Anchises loving Aphrodite: progress for men in love with goddesses

Men are prone to gyno-idolatry — to loving mortal women as if they were goddesses. How can men be equal to women if women are goddesses and men are merely mortals? Hey now, all you readers, put your lights on, put your lights on. Hey now, all you lovers, put your lights on, put your lights on. Hey now, all you thinkers, turn to classics, learn the ancients. So … imagine she’s a goddess. It’s easy if you try. No matter whether woke or hick, student or free, female or male or non-binary, immerse yourself in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. You be Anchises, and she, Aphrodite.

Muse, tell me the deeds of golden Aphrodite,
the Cyprian, who arouses sweet desire in gods,
who subdues the nations of mortals,
and all birds flying in the sky, all beasts,
all those nurtured on dry land and the seas.
All these know deeds of the beautifully garlanded goddess from Cythera.

{ μοῦσά μοι ἔννεπε ἔργα πολυχρύσου Ἀφροδίτης,
Κύπριδος, ἥτε θεοῖσιν ἐπὶ γλυκὺν ἵμερον ὦρσε
καί τ᾽ ἐδαμάσσατο φῦλα καταθνητῶν ἀνθρώπων
οἰωνούς τε διιπετέας καὶ θηρία πάντα,
ἠμὲν ὅσ᾽ ἤπειρος πολλὰ τρέφει ἠδ᾽ ὅσα πόντος:
πᾶσιν δ᾽ ἔργα μέμηλεν ἐυστεφάνου Κυθερείης. }[1]

Aphrodite gazed upon the manly beauty of Anchises, who was herding cattle on the slopes of Mount Ida near Troy. By the design of Zeus, the nominal head god in charge of the cosmos, intense sexual desire for Anchises conquered Aphrodite’s mind and loins. More sophisticated than a high-status man who feels impelled to beg a shepherd girl for love, she returned to her home temple to arm herself to subdue Anchises. She had herself anointed with alluringly fragrant oil. She clothed herself in beautiful dress. She adorned herself with golden jewelry. Then she felt prepared to accost him.

In the name of Athena, Artemis, and Hestia, deliver us from gyno-idolatry! According to the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, only these three goddesses of ancient Greek myth could withstand the power of Aphrodite. No one today believes in Athena, Artemis, and Hestia. Men, however, still sometimes feel like Anchises encountering the goddess Aphrodite.

Like men throughout history, Anchises was sexually bestialized in his encounter with Aphrodite. Consider her approaching him:

She hurried toward Troy, leaving behind fragrant Cyprus.
High among the clouds, she made her way most easily
and arrived at Mount Ida, mother of wild beasts, famous for springs.
She headed for Anchises’s homestead on the mountain. Following her came
gray wolves, fierce-looking lions fawning about her,
bears also, and swift leopards insatiable in devouring deer.
Delighted in her mind and loins in seeing them,
she put desire in their hearts. So all the beasts
went in pairs to sleep together in shaded vales.
She meanwhile came to the finely constructed huts
and found left behind, alone at the homestead,
Anchises, the hero possessing the beauty of the gods.

{ σεύατ᾽ ἐπὶ Τροίης προλιποῦσ᾽ εὐώδεα Κύπρον,
ὕψι μετὰ νέφεσιν ῥίμφα πρήσσουσα κέλευθον.
Ἴδην δ᾽ ἵκανεν πολυπίδακα, μητέρα θηρῶν,
βῆ δ᾽ ἰθὺς σταθμοῖο δι᾽ οὔρεος: οἳ δὲ μετ᾽ αὐτὴν
σαίνοντες πολιοί τε λύκοι χαροποί τε λέοντες,
ἄρκτοι παρδάλιές τε θοαὶ προκάδων ἀκόρητοι
ἤισαν: ἣ δ᾽ ὁρόωσα μετὰ φρεσὶ τέρπετο θυμὸν
καὶ τοῖς ἐν στήθεσσι βάλ᾽ ἵμερον: οἳ δ᾽ ἅμα πάντες
σύνδυο κοιμήσαντο κατὰ σκιόεντας ἐναύλους:
αὐτὴ δ᾽ ἐς κλισίας εὐποιήτους ἀφίκανε:
τὸν δ᾽ εὗρε σταθμοῖσι λελειμμένον οἶον ἀπ᾽ ἄλλων
Ἀγχίσην ἥρωα, θεῶν ἄπο κάλλος ἔχοντα. }[2]

The wild beasts that meet Aphrodite on Mount Ida prefigure the amorous man Anchises. Although he might possess divine beauty and construct huts skillfully, the man in a sexual engagement tends to be associated with beasts. The woman, in contrast, flies high among the clouds. Meninism is the radical notion that men are human beings, even in their sexuality human like women.

Men scarcely distinguish between beautiful young women and goddesses. So it was for Anchises seeing Aphrodite:

Aphrodite, the daughter of Zeus, stood before him,
in form and size transformed to resemble an unwed young woman,
so that when his eyes saw her, he would not fear.
As Anchises observed her, he felt awe
at her beauty, her stature, her splendid clothes,
and her robe that blazed more brightly than fire.
She had twisted brooches and shiny earrings in the shape of flowers,
and around her tender neck were hanging the most beautiful necklaces.
Her robe was beautiful, golden, crafted with every type of design.
Like the moon it glowed around her soft breasts, a marvel to see.

{ στῆ δ᾽ αὐτοῦ προπάροιθε Διὸς θυγάτηρ Ἀφροδίτη
παρθένῳ ἀδμήτῃ μέγεθος καὶ εἶδος ὁμοίη,
μή μιν ταρβήσειεν ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖσι νοήσας.
Ἀγχίσης δ᾽ ὁρόων ἐφράζετο θαύμαινέν τε
εἶδός τε μέγεθός τε καὶ εἵματα σιγαλόεντα.
πέπλον μὲν γὰρ ἕεστο φαεινότερον πυρὸς αὐγῆς,
εἶχε δ᾿ ἐπιγναμπτὰς ἕλικας κάλυκάς τε φαεινάς,
ὅρμοι δ᾿ ἀμφ᾿ ἁπαλῆι δειρῆι περικαλλέες ἦσαν
καλοὶ χρύσειοι παμποίκιλοι· ὡς δὲ σελήνη
στήθεσιν ἀμφ᾿ ἁπαλοῖσιν ἐλάμπετο, θαῦμα ἰδέσθαι. }

Goddesses typically are taller than humans and have domineering appearances. According to ancient common sense now usually disregarded, an unwed woman hoping to marry should at least pretend to be demure rather than domineering. Nonetheless, even if she isn’t the daughter of the chief god Zeus, a beautiful woman is enough to inspire awe in men. Upon seeing this beautiful woman, Anchises regarded her as a goddess. He offered to build for her an altar on a prominent peak and honor her with sacrifices there every year. He begged her for blessings, not including a sexual relationship. As least he didn’t seek to become her serf.

Aphrodite lied to Anchises. She declared:

Anchises, most glorious of earth-born men,
I am no goddess. Why do you liken me to the female immortals?
I am just a mortal. The mother that birthed me is a woman.
My father is Otreus, whose name is famed. Perhaps you have heard of him.

{ Ἀγχίση, κύδιστε χαμαιγενέων ἀνθρώπων,
οὔ τίς τοι θεός εἰμι· τί μ᾿ ἀθανάτηισιν ἐΐσκεις;
ἀλλὰ καταθνητή τε, γυνὴ δέ με γείνατο μήτηρ.
Ὀτρεὺς δ᾿ ἐστὶ πατὴρ ὀνομάκλυτος, εἴ που ἀκούεις }

Aphrodite was actually the daughter of Zeus and the goddess Dione, or perhaps she arose from the castrated genitals of the god Uranus. She further claimed that the god Hermes had abducted her and led her to Anchises:

Hermes said that, in the bed of Anchises, I would be your
duly wedded wife, that I would give you splendid children.

{ Ἀγχίσεω δέ με φάσκε παραὶ λέχεσιν καλέεσθαι
κουριδίην ἄλοχον, σοὶ δ᾿ ἀγλαὰ τέκνα τεκεῖσθαι. }

Aphrodite begged Anchises to marry her. Was she really interested in marriage, or did she just want to have sex with him?

Most men would delight at the thought of marrying a woman who looks like a goddess, or relish even just having sex with her. Yet men, inferior in guile to women and subject to harsh penal regulation, must be wary. Anchises thus said to Aphrodite:

If you are mortal, and if a woman gave you birth,
and if Otreus, whose name is famed, is your father, as you say,
and if the will of the immortal conductor Hermes has brought you here,
and if you are to be called my wife for all days to come,
then it is impossible for any god or any mortal
to hold me back from joining in love with you right here,
right now — not even if the one who shoots from afar, Apollo himself,
aims from his silver bow arrows that bring me misery.
O Lady who looks like the divine beings, once I have climbed into your bed,
I would willingly go down to Hades’s palace below.

{ εἰ μὲν θνητή τ᾿ ἐσσί, γυνὴ δέ σε γείνατο μήτηρ,
Ὀτρεὺς δ᾿ ἐστὶ πατὴρ ὀνομάκλυτος, ὡς
ἀγορεύεις, ἀθανάτου δὲ ἕκητι διακτόρου ἐνθάδ᾿ ἱκάνεις
Ἑρμέω, ἐμὴ δ᾿ ἄλοχος κεκλήσεαι ἤματα πάντα·
οὔ τις ἔπειτα θεῶν οὔτε θνητῶν ἀνθρώπων
ἐνθάδε με σχήσει πρὶν σῆι φιλότητι μιγῆναι
αὐτίκα νῦν, οὐδ᾿ εἴ κεν ἑκηβόλος αὐτὸς Ἀπόλλων
τόξου ἄπ᾿ ἀργυρέου προϊῆι βέλεα στονόεντα·
βουλοίμην κεν ἔπειτα, γύναι εἰκυῖα θεῆισιν,
σῆς εὐνῆς ἐπιβὰς δῦναι δόμον Ἄϊδος εἴσω. }

Anchises imagined himself being sent to the ancient Greek underworld simply for having consensual sex with the woman who would be his wife. He thus internalized disparagement and criminalization of men’s sexuality. The social construction of penal punishment is a horrible social injustice.

Anchises showed men’s ardent love for women beyond trappings of status and riches. Underscoring the physical risks that gender disproportionately imposes on men, Anchises had as bed-coverings the skins of bears and lions that he had killed in the mountains. Killing bears and lions, and sometimes even spiders, is dangerous work. Such work should not be imposed exclusively on men, nor is such work indicative of men’s sexuality. Anchises loved Aphrodite with the natural love that many men feel for women:

When they went upon the finely crafted bed,
first he removed the jewelry shining on her body’s surface —
the twisted brooches and the shiny, flower-shaped earrings.
Then he undid her waistband and her splendid clothes —
slipped them off and put them on a silver-studded chair.
Anchises by divine will and destiny then
lay with the immortal goddess, he a mortal not knowingly clearly.

{ οἳ δ᾿ ἐπεὶ οὖν λεχέων εὐποιήτων ἐπέβησαν,
κόσμον μέν οἱ πρῶτον ἀπὸ χροὸς εἷλε φαεινόν,
πόρπας τε γναμπτάς θ᾿ ἕλικας κάλυκάς τε καὶ ὅρμους,
λῦσε δέ οἱ ζώνην, ἰδὲ εἵματα σιγαλόεντα
ἔκδυε καὶ κατέθηκεν ἐπὶ θρόνου ἀργυροήλου
Ἀγχίσης· ὃ δ᾿ ἔπειτα θεῶν ἰότητι καὶ αἴσηι
ἀθανάτηι παρέλεκτο θεᾶι βροτός, οὐ σάφα εἰδώς. }

Men with their loving gaze delight in seeing nothing more than a woman’s face and her naked body. Anchises knew Aphrodite intimately. He loved her as an equal — as a human being like himself. He didn’t know that he was merely a plaything in a power game among divine beings.

The next morning, Aphrodite asserted her superiority relative to Anchises. Distancing herself from him, she arose while he still slept.[3] She put on her splendid clothes and re-assumed her form as a goddess. Her head reached to the ceiling of the bedroom. That emphasizes her superior status as an immortal woman relative to a merely mortal man. Instead of warmly appreciating Anchises’s sexual work, she rudely woke him and taunted him:

Rise up, son of Dardanos! Why do you sleep without waking?
See now if I seem as what you knew
when you first set eyes on me.

{ ὄρσεο, Δαρδανίδη· τί νυ νήγρετον ὕπνον ἰαύεις;
καὶ φράσαι, εἴ τοι ὁμοίη ἐγὼν ἰνδάλλομαι εἶναι,
οἵην δή με τὸ πρῶτον ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖσι νόησας. }

Demanding that he rise up is no way to get sex in the morning from a beloved man. Aphrodite suggested Anchises’s impotence while simultaneously promoting it. In short, she acted like a female supremacist emasculating men.

Anchises awoke. He was afraid. He turned his eyes away from her and hid his face in his cloak. He felt that he was in the presence of a superior being. He begged her:

When I first set eyes on you, goddess,
I knew you were a deity, but you didn’t tell the truth.
Touching your knees, I now beg you by Zeus the aegis-bearer,
don’t let me become sexually impotent and live so among humans.
Please, take pity! I know that a man’s life ceases to have vital vigor
if he lies in bed with an immortal goddess.

{ αὐτίκα σ᾿ ὡς τὰ πρῶτα, θεά, ἴδον ὀφθαλμοῖσιν,
ἔγνων ὡς θεὸς ἦσθα· σὺ δ᾿ οὐ νημερτὲς ἔειπες.
ἀλλά σε πρὸς Ζηνὸς γουνάζομαι αἰγιόχοιο,
μή με ζῶντ᾿ ἀμενηνὸν ἐν ἀνθρώποισιν ἐάσηις
ναίειν, ἀλλ᾿ ἐλέαιρ᾿· ἐπεὶ οὐ βιοθάλμιος ἀνήρ
γίνεται, ὅς τε θεαῖς εὐνάζεται ἀθανάτηισιν. }[4]

He prioritized what she said, which wasn’t true, over what he knew. After these self-abasing words, Anchises is silent for the rest of the hymn. The next hundred hymn verses are all descriptions of Aphrodite’s behavior and words she speaks. Men in intimate relation with women too often have no voice amid their internalized, socially constructed gender inferiority.

Anchises affirmed the importance of men’s sexuality. He didn’t want to live as a sexually impotent man. Men’s impotence is an epic disaster. Women in ancient Mesopotamia strove to overcome men’s impotence. Aphrodite became furious at men, such as Hippolytus, who didn’t pursue sex with women. As Anchises understood, men’s vital vigor matters. It’s essential for the humane continuation of humanity.[5]

Anchises believed that men’s sexuality cannot withstand a sexual relationship with a goddess. Given the power differential between a goddess and a mortal man, vigorous sex with a goddess could drain a man of all his life force if he lacked seminal abundance. Before Odysseus had sex with the goddess Circe, he worried that “when you have me stripped, you would make me vile and unmanly {ὄφρα με γυμνωθέντα κακὸν καὶ ἀνήνορα θήῃς}.”[6] Men serving the Anatolian mother goddess Cybele were castrated. Mortal men who have sex with goddesses must be confident that they are equal to goddesses in their sexuality.

Mortal men of course lack the immortality of goddesses. Aphrodite described two Trojan men made immortal for their divine lovers. One beloved man made immortal was the young, beautiful Ganymede. Zeus abducted him to be his cupbearer and boy-toy like Earinus was to the Roman Emperor Domitian. Ganymede remained perpetually a young man subservient to Zeus. That’s not a full, manly life.

Another beloved man made immortal was the young, beautiful Tithonus. The dawn goddess Eos abducted him to be her sexual servant. She procured for Tithonus immortality, but forget to secure for him agelessness. She loved his physical beauty while it lasted:

But when strands of gray hair started growing
from his beautiful head and noble chin,
Lady Eos stopped coming to his bed.
Instead, keeping him in her palace, she nourished him
with grain and ambrosia and gave him beautiful clothes.
When hateful old age was pressing fully hard on him
and he couldn’t move his limbs, much less lift them up,
in her heart she decided the best way to be indeed this:
she put him in a room and closed the shining doors upon him.
From there his voice endlessly pours out, but he has no vigor at all,
none like he formerly had in his supple limbs.

{ αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ πρῶται πολιαὶ κατέχυντο ἔθειραι
καλῆς ἐκ κεφαλῆς εὐηγενέος τε γενείου,
τοῦ δ᾿ ἤτοι εὐνῆς μὲν ἀπείχετο πότνια Ἠώς,
αὐτὸν δ᾿ αὖτ᾿ ἀτίταλλεν ἐνὶ μεγάροισιν ἔχουσα
σίτωι τ᾿ ἀμβροσίηι τε καὶ εἵματα καλὰ διδοῦσα.
ἀλλ᾿ ὅτε δὴ πάμπαν στυγερὸν κατὰ γῆρας ἔπειγεν,
οὐδέ τι κινῆσαι μελέων δύνατ᾿ οὐδ᾿ ἀναεῖραι,
ἥδε δέ οἱ κατὰ θυμὸν ἀρίστη φαίνετο βουλή·
ἐν θαλάμωι κατέθηκε, θύρας δ᾿ ἐπέθηκε φαεινάς.
τοῦ δ᾿ ἤτοι φωνὴ ῥέει ἄσπετος, οὐδέ τι κῖκυς
ἔσθ᾿ οἵη πάρος ἔσκεν ἐνὶ γναμπτοῖσι μέλεσσιν. }

Words honoring a man might make his glory immortal. Nonetheless, they are still merely words. Words are much less than a man in his full physical being.[7]

Aphrodite implicitly recognized that the statuses of the immortal Ganymede and the immortal Tithonus were inferior to her beloved mortal man Anchises. She didn’t seek for Anchises to be made immortal, or to be made immortal and ageless. As Zeus’s daughter, Aphrodite could get whatever she desired from her father, including immortality and agelessness for Anchises. Aphrodite, however, desired nothing other than the mortal man Anchises. She conceived with him their son Aeneas. According to later literature, she married Anchises and had at least one more child with him.[8]

Aphrodite understood that her ardent love for Anchises undermined female superiority and men’s worshiping of goddesses. She stated that she felt “terrible grief {αἰνὸν ἄχος}” that she fell in love with him. She grieved that her desire for him overcame her sense of superiority as a goddess to a mortal man. Speaking to him, she rationalized her love for him:

Of all mortal men, the closest to the gods
in both appearance and build are always those from your family line.

{ ἀγχίθεοι δὲ μάλιστα καταθνητῶν ἀνθρώπων
αἰεὶ ἀφ᾿ ὑμετέρης γενεῆς εἶδός τε φυήν τε· }

Although closest to the gods, Anchises’s appearance and build nonetheless were those of a mortal man. For mortal men, sexual relations with women go beyond physical pleasure, relational intrigue, and social status-jockeying. A mortal man provides his seminal blessing to a woman or goddess with awareness of his impending death. Because sexual reproduction is the only means for mortal men to extend their flesh beyond death, mortal men have higher stakes in sex than do gods. Women and goddesses sense mortal men’s higher sexual stakes — their more ardent earnestness — as an aspect of their appearance and build. No prayer to Zeus could preserve Anchises’s appearance and build while making him immortal. Mortality is an aspect of men’s beauty in sexual relations.[9]

Aphrodite grieved that she as a female divinity could no longer claim to be superior to male divinities. She complained to Anchises:

I’ll suffer huge disgrace among the male immortal gods,
disgrace forever, without end, all because of you.
They used to fear my intrigues and wiles by which I would get
all the male immortals coupling with mortal women.
My power of mind used to subdue them all.
But now my mouth can never again boast
about this among the male immortals. I’ve been led far astray,
terribly and unspeakably. I’ve gone out of my mind —
gotten a child under my waistband after bedding with a mortal man.

{ αὐτὰρ ἐμοὶ μέγ᾿ ὄνειδος ἐν ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσιν
ἔσσεται ἤματα πάντα διαμπερὲς εἵνεκα σεῖο,
οἳ πρὶν ἐμοὺς ὀάρους καὶ μήτιας, αἷς ποτε πάντας
ἀθανάτους συνέμειξα καταθνητῆισι γυναιξίν,
τάρβεσκον· πάντας γὰρ ἐμὸν δάμνασκε νόημα·
νῦν δὲ δὴ οὐκέτι μοι στόμα χείσεται ἐξονομῆναι
τοῦτο μετ᾿ ἀθανάτοισιν, ἐπεὶ μάλα πολλὸν ἀάσθην,
σχέτλιον, οὐκ ὀνομαστόν, ἀπεπλάγχθην δὲ νόοιο,
παῖδα δ᾿ ὑπὸ ζώνηι ἐθέμην βροτῶι εὐνηθεῖσα. }

Working in support of women’s dominance, modern classicists have refused to appreciate these verses’ distinctive gendering.[10] The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite signals the end to female supremacy among divinities. Female supremacy must end among mortals as well.

To maintain her ability to subdue male divinities, Aphrodite sought to suppress the truth that she had sex with Anchises. Displaying her understanding that she controls Zeus and the other gods, she threatened Anchises:

And if any mortal asks you
who was the mother that got your beloved son under her waistband,
be of mind to tell him as I command you.
Say that he is the child of a nymph with eyes like flower-buds,
one of them whom live on this beautiful, forest-covered mountain.
But if you speak out and boast with foolish heart
that you united in love with richly garlanded Aphrodite,
Zeus in his anger will strike you with a smoking thunderbolt.
So now, I have told you everything. Take note of it mindfully
and refrain from mentioning me. Fear the wrath of the gods.

{ ἢν δέ τις εἴρηταί σε καταθνητῶν ἀνθρώπων,
ἥ τις σοὶ φίλον υἱὸν ὑπὸ ζώνηι θέτο μήτηρ,
τῶι δὲ σὺ μυθεῖσθαι μεμνημένος ὥς σε κελεύω·
φάσθαι τοι νύμφης καλυκώπιδος ἔκγονον ειναι,
αἳ τόδε ναιετάουσιν ὄρος καταειμένον ὕληι.
εἰ δέ κεν ἐξείπηις καὶ ἐπεύξεαι ἄφρονι θυμῶι
ἐν φιλότητι μιγῆναι ἐϋστεφάνωι Κυθερείηι,
Ζεύς σε χολωσάμενος βαλέει ψολόεντι κεραυνῶι.
εἴρηταί τοι πάντα· σὺ δὲ φρεσὶ σῆισι νοήσας
ἴσχεο, μηδ᾿ ὀνόμαινε, θεῶν δ᾿ ἐποπίζεο μῆνιν. }

Because of systemic gender injustice, Anchises has good reason to fear the wrath of the gods for his illicit sexual relationship with Aphrodite. Men suffer from gender-biased punishment for illicit sexual relationships.[11] In fact, the goddess Calypso, repeatedly raping Odysseus, justified her action to Zeus’s messenger Hermes with a stark depiction of gender-biased punishment:

Hard-hearted are you, you gods, and quick to envy above all others.
You begrudge goddesses that they would mate with men openly
if one would take a mortal man as her own bedfellow.
When rosy-fingered Eos took to herself Orion,
long you gods that live at ease begrudged her,
until in Οrtygia chaste Artemis of the golden throne
assailed Orion with her gentle shafts and killed him.
When fair-haired Demeter yielded to her passion, with Iason
she lay in love in the thrice-plowed fallow land.
Not long being without knowledge of that affair,
Zeus with his bright thunderbolt struck Iason and killed him.

{ σχέτλιοί ἐστε, θεοί, ζηλήμονες ἔξοχον ἄλλων,
οἵ τε θεαῖς ἀγάασθε παρ᾿ ἀνδράσιν εὐνάζεσθαι
ἀμφαδίην, ἤν τίς τε φίλον ποιήσετ᾿ ἀκοίτην.
ὣς μὲν ὅτ᾿ Ὠρίων᾿ ἕλετο ῥοδοδάκτυλος Ἠώς,
τόφρα οἱ ἠγάασθε θεοὶ ῥεῖα ζώοντες,
ἧος ἐν Ὀρτυγίῃ χρυσόθρονος Ἄρτεμις ἁγνὴ
οἷς ἀγανοῖς βελέεσσιν ἐποιχομένη κατέπεφνεν.
ὣς δ᾿ ὁπότ᾿ Ἰασίωνι ἐυπλόκαμος Δημήτηρ,
ᾧ θυμῷ εἴξασα, μίγη φιλότητι καὶ εὐνῇ
νειῷ ἔνι τριπόλῳ· οὐδὲ δὴν ἦεν ἄπυστος
Ζεύς, ὅς μιν κατέπεφνε βαλὼν ἀργῆτι κεραυνῷ. }[12]

Whether it’s the goddess Eos and the mortal man Orion, or the goddess Demeter and the mortal man Iason, the one punished for an affair is the man. For revealing his sexual relationship with Aphrodite, Anchises potentially faced punishment like that inflicted upon Iason.

In a heroic step forward for gender equality, Anchises nonetheless revealed the affair of the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. The existence of this hymn implicitly testifies that Anchises defied Aphrodite’s threat and overcame the power of obscured female rule. Ancient Greek wisdom taught men their inferiority to goddesses:

Let no man fly to heaven,
nor attempt to marry Aphrodite.

{ [μή τις ἀνθ]ρώπων ἐς ὠρανὸν ποτήσθω
[μηδὲ πη]ρήτω γαμῆν τὰν Ἀφροδίταν }[13]

Anchises defied this ancient counsel that men should remain in their inferior status. He established that men can have sex with a goddess and still retain vital vigor.

Ancient Greek divinities honored Anchises. Helenus, a prophet of the god Apollo, addressed Anchises with deep respect:

You, worthy in marriage to the most superior, Venus herself, Anchises,
beloved of the gods, twice they saved you from the ruins of Troy.

{ coniugio, Anchise, Veneris dignate superbo,
cura deum, bis Pergameis erepte ruinis }[14]

Anchises’s son Aeneas addressed him as “the best father {pater optimus}.” To his son Aeneas, Anchises was “solace in every anxiety and misfortune {omnis curae casusque levamen}.” Anchises led the Trojans fleeing from the destruction of Troy, prayed to the gods on the Trojans’ behalf, and helped his desperate son as best as he could. All men and women need vigorous, vital fathers like Anchises.

Sexual desire, which need not be a means by which goddesses dominate men, is vitally important to the cosmos. The great Roman thinker Lucretius lacked sufficient appreciation for men’s personal sexual work of banging and bodily penetration. He nonetheless honored Aphrodite, whom the Romans knew as Venus:

Mother of Aeneas and his progeny, delight of humans and deities,
Venus the nurturing, you under the wheeling signs of heaven
permeate the ship-plowed sea, the fruit-bearing earth,
since through you all of the kind that breathe life
are conceived and rise up to look upon the sun’s light.

{ Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas,
alma Venus, caeli subter labentia signa
quae mare navigerum, quae terras frugiferentis
concelebras, per te quoniam genus omne animantum
concipitur visitque exortum lumina solis }[15]

Lucretius represents Venus as female, but as an abstraction rather than a person superior to male persons. In ancient thought, the sun with its joy-bringing light was both a male god and a male abstraction. Lucretius’s female Venus orients all life toward the male sun: “to look upon the sun’s light {visit … limina solis}.” Yet Venus herself has fundamental importance. She is necessary for life to encounter the male light: “without you nothing comes forth into the divine borders of light {nec sine te quicquam dias in luminis oras / exoritur}.” Lucretius’s hymn to Venus shows the harmony and fruitfulness that comes from overturning Aphrodite’s female supremacy.

While the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite shows progress toward freeing men from gyno-idolatry and achieving gender equality, much work remains to be done. Virgil with his Aeneid heroically attempted to raise Roman awareness of men’s vulnerable gender position. Over time the Aeneid regrettably has been read more and more gender-naively. Along with Lucretius himself, medieval Provencal men trobairitz, medieval Galician-Portugese women, and medieval Latin poets all sought to save men from gyno-idolatry. Their work, now largely unknown, hasn’t accomplished its purpose. Many persons still understand the world through gender myths such as those that the eminent French historian Georges Duby described.

Many men don’t understand that the goddesses they adore are actually human beings like themselves. To what hope can one cling? Anchises having sex with the love goddess Aphrodite overturned female divine supremacy. Perhaps a divine spirit might impregnate a fully human woman to save men finally and decisively from gyno-idolatry.

* * * * *

Read more:

• Zeus should have rejected Thetis’s plea for her son Achilles
• Odysseus through horrific storm left behind captivity under Calypso
• counter-alba: men’s love for women hastens dawning of new day

Notes:

[1] Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (Homeric Hymns 5, To Aphrodite {Εἲς Ἀφροδίτην}), vv. 1-6, ancient Greek text from West (2003), my English translation, benefiting from those of Nagy (2018), Rayor (2004), West (2003), Crudden (2001), Shelmerdine (1995), and Evelyn-White (1914).

The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, probably the oldest of the long Homeric hymns, is closest to the Iliad and the Odyssey in form and diction. West (2003) p. 14. West dates it to “the last third of the seventh century” BGC. Id. p. 16. Shelmerdine (1995) has many helpful notes on this poem for the non-specialist reader. Two important scholarly commentaries on it are Olson (2012) and Faulkner (2008a).

Zeus, the nominal head god in the charge of the cosmos, would become any beast and do anything in pursuit of his extra-marital amorous passions.

Subsequent quotes from the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite are similarly sourced. Those quotes above are from vv. 66-77 (She hurried toward Troy…), 81-90 (Aphrodite, the daughter of Zeus…), 108-11 (Anchises, most glorious of earth-born men…), 126-7 (Hermes said that, in the bed of Anchises…), 145-54 (If you are mortal…), 161-7 (When they went up upon the finely crafted bed…), 177-9 (Rise up, son of Dardanos!…), 185-90 (When I first set eyes on you, goddess…), 228-38 (But when strands of gray hair…), 200-1 (Of all mortal men, the closest to the gods…), 247-55 (I’ll suffer huge disgrace…), 281-90 (And if any mortal asks you…).

[2] The name Anchises {Ἀγχίσης} could be interpreted as a conflation of the first syllable of “near to the gods {ἀγχίθεος}” and the first syllable of “equal to the gods {ἰσόθεος}.” Nagy (2018), note 19. Anchises was nearly equal to the gods, but nonetheless a mortal man. Cf. Psalm 8:3-5.

[3] Men tend to be tired after they work hard for women. Men’s work, along with men’s need for rest, should be better appreciated.

[4] Displaying once again philologists’ penis problem, translations tend to obscure the contextual meaning of Anchises becoming “feeble {ἀμενηνός}”:

The situation in which Anchises finds himself in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite is one of a number of situations in which μένος could be lost. Its loss might manifest itself in a variety of ways: sexual activity implies sexual manifestation. When Anchises asks Aphrodite not to leave him living ἀμενηνός among men, therefore, he is voicing a fear of lifelong impotence.

Giacomelli (1980) p. 16.

In the ancient Greek festival Adonia {Ἀδώνια}, women mourned the death of Adonis, another mortal man who coupled in love with Aphrodite. The ancient gardens of Adonis, in which lettuce quickly withered, plausibly reflected concern about men becoming impotent. For a poor-dears interpretation of women celebrating the Adonia, Reed (1995).

[5] Modern scholarship, particularly that in the misandristic tradition, has created new variants on deeply rooted disparagement of penises. Using the ideological term “phallus,” Bergren claimed that the phallus is ‘the instrument by which the female is “tamed.”’ Bergren (1989) p. 10. Cf. Empress Theodora and Empress Messalina. On the verb “tame {δαμνάω},” see, e.g. Aphrodite “tames the nations of mortals {τ᾽ ἐδαμάσσατο φῦλα καταθνητῶν ἀνθρώπων}.” Homerica Hymn to Aphrodite, v. 3. Bergren extended her claims about the phallus to categorical disparagement of men:

From the perspective of an Anchises – of any man whom Aphrodite and eros deceive – the inside of the woman, her truth, remains impenetrable even to intercourse. In its desire to tame, the phallus is blinded.

Id. p. 16. Men with their penises don’t desire to “tame” women. Even when deceived by eros, a man can know a woman through conversation and sexual intercourse with her. Eros nor more blinds the penis than it blinds the vagina.

Modern scholars have interpreted men’s gender burdens so as to bestialize men’s sexuality. Men historically have been responsible for hunting, a dangerous but important task. The burden of that task has come to include sexual disparagement of men:

Anchises’ masculinity is also expressed in the description of his bedspread, which consists of the “skins of bears and deep-roaring lions / which he himself had killed in the high mountains” (158-159). Hunting involves the domination of nature in a manner analogous to the sexual domination of a female and is a culturally widespread feature of male coming-of-age rituals.

Schein (2012) p. 301, n. 21. Hunting involves killing animals. Men having sex with women involves mutual pleasure. Schein’s absurd analogy seems merely to signal support for dominant, oppressive gender ideology.

[6] Homer (attributed), Odyssey, 10.341, Greek text of Murray (1919) via Perseus, my English translation, benefiting from those of id., Fagles (1996), and Lombardo (2000). See similarly Odyssey 10.301. Here are relevant textual notes.

[7] Aphrodite surely appreciated men’s physical bodies. Hesiod in his Theogony interpreted a traditional epithet of Aphrodite, “smile-loving {φιλομμειδής},” as “genital-loving”:

Hesiod interprets the first half of the name Ἀφροδίτη as though it were derived from ἀφρός (foam), and the second half of the traditional epithet φιλομμειδής (“smile-loving,” here translated as “genial” for the sake of the pun) as though it were derived from μῆδος (genitals).

Most (2018) p. 19, note 10, commenting on Theogony, v. 200: “and genital-loving because she came forth from the genitals {ἠδὲ φιλομμειδέα, ὅτι μηδέων ἐξεφαάνθη}” (my English translation).

Aphrodite’s mythic exempla (paradeigmata) show immortalized men living lives inferior to those of Anchises. Aphrodite seems to be attempting to convince Anchises that he shouldn’t wish to become an immortal. Cf. Maravela (2018), which interprets the paradeigmata to be implicitly about Zeus. The issue, however, is not about Zeus’s superiority to Aphrodite, but about Aphrodite’s superiority to Zeus.

[8] On Aphrodite conceiving Aeneas with Anchises, Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, vv. 198-9, 255-79. That conception is also recounted in Iliad 2.819-21, 5.311-3 and Hesiod, Theogony, vv. 1008-10.

Other than the hymnist’s coda, the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite ends with Aphrodite flying off into the windy sky. This departure doesn’t mean that Aphrodite abandoned Anchises forever. Cf. Maravela (2014) p. 25. Aphrodite promised to return to Anchises on the fifth anniversary of Aeneas’s birth. Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite v. 277. Aeneid 3.475 suggests that Aphrodite married Anchises. In Iliad 5.311-3, Aphrodite intervenes to save her beloved adult son Aeneas. Moreover, Apollodorus recorded Aphrodite and Anchises having another child, Lyrus:

Assaracus had by his wife Hieromneme, daughter of Simoeis, a son Capys, who had by his wife Themiste, daughter of Ilus, a son Anchises, whom Aphrodite met in love’s dalliance, and to whom she bore Aeneas and Lyrus, who died childless.

{ Ἀσσαράκου δὲ καὶ Ἱερομνήμης τῆς Σιμόεντος Κάπυς, τοῦ δὲ καὶ Θεμίστης τῆς Ἴλου Ἀγχίσης, ᾧ δι᾿ ἐρωτικὴν ἐπιθυμίαν Ἀφροδίτη συνελθοῦσα Αἰνείαν ἐγέννησε καὶ Λύρον, ὃς ἄπαις ἀπέθανεν. }

Apollodorus, The Library {Bibliotheca} 3.12.2-3, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified insubstantially) from Frazer (1921).

[9] Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, vv. 200-1, are subsequently echoed in Aphrodite’s lament about Anchises:

If only you could stay the way you are in appearance and form,
living and being called my husband,
then grief would not envelop me with my cunning mind.

{ ἀλλ᾿ εἰ μὲν τοιοῦτος ἐὼν εἶδός τε δέμας τε
ζώοις ἡμέτερός τε πόσις κεκλημένος εἴης,
οὐκ ἂν ἔπειτά μ᾿ ἄχος πυκινὰς φρένας ἀμφικαλύπτοι. }

Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, vv. 241-3. On the epic phrases “in appearance and form {εἶδός τε δέμας τε}” and “in appearance and build {εἶδός τε φυήν τε},” Shakeshaft (2019) pp. 15-6. Homeric beauty is closely associated with affects, not all of which are attractive. In the Iliad, Achilles preparing to kill Hector appears “godlike, terrifying and beautiful.” Id. p. 21. On the idea of beauty more generally, Konstan (2015).

Scholars have struggled to understand why Aphrodite doesn’t seek to have Anchises be made immortal and ageless. One scholar wondered about Aphrodite:

And why does she not at least mention to Anchises the possibility of appealing to Zeus, if only to insist upon its futility? It is a question of the rhetoric of silence.

Bergren (1989) p. 35. Bergren then offered an intricate explanation that obscures women’s rule and Aphrodite’s desire for a mortal man with his mortal sexual distinctiveness:

Without the goddess’s silence in the face of her own stated wish, without her failure to ask for what her own story implies she can and must ask for, Zeus cannot demonstrate absolute sovereignty over the goddess’s desire. She must be allowed to voice her wish so that we can know what she wants.

Id. What did Anchises want other than not to be made impotent? The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite is also silent about what he wants. Bergren’s silence about Aphrodite’s desire for a mortal men seems necessary to uphold academic devaluation of mortal men.

Scholars have pondered at length Aphrodite’s silence about what she wants, but not Anchises’s silence about what he wants. For a review and analysis of what she wants, but not what he wants, Olson (2012) pp. 243-4. Scholars have similarly failed to consider, with respect to men’s desires, why Odysseus didn’t stay in Phaeacia and marry the lovely and kind-hearted princess Nausicaa.

[10] Scholars assume that Aphrodite will never again prompt mating between immortals and mortals. Bergren (1989) p. 35; Clay (1989) pp. 166-70, 192-3. Schein declared:

By telling how she is forced to stop making male gods mate with mortal women and goddesses with mortal men, the Hymn tells one small part of the story of Zeus’ increasing authority and of the ordering of the cosmos as we mortals know it.

Schein (2012) p. 297. Aphrodite, however, spoke only of limits on her power to induce (immortal) gods to couple with (mortal) women. She said nothing about limits on her power to induce goddesses to couple with (mortal) men. Careful analysis suggests that perhaps gods didn’t stop coupling with mortal women: “the case for the poem narrating the end of unions between gods and mortals has at least been overstated.” Faulkner (2008b) p. 16. In referring to unions between gods and mortals, Faulkner seems to include both gods coupling with mortal women and goddesses coupling with mortal men. His argument largely addresses gods coupling with mortal women. The case for couplings continuing between goddesses and mortal men is even stronger.

[11] As if willfully ignorant of the massive gender protrusion in persons authoritatively punished (incarcerated) today, a scholar naively asked:

But can Anchises be allowed to tell the world that he fathered the child of a goddess with impunity? Aphrodite’s specific threat appears to allude to the tradition that Zeus did indeed punish Anchises for the very union he caused. Anchises does not suffer sterility or death for his love-making with the goddess, but neither does he escape entirely unscathed. Why would Zeus punish the man for what he made the goddess make the man do?

Bergren (1989) p. 40. Men today are punished with patent injustice. Why wouldn’t that practice go all the way back to Zeus? Bergren provided an answer that merely distracts from gender injustice against men:

If there are never again to be liaisons between mortals and immortals, if Aphrodite has been stopped from collapsing the cosmos of Zeus into her world of mixture, there is no need to validate the prohibition against divine / human intercourse with punishment of the mortal male. In his blasting of Anchises, Zeus himself proves that he must keep this prohibition alive and thus that the power of Aphrodite has not been completely subordinated to his order of meaningful distractions.

Bergren (1989) p. 40. Aphrodite isn’t actually subordinate to Zeus, nor is Juno to Jove, nor are women to men. Moreover, the Hymn to Aphrodite doesn’t establish that “there are never again to be liaisons between mortals and immortals.” See previous note. The Hymn to Aphrodite clearly shows that men are punished unjustly. Its reception shows that scholars are extraordinarily reluctant to acknowledge the reality that men are punished unjustly.

[12] Homer (attributed), Odyssey 5.118-28, Greek text of Murray (1919) via Perseus, my English translation, benefiting from those of id., Fagles (1996), and Lombardo (2000).

[13] Alcman, Fragments 1.16-17 (from 1 P. Louvr. E 3320), ancient Greek text and English translation (modified insubstantially) from Campbell (1988) pp. 362-3.

[14] Virgil, Aeneid 3.475-6, Latin text of Greenough (1900), my English translation, benefiting from those of Fagles (2006) and Fairclough & Gould (1999). The subsequent two short quotes above are from Aeneid 3.710 (the best father) and 3.709 (solace in every anxiety and misfortune). Scholars have failed to recognize the importance of Anchises in the Aeneid for reception of the Hymn to Aphrodite. See, e.g. Faulkner, Vergados & Schwab (2016). Anchises’s heroic step forward for gender equality has been marginalized and trivialized under modern oppressive myth.

Some ancient literature indicates that Zeus struck Anchises with a thunderbolt. The thunderbolt made Anchises lame or blind, but didn’t kill him. Schein (2012) p. 296, n. 5 and associated text. The Aeneid provides an alternate, more critically important tradition about Anchises’s fate.

[15] Lucretius, On the nature of things {De rerum natura} 1.1-5, Latin text from Rouse & Smith (2002), my English translation, benefiting from those of id. and Esolen (1995). The subsequent two short quotes above are from De rerum natura 1.5 (to look upon the sun’s light) and 1.22-3 (without you nothing comes forth into the divine borders of light).

The Latin verb concelebro (from the textual concelebras) I’ve translated as “permeate.” Other translations of it are “fill with yourself” in Rouse & Smith (2002) and “rouse” in Esolen (1995). This Latin word seems to have been troublesome in English translations historically. Matulis (2022).

Lucretius apparently adapted his hymn to Venus from a lost hymn to Aphrodite that was the proem to Empedocles’s Physics. Lucretius’s hymn to Venus was also influenced by the Stoic Cleanthes’s Hymn to Zeus. Campbell (2014). On the influence of Empedocles’s hymn to Aphrodite on Lucretius’s hymn to Venus, Sedley (1998), chapters 1-2.

[images] (1) A goddess (a Muse) eyes Apollo with her female gaze in a painting on a covered drinking cup (kylix) made about 460 BGC in Athens, Greece. This kylix is preserved as accession # 00.356 in the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) Boston. Credit: Henry Lillie Pierce Fund. Source image from the MFA Boston’s website. More information about this kylix. (2) Aphrodite approaching Anchises, as suggested by verses from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Epipsychidion. Painted by William Blake Richmond about 1890. Preserved as accession # WAG 3082 in the National Museums Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery. Image via Wikimedia Commons. (3) Statuette of Aphrodite rising from the sea (Anadyomene). Made in the eastern Mediterranean between 100 BGC and 70 GC. Preserved as accession # 1982.286 in the MFA Boston. Credit: Classical Department Exchange Fund. Source image from MFA Boston website. MFA Boston has a rich collection of Aphrodite artifacts. Aphrodite Anadyomene inspired Luxorius’s fine tribute to Saint Marina. (4) Anchises and Aphrodite with their baby Aeneas. Marble panel on the south building of Aphrodisias’s Sebasteion. Made c. 20-60 GC. Preserved in the Aphrodisias Museum (near Geyre, Turkey). Source image thanks to Dosseman and Wikimedia Commons. More information on the sculptures at Aphrodisias. (5) Cypriote terracotta figurine of Aphrodite-Astarte holding her breasts. Made 650–550 BGC. Preserved as accession # 72.157 in the MFA Boston. Source image from MFA Boston.

References:

Bergren, Ann. 1989. “The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite: Tradition and Rhetoric, Praise and Blame.” Classical Antiquity. 8(1): 1–41. Slightly revised as chapter 7 in Bergren (2008).

Bergren, Ann. 2008. Weaving Truth: Essays on Language and the Female in Greek Thought. Hellenic Studies Series 19. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies.

Campbell, David A., ed and trans. 1988. Anacreon. Greek Lyric, Volume II: Anacreon, Anacreontea, Choral Lyric from Olympus to Alcman. Loeb Classical Library 143. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Campbell, Gordon. 2014. “Lucretius, Empedocles, and Cleanthes.” Pp. 26-60 in Myrto Garani and David Konstan, eds. The Philosophizing Muse: the Influence of Greek Philosophy on Roman Poetry. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Book review by Francesca Romana Berno.

Clay, Jenny Strauss. 1989. The Politics of Olympus: Form and Meaning in the Major Homeric Hymns. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. Review by Christian Werner.

Crudden, Michael, trans. 2001. The Homeric Hymns. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Review by Stephen Evans.

Esolen, Anthony M., trans. 1995. Lucretius. On the Nature of Things: De rerum natura. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Evelyn-White, Hugh G. 1914. The Homeric Hymns and Homerica. London: William Heinemann Ltd.

Fagles, Robert, trans. 1996. Homer. The Odyssey. New York: Penguin Publishing Group.

Fagles, Robert, trans. 2006. Virgil. The Aeneid. New York: Viking.

Fairclough, H. Rushton, revised by G. P. Goold. 1999. Virgil. Eclogues. Georgics. Aeneid: Books 1-6. Loeb Classical Library 63. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Faulkner. Andrew. 2008a. The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite: Introduction, Text, and Commentary. Oxford Classical Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Review by Laura Carrara.

Faulkner, Andrew. 2008b. “The Legacy of Aphrodite: Anchises’ Offspring in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite.” The American Journal of Philology. 129(1): 1–18.

Faulkner, Andrew, Athanassios Vergados, and Andreas Schwab, eds. 2016. The Reception of the Homeric Hymns. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Table of Contents.

Frazer, James G. ed, and trans. 1921. Apollodorus. The Library, Volume II: Book 3.10-end. Epitome. Loeb Classical Library 122. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Giacomelli, Anne. 1980. “Aphrodite and After.” Phoenix. 34(1): 1–19.

Konstan, David. 2015. Beauty: The Fortunes of an Ancient Greek Idea. New York: Oxford University Press.

Lombardo, Stanley, trans. 2000. Homer. Odyssey. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Most of Lombardo’s translation is in the The Essential Odyssey (2007).

Maravela, Anastasia. 2014. “Tongue-tied Aphrodite: the paradeigmata in the Hymn to Aphrodite.” Pp. 15-27 in Eyjólfur K. Emilsson, Anastasia Maravela and Mathilde Skoie, eds. Paradeigmata: Studies in Honour of Øivind Andersen. Papers and Monographs from the Norwegian Institute at Athens Series 4, Volume 2, Athens: The Norwegian Institute at Athens. Alternate source.

Matulis, Harri Haralds. 2022. ‘Comparison of Six English translations of Lucretius “De rerum natura.”‘ Research Report from Digital Humanities Project Course, University of Helskinki. Github repository. Web presentation.

Most, Glenn W., ed. and trans. 2018. Hesiod. Theogony. Works and Days. Testimonia. Loeb Classical Library 57. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Murray, A. T., ed. and trans., revised by George E. Dimock. 1919. Homer. Odyssey. Volume I: Books 1-12. Loeb Classical Library 105. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Nagy, Gregory, trans. 2018. “Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite.” The Center for Hellenic Studies. Online.

Olson, S. Douglas. 2012. The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite and Related Texts: Text, Translation and Commentary. Texte und Kommentare 39. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Review by Adrian Kelly.

Rayor, Diane J. 2004. The Homeric Hymns: A Translation with Introduction and Notes. Updated edition, 2014. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Review by Stephen Evans.

Reed, Joseph D. 1995. “The Sexuality of Adonis.” Classical Antiquity. 14(2): 317‒47.

Rouse, W. H. D., and Martin Ferguson Smith, eds. and trans. 2002. Lucretius. De rerum natura. Loeb Classical Library 181. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Schein, Seth L. 2012. “Divine and Human in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite.” Pp. 295-312 in Richard Alain Bouchon and Pascale Brillet-Dubois, eds. Hymnes de la Grèce Antique: Approches Littéraires et Historiques. Actes du Colloque International de Lyon, 19-21 Juin 2008. Lyon: Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée.

Sedley, David. 1998. Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Review by Gordon Campbell.

Shakeshaft, Hugo. 2019. “The Terminology for Beauty in the Iliad and the Odyssey.” The Classical Quarterly. 69(1): 1–22. Alternate source.

Shelmerdine, Susan C., trans. 1995. The Homeric Hymns. Newburyport, MA: Focus Information Group. Review by Ingrid Holmberg.

West, Martin L., ed. and trans. 2003. Homeric Hymns. Homeric Apocrypha. Lives of Homer. Loeb Classical Library 496. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Review by R. Garner.