ABSTRACT
It is be conceded that the celestial Aphrodite is not only earlier but also more dignified; she engenders or represents spiritual Love, while the people's Aphrodite is concerned with affairs of the flesh. As it was, the assimilation of the Italian Venus to the Greek Aphrodite was effected effortlessly. To understand Homer's Aphrodite people must look beyond the story of her wound or what is said about the girdle borrowed by Hera and remember the account of the meeting between the goddess and Helen. Aphrodite's beauty is no mere cosmetic beauty: it strikes, confounds and overwhelms. This idea emerges clearly when people compares the lines from the Iliad with the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, in which an unknown bard describes the goddess's love for Anchises, which resulted in the birth of Aeneas. It starts by describing Zeus's plan to exact revenge on Aphrodite on the grounds that, since both gods and mortals are subject to her goad.
