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Aphrodite ( ; Greek: ) is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation. Her Roman equivalent is the goddess ラテン語:Venus.〔''Larousse Desk Reference Encyclopedia'', The Book People, Haydock, 1995, p. 215.〕 She is identified with the planet Venus. As with many ancient Greek deities, there is more than one story about her origins. According to Hesiod's ''Theogony'', she was born when Cronus cut off Uranus's genitals and threw them into the sea, and she arose from the sea foam (''aphros''). According to Homer's ''Iliad'', she is the daughter of Zeus and Dione. According to Plato (''Symposium'', 180e), these two origins were of entirely separate entities: Aphrodite Ourania and Aphrodite Pandemos. Because of her beauty, other gods feared that their rivalry over her would interrupt the peace among them and lead to war, so Zeus married her to Hephaestus, who, because of his ugliness and deformity, was not seen as a threat. Aphrodite had many lovers—both gods, such as Ares, and men, such as Anchises. She played a role in the Eros and Psyche legend, and later was both Adonis's lover and his surrogate mother. Many lesser beings were said to be children of Aphrodite. Aphrodite is also known as Cytherea (''Lady of Cythera'') and Cypris (''Lady of Cyprus'') after the two cult sites, Cythera and Cyprus, which claimed to be her place of birth. Myrtle, doves, sparrows, horses, and swans were said to be sacred to her. The ancient Greeks identified her with the Ancient Egyptian goddess Hathor.〔Reginald Eldred Witt, ''Isis in the ancient world'' (Johns Hopkins University Press) 1997:125. ISBN 0-8018-5642-6〕 Aphrodite had many other names, such as Acidalia, Cytherea, and Cerigo, each used by a different local cult of the goddess in Greece. The Greeks recognized all of these names as referring to the single goddess Aphrodite, despite the slight differences in what these local cults believed the goddess demanded of them. The Attic philosophers of the 4th century, however, drew a distinction between a celestial Aphrodite (Aphrodite Urania) of transcendent principles, and a separate, "common" Aphrodite who was the goddess of the people (Aphrodite Pandemos). ==Etymology== ''Aphrodite'', perhaps altered after ''aphrós'' () "foam", stems from the more archaic Cretan ''Aphordíta'' and Cypriot ''Aphorodíta'', and was probably ultimately borrowed from Cypriot Phoenician.〔Robert Beekes, ''Etymological Dictionary of Greek'', Vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 179.〕 Herodotus and Pausanias recorded that Aphrodite's oldest non-Greek temple lay in the Syrian city of Ascalon where she was known as ''Ourania'', an obvious reference to Astarte. This suggests that Aphrodite's cult located at Cythera-Cyprus came from the Phoenicians. The fact that one of Aphrodite's chief centers of worship remained on the southwestern Cypriot coast settled by Phoenicians, where the goddess had long been worshiped as ''Ashtart'' (ʻštrt), points to the transmission of Aphrodite's original cult from Phoenicia to Cyprus then to mainland Greece.〔Pausanias 1.14.6-7, W.S. Jones (trans.), Pausianas: Descriptions of Greece (London, 1931).〕 So far, however, attempts to derive the name from Aphrodite's Semitic precursor have been inconclusive. A number of false etymologies have been proposed through the ages. Hesiod derives ''Aphrodite'' from ''aphrós'' "foam," interpreting the name as "risen from the foam".〔Hesiod, ''Theogony'', 176ff.〕〔Kretschmer ''KZ'' 33 (1895): 267.〕 Janda (2010), accepting this as genuine, claims the foam birth myth as an Indo-European mytheme. Janda intereprets the name as a compound ''aphrós'' "foam" and ''déato'' "() seems, shines", meaning "she who shines from the foam ()", supposedly a byname of Eos, the dawn goddess.〔Janda, Michael, ''Die Musik nach dem Chaos'', Innsbruck 2010, p. 65〕 Likewise, Mallory and Adams (1997)〔Mallory, J.P., and Adams, D.Q. ''Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture''. London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishing, 1997.〕 propose an Indo-European compound ' "very" and ' "to shine", also referring to Eos. However, etymologies based on comparison with Eos are unlikely since Aphrodite's attributes are entirely different from those of Eos (or the Vedic deity Ushas).〔Charles Penglase, ''Greek Myths and Mesopotamia: Parallels and Influence in the Homeric Hymns and Hesiod'' (Routledge, 1997), 164; citing Deborah Boedeker, ''Aphrodite's Entry into Greek Epic'' (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 15-6.〕 Finally, the medieval ''Etymologicum Magnum'' offers a highly contrived etymology, deriving ''Aphrodite'' from the compound ''habrodíaitos'' (), "she who lives delicately", from ''habrós'' and ''díaita''. The alteration from ''b'' to ''ph'' is explained as a "familiar" characteristic of Greek "obvious from the Macedonians",〔Etymologicum Magnum, Ἀφροδίτη〕 despite the fact that the name cannot be of Macedonian origin. A number of improbable non-Greek etymologies have been suggested in scholarship. One Semitic etymology compares Aphrodite to the Assyrian ''barīrītu'', the name of a female demon that appears in Middle Babylonian and Late Babylonian texts.〔see Chicago Assyrian Dictionary vol. 2 p. 111〕 Hammarström (1921)〔M. Hammarström, ''Glotta: Zeitschrift für griechische und lateinische Sprache'' 11 (1921): 215f.〕 looks to Etruscan, comparing ''(e)prϑni'' "lord", an Etruscan honorific loaned into Greek as πρύτανις. This would make the theonym in origin an honorific, "the lady". Hjalmar Frisk and Robert Beekes (2010) rejects this etymology as implausible, especially since Aphrodite actually appears in Etruscan in the borrowed form ''Apru'' (from Greek ''Aphrō'', clipped form of ''Aphrodite''). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Aphrodite」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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