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Patar knight  · CC BY-SA 3.0

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Two fathers for Aphrodite

One goddess, two accounts of where she came from, and neither is a correction of the other. The clearest demonstration on the site of why a genealogy needs a by-line.

  • 6 steps
  • Deities, Texts, Figures, Traditions
  • A note at each step
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  1. Ricardo André Frantz (User:Tetraktys) · CC BY-SA 3.0

    Step 1 of 6: Deity

    Aphrodite

    Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation

    Start with the goddess. The profile shows every relationship the records hold for her — and note what almost all of them say in the small print: “Account not stated”. Wikidata records that her father is Zeus without recording which poem says so, and this site will not invent the attribution.

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  1. Aphrodite Family tree
  2. Theogony Text
  3. Hesiod Figure
  4. Zeus Deity
  5. Ancient Greek religion Tradition

  1. Again First seen at step 1

    Step 2 of 6: Deity · Family tree

    Aphrodite

    Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation

    Her family, drawn. The section is headed “Kinship in an account”, not “Family”, and the line colour is the one this site reserves for a parentage a named source tells. Two accounts of her origin have been current since antiquity: in Hesiod’s Theogony she rises from the sea foam, with no mother and a father only in the sense that Uranus’ severed flesh fell into the water; in Homer’s Iliad she is plainly the daughter of Zeus and Dione. A single tree cannot hold both, so a single tree is the wrong drawing.

    Open the family tree Continue to Theogony
  2. Sailko · CC BY 3.0

    Step 3 of 6: Text

    Theogony

    Poem by Hesiod, describing the origins and genealogies of the greek gods

    The Theogony itself, and the first thing the page tells you is which clock its date is on. Hesiod wrote around the eighth or seventh century BCE. That is a date for the poem. It is not a date for Aphrodite, who has none, and it is not a floor on her worship, which the archaeology puts earlier than the poem.

    Open the profile Continue to Hesiod
  3. Unknown artist · Public domain

    Step 4 of 6: Figure

    Hesiod

    Ancient Greek poet of the archaic period

    And the poet. A work has an author, a composition date, editions, translations and manuscripts, and all five are separate records with separate dates and separate rights. The habit of collapsing them is how a Victorian translation ends up described as an ancient text.

    Open the profile Continue to Zeus
  4. Jamain · CC BY-SA 4.0

    Step 5 of 6: Deity

    Zeus

    Greek god of the sky and king of the gods

    Zeus, the father in the other account. Follow the relationship back from his page and you find the same statement read from the other end — one statement, two pages, and the row marked so you can tell which side it lives on. That is what makes it safe to click.

    Open the profile Continue to Ancient Greek religion
  5. Patar knight · CC BY-SA 3.0

    Step 6 of 6: Tradition

    Ancient Greek religion

    Religion in ancient Greece

    The tradition both accounts belong to. It has no founder, no single canon and no fixed roster of gods, and the page does not offer fields for any of them: an empty “Founder” row would be a claim that something is missing.

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