The Love of Aphrodite and Anchises

Author: Anonymous

Time Period: 999 BCE–1 BCE

Country or Culture: Greece

Genre: Myth

PLOT SUMMARY

“The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite” begins by describing the limits of the goddess’s powers, which do not affect her fellow goddesses Athena, Artemis, and Hestia because they are utterly unconcerned with matters of love. Aphrodite’s power affects all others, and she is particularly known for causing the gods to fall in love with mortals. These unions produce children who are mortal and thus subject to death, which causes the gods great sorrow. To give Aphrodite a taste of her own medicine, Zeus, the king of the gods, decides to make her fall in love with the mortal Anchises, a Trojan hero and shepherd.

Struck with desire, Aphrodite prepares herself with divine oils, rich clothing, and jewelry and flies through the clouds to Mount Ida, where she appears before Anchises as a noble, mortal maiden. Suspecting she is a goddess, Anchises addresses her as such, asking for her favor and promising to sacrifice to her. Aphrodite denies her divine nature, claiming instead to be the daughter of the Phrygian king Otreus and a devotee of Artemis. She tells Anchises that she was taken away from her band of nymphs and maidens by the god Hermes, who delivered her to Anchises because she is destined to be his bride. She requests that he present her to his family and send a messenger to her people, the Phrygians, to announce their marriage. She claims that her family will send gifts and gold as a dowry.

Still believing that Aphrodite is mortal, Anchises agrees to the marriage, and the two copulate. After their encounter, Aphrodite causes her lover to fall asleep while she restores her appearance to her full divine splendor. She awakens Anchises and commands him to look upon her. Recognizing the goddess, Anchises is astonished and hides his face with his cloak. He says that he had suspected that she was a goddess and begs for her pity, acknowledging that mortal men who consort with goddesses often face unpleasant consequences.

Aphrodite reassures him that he need not fear the gods and declares that a glorious son will result from their union. This son will be named Aeneas and will be as beautiful as the gods. Aphrodite then gives examples of gods who have granted immortality to mortals, sometimes with unfavorable results. She tells Anchises that she will not make him immortal because he will soon be old and she would not want such a husband. Moreover, she blames him for the shame she will feel when her divine peers mock her for enduring the same abasement that she so frequently inflicted on them and for her resulting pregnancy. Aphrodite tells Anchises that as soon as the child is born, he will be handed over to mountain nymphs, who will raise him for the first years of his life, and that she will present the child to Anchises when he is five years old. At the conclusion of the hymn, Aphrodite commands Anchises to tell everyone that the child’s mother is one of the wood nymphs, and she warns him that if he foolishly identifies her as the boy’s true mother, he will face the wrath of Zeus.

SIGNIFICANCE

An essential part of the Greek mythological corpus, the Homeric hymns are generally dated between the seventh and sixth centuries BCE. The hymns are of unknown authorship but are described as “Homeric” because they share characteristics of meter and dialect with the eighth-century BCE Greek epics the Iliad and the Odyssey, which are commonly attributed to the poet Homer. The major significance of the hymn to Aphrodite is twofold. First, the hymn describes the origin of the hero Aeneas, who, although not central in Greek mythology, became one of the most important heroes in Roman culture. In the Iliad, Aeneas is a member of the force fighting against the Greeks in the Trojan War, and although not a major character, he is repeatedly saved from death through the interventions of Aphrodite and other gods. Aeneas is most notable in his role as protagonist of the Aeneid, an epic composed by the Roman poet Virgil between 29 and 19 BCE. This poem narrates the Trojan War from the perspective not of the Greeks, as in the Homeric epics, but of the Trojans, a natural choice given that the Romans credited Aeneas with settling the region that would become Rome following his escape from Troy.

The second and most significant feature of the hymn is what it reveals about the mythological relationships among the gods and between gods and mortals. Aphrodite’s love affair with Anchises occurs because of an act of retaliation by Zeus, who himself, along with many other gods, has been the victim of Aphrodite’s power. These power games indicate that the gods are not omniscient and are subject to all-too-human emotions such as lust and anger. Furthermore, the revelation of Aphrodite’s true identity after her encounter with Anchises constitutes an epiphany scene, a common element of ancient Greek literature. The goddess’s deceit, interaction with Anchises, and revelation in which she blames the human man for her humiliation and warns him not to speak of the encounter reveal a formulaic pattern found in many other epiphany scenes. The purpose of these scenes is certainly to entertain but also to affirm the gods’ unequivocal and often unjust power over mortals, even if the deities are also partially driven by forces beyond their control.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bergren, Ann L. “The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite: Tradition and Rhetoric, Praise and Blame.” Classical Antiquity 8.1 (1989): 1–41. Print.

Evelyn-White, Hugh G., trans. Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1954. Print.

Faulkner, Andrew. The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite: Introduction, Text, and Commentary. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.

---. The Homeric Hymns: Interpretative Essays. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011. Print.

Richardson, N. J. Three Homeric Hymns: To Apollo, Hermes, and Aphrodite; Hymns 3, 4, and 5. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010. Print.