Page:Greek and Roman Mythology.djvu/93

 THE GREEK GODS 79 justice; (2) the hostile divinities of war and strife ; (3) the divinities of fate, who determine all that happens to man. Closely related to the genuine personifications of these spiritual forces are those attributes of older divinities of nature which have been developed into independent fig- ures (e.g. Athena-Kike). And in the case of some of these very divinities of nature (e.g. Aphrodite and Ares), even in foreign lands before their reception into the circle of the Greek gods, purely spiritual functions came so prominently into the foreground as almost entirely to supplant their older signification in the natural world. It was not until a comparatively late period that a similar result followed with such indigenous divinities as the Charites and Horae. 1. THE DIVINITIES OF LOVE, SOCIAL INTERCOURSE, ORDER, AND JUSTICE 105. In Greece Aphrodite (Lat. Venus) was preemi- nently the goddess of love and of the beauty that inspires love. When in Homer she is derided by her sister Athena on account of her unwarlike nature, Zeus himself, smiling gently, comes to her defense with the explanation, Not upon thee were bestowed, dear daughter, the deeds of war ; Order thou rather, as ever, the delightful affairs of marriage. So Eros, love's longing personified, is regarded as her constant companion, and according to the later idea, as her son. In their train are found Peitho ( ( persuasion 7 ) and the Charites, to whom Aphrodite is otherwise closely related ; for in the Iliad Charis is the wife of Hephaestus, while according to the Odyssey Aphrodite herself occupies this position. Her parents were Zeus and Dione ; while Hebe, the representative of the bloom of youth, was the