followed details pretty faithfully. It has been noticed for instance
that the feet of the Venus are larger than those of the average woman of
to-day and the head is unusually small. In fact this close adherence to
actual life may be the main secret of the charm of the statue, for on
account of this reality there is a personal element in it, and we can
almost read the character of the woman who stood as a model. We see at
once an absence of any and every lascivious trait quite common to Venus
figures of a later period, and in the face there is a remarkable
unconsciousness of self.
We may assume that the artist belonged to the famous school of Rhodes or
to the group of those artists who made Pergamum famous with their work,
but no statement can be made with certainty. Upon archeological grounds
we cannot place the date of the statue earlier than about 400 B. C., nor
later than the first part of the second century B. C., and this opinion
is mainly based upon the excellent workmanship, the peculiar warmth of
the skin as well as the classical simplicity of the statue as a whole.
It appears that this valuable piece of art is worthy of a Phidias, a
Praxiteles, a Lysippos, or a Scopas.
Having searched art books in vain for an explanation of the history of
the Venus of Milo and its tragic fate, we will here briefly recapitulate
what the simple facts of the statue, its workmanship, its sad and
mutilated condition and also its place of discovery, can teach us.
The statue shows a few scratches which indicate that it may have been
dragged along the ground, but the marble bears innumerable indentations
which can scarcely be explained otherwise than as due to blows with
heavy sticks or clubs. The story of M. Ferry recapitulated in the
foregoing chapter does not suffice. Some mutilations may be due to a
rough handling in transportation, but the scratches are few and the
cudgel marks are many. Apparently the statue has stood an attack of a
mob of infuriated enemies who hated the goddess and regarded her as a
devil--as the patron deity of the worst of sins. She must have endured a
terrible persecution at the hands of implacable enemies, and these
enemies can only have been Christians.
It is obvious that the statue has been hidden, and we need not doubt
that it was concealed by pagan worshipers who wanted to preserve the
effigy of the goddess. The marks of brutal treatment visible all over
the body of the statue indicate that the fair goddess had been most
furiously belabored as if in corporeal chastisement with rods and any
weapons that happened to be at hand. The arms are broken and we must
assume that the statue was upset and thrown from its pedestal. Probably
the goddess fell on her right shoulder which is crushed, while the left
arm exhibits a smooth fracture as if it had been broken by the
concussion of the fall. If the arms are not the fragments enumerated by
Count Marcellus and now preserved in the Louvre, they must have been
lost; possibly they were smashed to small fragments.
Can we assume that the provincial population of a small island could
have produced the greatest piece of art of antiquity? Could a few
farmers have engaged a sculptor who must have been the equal of Phidias
and Scopas? If the statue had represented the tutelary goddess of the
island, would not some Greek author have alluded to its existence; would
not Pausanias have mentioned the fact? The idea that the statue was of
indigenous workmanship is a mere assumption and by no means probable.
But whence can the statue have come, and how did it find its way to this
little island in the Ægean Sea?
This question is not unanswerable; we need only consider the history of
the island and its political connections.
The island of Milo was too small a place to have a temple that could
afford a statue of such extraordinary value, and we must assume that it
was carried thither on a ship. Athens is the only place that we can
think of which might have been its original home.
The early centuries of the Christian era were troublesome times.
Lawlessness prevailed and a general decadence had set in, which was due
to the many civil wars in both Greece and Italy. The establishment of
the Roman empire checked the progress of degeneration but only in
external appearance. In reality a moral and social deterioration
continued to take an ever stronger hold upon the people. The old
religion broke down and the new faith was by no means so ideal in the
beginning as it is frequently represented by writers of ecclesiastical
history.
Our notions concerning the vicious character of
[Illustration: VENUS ON THE SWAN.
A kylix from Capua.]
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.
[Illustration: HEAD OF THE VENUS OF MILO.
Profile view.]
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
[Illustration: HEAD OF THE VENUS OF MILO.
Front view.]
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 MEANING OF “APHRODITE.”
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
[Illustration: HEAVENLY AND WORLDLY LOVE.
By Titian.]
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.
THE CULT OF APHRODITE.
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
[Illustration: BIRTH OF VENUS.
Relief found in the Villa Ludovisi.]
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
[Illustration: DETAIL FROM THE LUDOVISI RELIEF.]
“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.
[Illustration:
WINTER. SUMMER.
End pieces of the Ludovisi relief.]
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.
[Illustration: VENUS AND ANCHISES.]
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]
THE GODDESS OF WAR.