(^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 re-
lief (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 wor-
ship 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 seduc-
tive 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 bor-
rows it with great effect upon her husband, Zeus.
- 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 "lam-
entable objects" by Martin Robertson. Unlike them, the Aphrodite of Melos is unrestored
and half draped. It has aroused passionate criticism, favorable and unfavorable. Its sculp-
tor was probably a Greek from Phrygian Antioch, whose name ended in "... andros."
(Paris, Louvre.)