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Aphrodite is the Goddess of love, charged only with one duty, unlike
the other Olympian gods and goddesses. Her job was to incite desire in
the hearts of mortals and nothing else. She had no parents, but was born
out of the sea foam that formed when Cronus killed his father, the titan
Uranus, and flung him into the sea; the blood drifted into the sun and
whitened into that foam. The tall yellow-haired maiden came ashore at Cyprus
and thus love was born out of the grisly murder, illustrating the Greek's
belief in the final indestructibility of life. Aphrodite was courted by
all the gods, but surprised all in marrying the ugliest of them all, Hephaestus,
the lame smith god. She bore many children under many fathers, but she
always came back to Hephaestus and he always forgave her. The apple, rose,
myrtle and the dove were sacred to her.
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