{
  "id": "aphrodite",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Aphrodite",
  "summary": "Goddess of love and desire with two incompatible births — grown from the foam around the severed members of Uranus in Hesiod, daughter of Zeus and Dione in Homer. Wounded by Diomedes at Troy, lender of the girdle that seduces Zeus, wife of Hephaestus and lover of Ares in the Odyssey, and, in her Homeric Hymn, made by Zeus to love the mortal Anchises and bear Aeneas. Cyprus and Paphos are hers.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "greek",
    "deities",
    "olympians",
    "love-goddesses",
    "cyprus"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "child_of",
      "target": "uranus"
    },
    {
      "rel": "child_of",
      "target": "zeus"
    },
    {
      "rel": "consort_of",
      "target": "hephaestus"
    },
    {
      "rel": "consort_of",
      "target": "ares"
    },
    {
      "rel": "parent_of",
      "target": "aeneas"
    },
    {
      "rel": "equivalent_of",
      "target": "venus"
    },
    {
      "rel": "member_of",
      "target": "twelve-olympians"
    },
    {
      "rel": "attested_in",
      "target": "theogony"
    },
    {
      "rel": "attested_in",
      "target": "iliad"
    },
    {
      "rel": "attested_in",
      "target": "odyssey"
    },
    {
      "rel": "attested_in",
      "target": "homeric-hymns"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "eros"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "Who is Aphrodite?",
    "How was Aphrodite born?",
    "Is Aphrodite the daughter of Zeus?",
    "Why is Aphrodite called Cytherea and Cyprogenes?",
    "Who is the husband of Aphrodite?",
    "Who is the mother of Aeneas?",
    "What is the girdle of Aphrodite?",
    "Which goddesses can Aphrodite not overcome?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "Hesiod's birth: when Cronus cast the severed members of Heaven into the sea, \"a white foam spread around them from the immortal flesh, and in it there grew a maiden\", who came first to Cythera and then to Cyprus; hence \"the foam-born goddess\", \"Cytherea\", \"Cyprogenes\" and \"Philommedes because she sprang from the members\"; Eros and Desire attended her from birth (Theog. 188–206).",
      "sources": [
        "hesiod-theogony"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "Homer's birth: wounded at Troy she \"flung herself upon the knees of her mother Dione\", who comforts \"my child\" (Il. 5.370–382), and Diomedes calls her \"daughter of Zeus\" (Il. 5.348). Apollodorus lists her among Zeus's children, \"by Dione he had Aphrodite\" (Apollod. 1.3.1). Hesiod and Homer cannot both be right, and neither mentions the other's version.",
      "sources": [
        "homer-iliad",
        "apollodorus-library"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "Diomedes wounded her hand as she carried Aeneas out of battle; \"forth flowed the immortal blood of the goddess, the ichor\", she dropped her son and fled on Ares's horses; Zeus told her, \"Not unto thee, my child, are given works of war; nay, follow thou after the lovely works of marriage\" (Il. 5.311–430).",
      "sources": [
        "homer-iliad"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.94
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "Her girdle: at Hera's request she \"loosed from her bosom the broidered zone, curiously-wrought, wherein are fashioned all manner of allurements; therein is love, therein desire, therein dalliance — beguilement that steals the wits even of the wise\" (Il. 14.197–223).",
      "sources": [
        "homer-iliad"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.94
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "In the Odyssey she is Hephaestus's wife and Ares's lover: the smith's net held them \"together in love\", Hephaestus demanded back \"all the gifts of wooing that I gave him for the sake of his shameless girl\" from \"her father\", and when freed she \"went to Cyprus, to Paphos, where is her demesne and fragrant altar\" to be bathed by the Graces (Od. 8.266–366).",
      "sources": [
        "homer-odyssey"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.94
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "The Homeric Hymn names three she cannot bend — Athena, Artemis and Hestia (HH5 7–33) — and tells how Zeus, so that she could no longer mock the gods for loving mortals, made her desire Anchises on Ida; she lay with him disguised as a Phrygian princess, revealed herself, and foretold \"a dear son who shall reign among the Trojans ... His name shall be Aeneas\", warning Anchises never to boast of it (HH5 45–55, 107–142, 168–199, 281–290).",
      "sources": [
        "homeric-hymns"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.94
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "The short sixth Hymn gives the Cyprian arrival: the west wind \"wafted her over the waves ... in soft foam\" to Cyprus, the gold-filleted Hours dressed and crowned her and brought her to the gods, \"each one of them prayed that he might lead her home to be his wedded wife\" (HH6 1–18).",
      "sources": [
        "homeric-hymns"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.93
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "Pausanias traces the cult of \"Heavenly Aphrodite\" from the Assyrians to the Paphians of Cyprus, the Phoenicians of Ascalon and Cythera, and says Aegeus established it at Athens, where the statue was by Pheidias (Paus. 1.14.7); the Cnidians honoured her as Doritis, Acraea and Euploia (Paus. 1.1.3).",
      "sources": [
        "pausanias-description"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [
    "Two births, two witnesses — foam and Uranus (Hesiod), Zeus and Dione (Homer, Apollodorus) — and the corpus records both as claims, not a blend.",
    "Her epithets are etymologies in Hesiod (Cytherea, Cyprogenes, Philommedes), each explained in the text.",
    "The girdle in Il. 14 is a physical object she lends, which is why Hera can use it.",
    "The Hymn makes her the mother of Aeneas by a deliberate humiliation designed by Zeus."
  ],
  "faqs": [
    {
      "q": "How was Aphrodite born?",
      "claim": "c1"
    },
    {
      "q": "Is Aphrodite the daughter of Zeus?",
      "claim": "c2"
    },
    {
      "q": "Who is the husband of Aphrodite?",
      "claim": "c5"
    },
    {
      "q": "Who is the mother of Aeneas?",
      "claim": "c6"
    },
    {
      "q": "What is the girdle of Aphrodite?",
      "claim": "c4"
    }
  ],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "theoretical",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "Answers \"how was Aphrodite born?\" with both passages instead of one, and binds each epithet to the line that explains it — the blended biography cannot say which text gave her Dione.",
  "confidence": 0.93,
  "last_verified": "2026-09-03",
  "media": [],
  "x": {
    "myth": {
      "pantheon": "greek",
      "kind": "deity",
      "group": "olympian",
      "domains": [
        "love",
        "desire",
        "beauty",
        "marriage",
        "seduction"
      ],
      "symbols": [
        "embroidered girdle",
        "foam",
        "the Graces",
        "gold"
      ],
      "wikidata": "Q35500"
    }
  },
  "canonical_url": "https://mythosdata.dev/k/aphrodite",
  "api_url": "https://mythosdata.dev/api/k/aphrodite.json",
  "jsonld": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "Aphrodite",
    "description": "Goddess of love and desire with two incompatible births — grown from the foam around the severed members of Uranus in Hesiod, daughter of Zeus and Dione in Homer. Wounded by Diomedes at Troy, lender of the girdle that seduces Zeus, wife of Hephaestus and lover of Ares in the Odyssey, and, in her Homeric Hymn, made by Zeus to love the mortal Anchises and bear Aeneas. Cyprus and Paphos are hers.",
    "url": "https://mythosdata.dev/k/aphrodite",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-09-03",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Hesiod, Theogony — tr. Hugh G. Evelyn-White (Loeb, 1914), Perseus TEI edition",
        "url": "https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-greekLit/blob/master/data/tlg0020/tlg001/tlg0020.tlg001.perseus-eng2.xml"
      },
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "The Homeric Hymns — tr. Hugh G. Evelyn-White (Loeb, 1914), Perseus TEI edition",
        "url": "https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-greekLit/blob/master/data/tlg0013/"
      },
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Apollodorus, The Library (Bibliotheca) — tr. Sir James George Frazer (Loeb, 1921), Perseus TEI edition",
        "url": "https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-greekLit/blob/master/data/tlg0548/tlg001/tlg0548.tlg001.perseus-eng2.xml"
      },
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Homer, Iliad — tr. A. T. Murray (Loeb, 1924), Perseus TEI edition",
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    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Aphrodite"
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}