Aphrodite had an unusual birth. She rose up out of sea foam, beautiful and fully grown-up. She was the goddess of love, and she liked doves, sparrows, and swans. She was married to Hephaestus, the god of the forge, but not at all happily. She was really in love with Ares, the god of war.
Aphrodite and her son Eros were in charge of making people and gods fall in love. Eros used his magic bow and arrow to make that happen.
Oddly, this goddess of love helped start a terrible war. But she didn’t really mean to. Eris, the goddess of discord, liked to stir up trouble. So one day Eris made a golden apple. She wrote the words “For the Fairest” on it. Then she threw this apple where the goddesses Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite would find it.
Each one of them thought she was “the Fairest”—the most beautiful goddess of all. They decided to hold a beauty contest. To judge the contest, they chose a mortal named Paris. He was a handsome Prince of Troy.
Each goddess took Paris aside and offered him a gift. If Paris chose Hera, she promised to make the ruler of the world. If he chose Athena, she promised to make him a victorious soldier. But Paris wasn’t very ambitious or brave. He wasn’t interested in either of those offers.
Then Aphrodite promised Paris the love of the most beautiful woman in the world. This appealed to Paris much more than the other offers did. So he judged Aphrodite “the Fairest” of the goddesses, and she got to keep the apple.
This was exactly what the troublemaking Eris had hoped for. The most beautiful woman in the world happened to be married already. Her name was Helen. She was the Queen of Sparta and the wife of King Menelaus.
When Helen and Paris ran away to Troy together, Menelaus was furious. He called all the great warriors of Greece together, and they declared war on Troy. Many thousands of warriors died in the Trojan War, which lasted ten years. It ended with the destruction of Troy.
Here are some interesting facts about Aphrodite’s story:
•Today some historians believe that there really was a Trojan war. It was fought between Greece and Troy.
•The Romans called Aphrodite by the name Venus. The planet Venus is named after her.
•Venus is the planet closest to Earth. It is also the nearest planet in size to Earth. Next to the moon, it is usually the brightest object in the nighttime sky. Venus is easiest to see in the morning and evening. That’s why it is called both the “Morning Star” and the “Evening Star.”
•The Greeks pictured Aphrodite’s son Eros as a handsome young man. The Romans called him Cupid. They came to picture him as a little boy with wings and a bow and arrow. Pictures of Cupid are very common on Valentine’s Day.
•The goddess Venus was said to be the mother of the hero Aeneas. According to legend, Aeneas helped found the city of Rome. The real-life Roman general and dictator Julius Caesar claimed to be a descendent of Venus.