Aphrodite in our home – Venus in the Getty Museum

Aphrodite is the ancient Greek goddess of love and beauty whose Roman doppelganger is Venus.

In Naples en route from South Africa to Canada in 1974

In the background of this picture is Vesuvius, and it was in Pompeii where we went without lunch to buy our little statue at the start of our married life together.

The word aphros means “foam” which, according to the Greek poet Hesiod in 700 BC, was produced by the severed genitals of Uranus after his son Cronus threw them into the ocean, and from which Aphrodite was born.

The castration of Uranus, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, Italy

The birth of Venus, Boticelli, 1496

Ten years later, when Lil and I gazed at the well-known Birth of Venus at the Uffizi in 1984, we were oblivious of her gruesome origin and countless affairs with both gods and mortals. For us, Aphrodite (Venus) was simply the goddess of love.

These three very similar statuettes portray Aphrodite. The original was probably the small terracotta sculpture in the center that is now in the British Museum and dates back more than 2200 years. The bronze on the left, also in the British Museum, is an equally old copy. Our little statue is a fine art reproduction and, although there must have been hundreds produced around the time we bought it, the beauty of the original is faithfully conveyed.

Aphrodite was the only beautiful presence in the scrubby little furnished apartment above a convenience store that was our first rented home upon arriving in Canada.
She was wrapped, packed, transported and unpackaged fourteen or fifteen times as we moved from apartment to house, from city to city in Canada and later to Jamaica where she watched our armed robbery but was herself left unscathed. Then to the United States to watch the children grow. Then back to Ontario followed by Quebec, only to return to Ohio followed by Arizona, then back to Ohio where Aphrodite, now fifty years old, is quite at home in our retirement community.

Is love ever out of place?