of "sacred prostitution", an idea which is now
generally seen as erroneous.

In Hesiod's Theogony, Aphrodite is born off the coast of Cythera from the foam
(aphros) produced by Uranus's genitals, which his son Cronus has severed and thrown
into the sea. In Homer's Iliad, however, she is the daughter of Zeus and Dione.
Plato, in his Symposium 180e, 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"). Aphrodite had many other
epithets, each emphasizing a different aspect of the same goddess, or used by a
different local cult. Thus she was also known as Cytherea (Lady of Cythera) and
Cypris (Lady of Cyprus), due to the fact that both locations claimed to be the
place of her birth.

In Greek mythology, Aphrodite was married to Hephaestus, the god of blacksmiths and
metalworking. Despite this, Aphrodite was frequently unfaithful to him and had many
lovers; in the Odyssey, she is caught in the act of adultery with Ares, the god of
war. In the First Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, she seduces the mortal shepherd
Anchises. Aphrodite was also the surrogate mother and lover of the mortal shepherd
Adonis, who was killed by a wild boar. Along with Athena and Hera, Aphrodite was
one of the three goddesses whose feud resulted in the beginning of the Trojan War
and she plays a major role throughout the Iliad. Aphrodite has been featured in
western art as a symbol of female beauty and has appeared in numerous works of
western literature. She is a major deity in modern Neopagan religions, including
the Church of Aphrodite, Wicca, and Hellenismos.