Aphrodite

Aphrodite is by tradition ascribed parentage from Uranus, the sky, whose genitals Cronus threw into the sea, from whence Aphrodite rose fully grown from the foam and spray. From the very moment of her birth, she was indescribably beautiful, and was sought after by men and women alike. She is the Goddess of love and of lust, of high-minded devotion and base carnal desire, and while the prudish may call her by two names to try to separate the two, she is but a single Goddess. Wedded to Hephaestus by Zeus, she and Ares have carried on an affair for millennia that has more than once resulted in humiliation for all concerned. Eldest of all the Theoi, she does not chafe beneath Zeus’ rule—for after all, does not lust often rule the mind of the greatest among the Theoi?

In Rome, she was called Venus, and though little about her changed she was greatly honored as the mother of the Roman people, opposite Ares, here called Mars. Divine mother of the hero Aeneas who was said to have predated even Romulus and Remus, she was also claimed as an ancestress by none other than Julius Caesar himself — a claim that his heir, Augustus, played to the hilt in the struggle to become Rome’s first emperor.

The modern World reveres Aphrodite in 1,000 different ways each and every day. The symbol of Venus may be found on labels for cosmetics, used in advertising, and even used to denote women as a whole (something which frustrates the other Goddesses to no end). Beauty is king in the worlds of fashion and film, and if it is not the same beauty that was celebrated long ago, Aphrodite is more than able to adapt. She is beloved, if by proxy, and Aphrodite in turns loves the World back.