ancient paganism are entirely wrong. Even the worship of Aphrodite and of the Phenician Astarte was by no means degraded by that gross sensualism of which the fathers of the church frequently accuse it. Wherever we meet with original expressions of the pagan faith we find deep reverence and childlike piety. In many respects the worship of Istar in Babylonia and Astarte in Phenicia, of Isis in Egypt, of Athene, Aphrodite and Hera in Greece, of the Roman Juno, and Venus, the special protectress of the imperial family, was noble in all main features, and did not differ greatly from the cult of the Virgin Mary during the Middle Ages. We shall discuss this phase in a subsequent chapter and here reproduce an ancient platter which is ascribed by archeologists to the fourth century B. C., and shows a noble and serene Venus who is fully draped and flying on a swan.
When Christianity spread over the Roman empire, the city of Athens was the last stronghold of paganism, but even there the mass of the population had become Christian. There was a time in the development of Christianity when it was hostile not only to ancient pagan mythology but also to pagan science and to pagan art. This was the age in which almost all the statues of the Greek gods were either destroyed, or maltreated and shattered so that not one has come down to us unmutilated.
Prof. F. C. Conybeare of University College, Oxford, describes conditions of that age in his translation of the Apology and Acts of Apollonius and Other Monuments of Christianity, as follows:
“The obvious way of scotching a foul demon was to smash his idols; and we find that an enormous number of martyrs earned their crown in this manner, especially in the third century, when their rapidly increasing numbers rendered them bolder and more ready to make a display of their intolerance.
Sometimes the good sense or the worldly prudence of the Church intervened to set limits to so favorite a way of courting martyrdom; and at the Synod of Elvira, c. A. D. 305, a canon was passed, declaring the practice to be one not met with in the Gospel nor recorded of any of the Apostles, and denying to those who in future resorted to it the honors of martyrdom. But in spite of this, the most popular of the saints were those who had resorted to such violence and earned their death by it; and as soon as Christianity fairly got the upper hand in the fourth century, the wrecking of temples and the smashing of the idols of the demons became a most popular amusement with which to grace a Christian festival. As we turn over the pages of the martyrologies, we wonder that any ancient statues at all escaped those senseless outbursts of zealotry.”
It must have been in one of these “outbursts of zealotry” that one of the temples of Aphrodite was attacked and the statue of the goddess brutally assaulted. The mutilated statue presumably lay prone upon the ground at the foot of its pedestal at the overturned altar, and had to suffer under the clubs of fanatical zealots. When night broke in and the rioters sought their homes, the few friends of paganism, perhaps the priests, perhaps some well-to-do philosophers and admirers of the ancient Greek civilization, came to the rescue. They met stealthily at the place of the tumult and with the assistance of
their servants had the statue carried away down to a ship at anchor in the harbor. Before the riot could be renewed on the next morning the ship set sail for the island of Milo where the devotees of the goddess may have had friends, or where possibly one of their own number possessed a farm. There they hid the statue, and it is certain that the act of concealment was done in the greatest haste, for it was only lightly covered over, and a mark, discovered later on by careful investigation of the place of hiding, was scratched into the curbstone on the wayside to indicate the spot.
This explanation seems to me simple enough to be acceptable. The facts seem to tell it. Consider the age when paganism broke down; consider the fanaticism of the early Christians, the uncultured mobs led by fanatical monks, mobs capable of tearing to pieces a noble woman—I refer to Hypatia—in the conviction that they were doing a good deed pleasing in God’s sight. Other statues of pagan gods have received exactly this treatment. Is it possible to explain the cudgel marks on the statue of the Venus of Milo differently?
It seems strange that this explanation has not been offered before. The data of the conditions in which the statue was found, the place of hiding, the political relation of Melos to Athens, and the character both of the few pagans and of the multitudes of Christians who lived in the beginning of the Christian era, tell us the story of the statue, its sad fate and why it found here a safe place of concealment.
The pagan remnant was small and kept quiet for fear of persecution, but we may very well imagine how they lived in the hope that paganism would celebrate a revival, that the storms of these barbarous outbursts would pass by and the temples of the gods would be restored in all their ancient glory. Then would come the time to bring the goddess back to her ancient dwelling place, to raise her altar again and light the sacrifice anew. But though the riots ceased and the authorities restored order, though for a short time a pagan emperor sat again on the throne of Cæsar, the ancient gods never returned and Christianity permanently replaced paganism. The devotees of the lost cause died without seeing their hope fulfilled. The desecrated statue remained hidden and their secret was buried with them in the grave.
THE etymology of the name Aphrodite is doubtful. The Greeks derived it from the word ἀφρός = foam, because the goddess was said to have risen from the foam of the sea. This wild guess of ancient Greek philology may have been responsible for the fable that Uranus (Heaven) nightly embraced Gaia (Earth) until he was attacked and mutilated by his rebellious son Kronos. Uranus, deprived of his creative ability, retired to the outskirts of the world. Mythologists assume that herewith the creation of the raw material of the universe ceased, but that the generative principle being now mingled with the sea changed into foam, whence rose the goddess that represents all fertility and creativeness in both vegetable and animal domains.
If this legend of the origin of Aphrodite is not simply the product of the wrong etymology of her name[7] it is assumed to have been imported from Phenicia. The only other similar myth known is found among the South Sea islanders where Rangi (Heaven) and Papa (Earth) embraced one another so closely that no life could originate, Rangi being regarded as a great blue canopy of stone. Then Tane Mahuta, their youngest son, corresponding to Kronos, the youngest child of Uranus and Gaia, cruelly separated the couple and forced his father upward and pressed his mother down, thus becoming the creator of life on earth.[8]
The ancient Greeks were poor philologists and similar failures of etymological speculation are quite common among them. Thus they explained the origin of names like Heracles as “the fame of Hera,” or Amazon as “the woman without breasts,” or Prometheus as “the forethinker,” etc. All these derivations are wild and obviously wrong guesses, nor may our modern philologists, though more scientific, be always exactly correct. We are taught now by comparative philology that Prometheus, the firebringer, is the Sanskrit word pramathyus, “the driller,” denoting the hard stick[9] which by a swift rotation in a soft piece of wood produces the spark that calls forth the beneficent flame.
This explanation seems probable but we cannot say that our etymologies of other names have been equally successful.
One recent interpretation of “Aphrodite” would make us regard the name as an Egyptian importation, explaining the word to mean Apharadat, “the gift of Ra,” the sun-god, derived from Pha Raa Da-t with the prosthetic A; but this, like the suggested derivation of Psyche from Pha Sakhu, “the mummy,” seems to be a mere accident of homophony. Other Greek names such as Elysion from Aalu, the Elysian Fields of the Egyptians, Charon from Kere, driver or skipper (ferryman), are better attested, but if the name Aphrodite came from Egypt the cult of a goddess by that name and character has been lost or obliterated.
* * *
Originally Aphrodite was the same figure as Hera or Juno, Artemis or Diana and Pallas Athene or Minerva. These female deities are differentiations of the idealized and personified activities of womanhood: Hera as the queen of heaven, the protectress of wifehood; Diana of girlhood and virginity; Athene as the goddess of battles, as protectress of arts and sciences, as wisdom personified; Aphrodite, the personification of beauty and love.
The ancient pagans were not so very unlike the Christians; e. g., Istar, like the Virgin Mary, represented at the same time eternal virginity and motherhood, and the name of the temple on the Acropolis might truly be translated “Church of the Holy Virgin,” for Parthenon is derived from παρθένος, “virgin.”
In prehistoric times there was more reverence for the female deity than for the male god. So Ares (or Mars) is the god of fight, of combativeness, while Athene is the teacher of the art of warfare, of generalship, of strategy in battle.
The character of Aphrodite as a universal principle was never lost sight of. She was and remained the giver of life, joy, love, loveliness, grace, fertility, increase, exuberance, rejuvenescence, springtime, restoration of life, immortality, prosperity and the charm of existence,—and all this she was in one, all as a universal principle and in its cosmic significance.
The same idea is also expressed in Eros, called in Latin Amor or Cupido, who is regarded as the oldest and at the same time the youngest of the gods, represented as a beautiful youth. This same Eros is said to have existed prior to Aphrodite, for when she rose out of the sea, Eros met her at the shore, while according to another version he was regarded as her son.
The notion that Aphrodite is the cosmic principle of love has found expression in poetry and philosophy, but her mythical nature has never been definitely settled. Homer, who calls Aphrodite Cypris (Κύπις) speaks of her in the Iliad (V, 312) as the daughter of Zeus[10] and Dione, the goddess
who in olden times was worshiped on the Acropolis in Athens, in Dodona, and in other localities, as the wife of the Olympian ruler and as his female counterpart. Dione is probably the same word as Hera’s Latin name Juno. As her daughter, Aphrodite is called Dionæa (Διωναία) and also by her mother’s name Dionē.
Being the goddess of sexual love, Aphrodite was also held responsible for all relations between men and women, and philosophers felt the need of distinguishing between heavenly love and vulgar passion, calling the former “Aphrodite Urania,” the latter “Aphrodite Pandemos.” In Plato’s Symposium (180 D) the heavenly love is described as “the older one, born without mother, the daughter of heaven,” while the younger and less divine Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus and Dione. The same contrast is brought out in the age of the Renaissance by Titian in his famous picture of heavenly and worldly love.
The distinction between celestial and earthly love however is artificial and has certainly not influenced the cult of the goddess. It is a later thought, invented by philosophers for the purpose of teaching a lesson.
POLYTHEISM is not a stable religion. It changes with the growth of civilization, and we do not know a time in which it was not constantly in a state of transition.
The myths which connect Aphrodite in one place with Adonis, in others with Mars, Hephæstos, Anchises and other gods or mortals, were originally several different developments of the same fundamental idea, the love story of the goddess of love. This is quite natural and ought to be expected, but when in the days of a more international communication these myths were told in different shapes in all localities, they in their combination served greatly to undermine the respect for the goddess and to degrade the conception of her even as early as in the time when the Homeric epics were composed. Nevertheless, since the sarcasm remained limited for a long time to the circle of heretics and scoffers, the noble conception of Aphrodite was preserved down to the latest days of paganism.
In other words Venus was originally the mother of mankind. She was at once the Queen of Heaven or Juno, the Magna Mater or Venus Genetrix, the educator and teacher or Pallas Athene, the eternal virgin or Diana, and the all-nourishing earth-goddess, Demeter or Ceres; and this view had better be stated inversely, that the original mother of mankind became differentiated in the course of history into these several activities of womanhood, as Juno, Venus, Diana, Ceres and Athene, which divinities were again reunited in Christianity in the form of Mary, the Queen of Heaven, the Mother of God, the Lady as an authority and guide in life, and the Eternal Virgin.
Aphrodite was worshiped in a prehistoric age, and the origin of her cult is plainly traceable to the Orient, especially to Phenicia and further back to Pamphylia, Syria, Canaan and Babylon. The Phenician Astarte was imported to the islands of the Ægean Sea, to Cythera, Paphos and Amathus. Hence even in the Hellenistic age she was still honored with the names Cytherea, Paphia and Amathusia.
From the Ægean islands the cult of Aphrodite spread rapidly to Sparta, Athens and other Greek centers. The barbaric origin of the Aphrodite cult is in evidence in the myth of Aphrodite’s birth as the foam-born, but it is difficult to say whom we shall deem responsible for the legend—perhaps the inhabitants of the islands. Certainly we cannot lay the burden of the invention of the story upon
the Asiatics, at least not on the Syrians, for according to an account of Nigidius Figulus,[11] the fish of the Euphrates found a large egg in the floods and pushed it ashore, where it was brooded upon by a dove until the Syrian goddess came forth from it.
An exquisitely graceful relief pictures the birth of Venus from the foam of the ocean. She appears as a young maiden covered with a diaphanous garment, and is being lifted out of the water by the Graces. The marble is preserved in the National Museum at Rome and was discovered by excavations in the grounds of the Villa Ludovisi in 1887.
The Oriental goddess was originally the queen of the starry heaven, either the moon or the morning star, and as such she was the same figure which in other places gave rise to the development of Artemis. We may emphasize here that like the Christian Mary the pagan female divinity was at the same time both the eternal virgin and the celestial mother. Mythology cannot stand the application of logical rationalism, and we must not try to make the traditional legends rigidly consistent.
While we recognize a strong Oriental influence in the Greek construction of the Aphrodite cult, we must acknowledge that in Greece we have a new and independent origin of the divine ideal of femininity. In Mesopotamia Istar was a very popular deity, and innumerable idols have been found in the shape of a naked woman, commonly called
“Beltis” or “Lady,” but this conception of the goddess of femininity cannot be regarded as the prototype of the Greek Aphrodite who at an early period assumed a definitely Greek figure and character. Without detracting from her universal significance as the cosmic principle of generation, the artistic conception of the Greek mind at once idealized her as the incarnation of loveliness and grace, and from Phidias down to the end of paganism she has retained this ideal.
In Cnidos Aphrodite was worshiped in three forms: as gift-giver (δωρῑτις), as goddess of the high places (ἀκραία) and as the lucky sailor (εὔπλοια), and we learn that bloody sacrifices were not permitted (Tac., Hist., II, 3), even on the main altar in Paphos.
Originally, Aphrodite was not only love, grace and beauty, but the mistress, the lady, the queen; and so she is represented in Cythera as fully armed. The same is true in Sparta and in Corinth where her temple was erected on the highest place of the city, called Acrocorinthus.
The sensual features of the Aphrodite cult were certainly not absent in ancient Hellas. We know that in Corinth there were large numbers of hierodules in the temple who helped to make the ceremonies gorgeous and impressive, but judging from the language used by Æschylus and Pindar they were highly respected and received public acknowledgment for their fervent prayers during the Persian wars.
In the early imperial time of Rome, the authority of Venus was promoted by the fact that she was the tutelary deity of Cæsar, who through the similarity of his name “Julius” with “Julus,” the son of Æneas, was encouraged to derive his legendary pedigree from Æneas, the mythical founder of the Latin race, the son of Anchises and Aphrodite.
With the rise of Christianity the worship of Venus naturally deteriorated very rapidly, and the fathers of the church referring to all the different versions of her love affairs maligned her in the eyes of the world by identifying the Venus Urania with the Venus Vulgaris, and their views have contributed a good deal to disfigure her picture in later centuries.
In the times of Cæsar she was still the great goddess whose domain was not limited to beauty and love nor even to the procreation of life, in which capacity she was called Venus Genetrix, but she was also Venus Victrix, or the goddess who in battle assures victory. Yea, more than all this, she was the goddess of life and immortality connected with the chthonian gods—the powers of death in the underworld. Her emblem, the pomegranate, is also found in the hands of Persephone, indicating a kinship between Aphrodite and the daughter of Demeter.
It is not accidental that Aphrodite as the goddess of love and generation is also the queen of the underworld. She begets life, she restores to life; she leads into Hades and back out of Hades into the world of life. It is for this reason that, according to Pausanias (II, 10, 4), her statue in the temple at Sicyon carries the chthonian symbols, the apple and the poppy, in her hands, and there her priestesses were bound by a vow of chastity.
The chthonian aspect of the Aphrodite cult appears in the legend of the death of Adonis with all its details of funeral lamentations and ceremonies and the great hope of his resurrection. Istar herself descends to the underworld, as we shall see further down (see pp. 85-95), and we know at least that in Cyprus a tomb of Aphrodite has been shown. [12]
ONE special function of the mother goddess was leadership in war. It was a custom among the Arabians until recent times that the warriors of a tribe were led in battle by a girl riding at their head with breast exposed, inspiring them in their attack to the display of irresistible courage; and if it was a common practice in prehistoric times, we may assume that this function of womanhood established the character of Istar as the goddess of war, later on differentiated as the Greek Pallas Athene and the Roman Bellona.
VENUS VICTRIX.[*]
After Hirt, Bilderbuch, Plate VII, 11.]
[*] Engraving on a gem representing the statue of Venus Erycina on the Capitoline. This interpretation does not exclude other possibilities. Certainly the attitude of little Eros is artistic and pleasing.]
We may be sure that the character of Aphrodite as Venus Victrix is by no means a late Roman invention of the days of Cæsar but dates back to the most ancient days of Babylonian tradition. She was from the start of history the great Magna Mater, the All-Mother and Queen to whom the people appealed in all their needs, especially in war. In Greece she is frequently addressed as νικηφόρος, bringer of victory.
A penitential psalm on the destruction of the ancient city of Erech has been preserved in a fragment which in Theodore G. Pinches’s translation reads thus:[13]
As Venus Victrix, the warlike goddess akin to the Greek Pallas Athene, Istar, appears to Asurbanipal in a vision, recorded in a cuneiform inscription of the annals of this powerful Assyrian king, and refers to the invasion of Tiumman, King of Elam. The passage reads in H. Fox Talbot’s translation thus:[15]
“In the month Ab, the month of the heliacal rising of Sagittarius, in the festival of the great Queen [Istar] daughter of Bel, I [Asurbanipal, King of Assyria,] was staying at Arbela, the city most beloved by her, to be present at her high worship.
“There they brought me news of the invasion of the Elamite, who was coming against the will of the gods. Thus:
“‘Tiumman has said solemnly, and Istar has repeated to us the tenor of his words: thus: “I will not pour out another libation until I have gone and fought with him.”’
“Concerning this threat which Tiumman had spoken, I prayed to the great Istar. I approached to her presence, I bowed down at her feet, I besought her divinity to come and save me. Thus:
“‘O goddess of Arbela, I am Asurbanipal, King of Assyria, the creature of thy hands, [chosen by thee and] thy father [Asur] to restore the temples of Assyria, and to complete the holy cities of Akkad. I have gone to honor thee, and I have gone to worship thee. But he Tiumman, King of Elam, never worships the gods....
[Here some words are lost.]
“‘O thou Queen of queens, Goddess of war, Lady of battles, Queen of the gods, who in the presence of Asur thy father speakest always in my favor, causing the hearts of Asur and Marduk to love me.... Lo! now, Tiumman, King of Elam, who has sinned against Asur thy father, and has scorned the divinity of Marduk thy brother, while I Asurbanipal have been rejoicing their hearts. He has collected his soldiers, amassed his army, and has drawn his sword to invade Assyria. O thou archer of the gods, come like a [thunderstorm] ... in the midst of the battle, destroy him, and crush him with a fiery bolt from heaven!’
“Istar heard my prayer. ‘Fear not!’ she replied, and caused my heart to rejoice. ‘According to thy prayer thine eyes shall see the judgment. For I will have mercy on thee!’
* * *
“In the night-time of that night in which I had prayed to her, a certain seer lay down and had a dream. In the midst of the night Istar appeared to him, and he related the vision to me, thus:
“‘Istar who dwells in Arbela, came unto me begirt right and left with flames, holding her bow in her hand, and riding in her open chariot as if going to the battle. And thou didst stand before her. She addressed thee as a mother would her child. She smiled upon thee, she Istar, the highest of the gods, and gave thee a command. Thus: “take [this bow],” she said, “go with it to battle! Wherever thy camp shall stand I will come.”
“‘Then thou didst say to her, thus: “O Queen of the goddesses, wherever thou goest let me go with thee!” Then she made answer to thee, thus: “I will protect thee! and I will march with thee at the time of the feast of Nebo. Meanwhile eat food, drink wine, make music, and glorify my divinity, until I shall come and this vision shall be fulfilled.”
“‘Thy heart’s desire shall be accomplished. Thy face shall not grow pale with fear: thy feet shall not be arrested: thou shalt not even scratch thy skin in the battle. In her benevolence she defends thee, and she is wroth with all thy foes. Before her a fire is blown fiercely, to destroy thy enemies.’”
Mr. Talbot makes the following editorial comment on the historical event connected with Asurbanipal’s narrative:
“The promises which the goddess Istar made to the king in this vision of the month Ab were fulfilled. In the following month (Elul) Asurbanipal took the field against Tiumman, and his army speedily achieved a brilliant victory. Tiumman was slain, and his head was sent to Nineveh. There is a bas-relief in the British Museum representing a man driving a rapid car, and holding in his hand the head of a warrior, with this inscription, Kakkadu Tiumman, ‘The head of Tiumman.’”
AS the goddess of love Venus is the restorer of life, and as such she descends into the underworld and brings the dead back to life. Lewis Richard Farnell in his Cults of the Greek States[16] reproduces a remarkable votive tablet which shows Hermes the soul-dispatcher (psychopompos) confronting a woman holding in her outstretched hand a pomegranate blossom (the symbol of both the chthonian Aphrodite and Persephone) and Eros, the god of love, on her arm. The obvious meaning of the tablet indicates that it is love which redeems from death. This conception of the great goddess found a fit expression in the myth of Demeter’s daughter Persephone (called in Latin “Proserpina”) who, after being snatched away by Pluto, the ruler of Hades, is allowed to return to earth. So life on earth with its bloom of vegetation dies off each winter but returns annually in the spring.
This idea became a symbol of human immortality in the Eleusinian mysteries, presumably derived from older sources which go back to religious cults in Babylonia and Asia Minor, and the Christian doctrine is apparently derived from the same tradition. Paul says (1 Cor. xv. 36-38):
“Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die. And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain. But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.”
Jesus echoes the same argument and uses the same simile of the grain of wheat in John xii. 24:
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”
The most important document still at our command relating to the chthonian Venus is a fragmentary poem called “Istar’s Descent to Hell.” The main subject is introduced in order to justify the possibility of conjuring the dead from Sheol. Dr. Jeremias[17] explains the situation as follows:
“A man grieves over the death of his sister. He consults a magus as to how to release the spirit of the deceased from the prison of Hades. The priest tells him the story of Istar’s descent to Sheol for the sake of proving that the gates of Sheol are not unconquerable, and advises him to address Istar, the conqueror of Hades, and Tammuz her consort, with prayer and sacrifice, in order to gain their assistance. He is requested to comply with funeral ceremonies at the coffin of the dead and to begin his mourning with the assistance of the Uhats, the companions of Istar. The spirit of the dead, hearing the lamentations of her brother, requests him to rescue her from the horrors of Sheol through mourners’ music and sacrifices in the days of Tammuz, which is the time when the people sing and weep, as told by Ezekiel viii. 14, and mourn for their dead under the shape of Tammuz. The concluding lines of the poem, which are summed up in these words, form the core of the whole, while the legend of Istar’s descent to Sheol is only an introduction to it, and constitutes a part of the conjuration of the dead. From other documents of Babylonian literature we learn that on the names of Istar and Tammuz, the hero and heroine of the legends of the descent to Sheol, depend the hopes of a rescue from Sheol.” (Loc cit., pp. 7-8.)
It appears that people celebrated with special preference the days of the god Tammuz, who represented the disappearance of vegetation and its resurrection to life. The legend of Istar’s descent[18] to Sheol reads in the translation based on Dr. Jeremias’s version as follows:
(OBVERSE OF THE TABLET.)
[The goddess Allatu is greatly agitated about Istar’s appearance in Sheol. The poem continues:]
REVERSE OF THE TABLET.
[Allatu curses Uddusunâmir, but the conjuration which he uttered is too powerful, and she must obey. Thus the power of the realm of death is broken and Istar is free.]