The Mythology of the Aryan Nations. E-book. Formato PDF - 9780243605255

But the conception of the morning in the form of Aphro dite exhibits none of the severity which marks the character of Athéné. She is the dawn in all her loveliness and splen dour, but the dawn not as unsullied by any breath of passion, but as waking all things into life, as the great mother who preserves and fosters all creatures in whom is the breath of life. She would thus be associated most closely with those forms under which the phenomena of reproduction were uni versally set forth. She would thus be a goddess lavish of her smiles and of her love, most benignant to her closest imitators; and as the vestals of Athens showed forth the purity of the Zeus-born goddess, so the Hierodouloi of Corinth would exhibit the opposite sentiment, and answer to the women who assembled in the temples of the Syrian Mylitta. The former is really Aphrodité Ourania; the latter the Aphrodité known by the epithet Pandémos. Aphrodité is thus the mother of countless children, not all of them lovely and beautiful like herself, for the dawn may be re garded as Sprung from the darkness, and the evening (eos) as the mother of the darkness again. Hence like Echidna and Typhon, Phobos and Deimos (fear and dread) are among the offspring whom the bright Paphian goddess bore to Ares, while Priapos and Bacchos are her children by Dionysos. Nor is her love confined to undying gods. The so-called Homeric hymn tells the story how in the guise of a simple maiden she came to the folds where the Trojan Anchises was tending his ?ocks, and how Aineias was born, whom the nymphs loved by the Seilenoi and Hermes the argos-slayer tended and cherished.'