ABSTRACT
Eros and Aphrodite represent natural energies that like the Cyclopses' island must be ordered by "technologies" limiting their destructiveness and exploiting their fertilizing power. As forces of fertility, Eros and Aphrodite create the springtime loveliness of the earth, including the sexual beauty of humans. One technology, agriculture, is used to legitimize another, marriage, both activities assuming that nature must be ordered and controlled for its creative energy to be exploited. In Apollo's reasoning, the cultural relationship created by marriage, paternity, takes precedence over the natural one, maternity. The Adonia occupies one end of a spectrum of ritual technology whose other end is the Thesmophoria. If marriage is a cultural "technology", then the energy it uses is the sexual power of Aphrodite, the mutual desire of husband for wife and wife for husband that strengthened the household.
