Aphrodite Meddles in Mortal Affairs
The goddess Athena is found helping demigods, like Perseus, and mortals, like Odysseus, in much of Greek mythology, but other gods and goddesses also got involved. Aphrodite generally meddled in mortal matters when affairs of the heart were at stake. Aphrodite helped in some instances, but when a mortal tried to deny love, Aphrodite took her wrath out on the mortals, sometimes making the guilty party fall in lust with someone inappropriate.
Here are adventures from Greek mythology in which Aphrodite had a hand.
Atalanta
Atalanta was a swift-footed runner who offered to marry anyone who could beat her in a foot race, but anyone who lost would be killed. Hippomenes offered to race her. When he asked Aphrodite to help, she gave him three golden apples of the Hesperides which were as tempting to the mortal as Eris' golden apple had been to the goddesses. Atalanta couldn't help herself. She had to stop to pick up the apples one-by-one as Hippomenes threw them out on the track. It was a close race, but he won and married Atalanta. Theirs wasn't a long and happy life for they were turned into lions by the gods.
OvidMetamorphoses 10.560-707
A fine athlete, Atalanta is featured in two of the seminal Greek heroic myths as the lone female adventurer:
Hippolytus
In Euripides' Hippolytus, Aphrodite revenges herself on Hippolytus, son of Theseus and the Amazon Antiope, for his failure to honor her.
And the truth of this I soon will show; for that son of Theseus, born of the Amazon, Hippolytus, whom holy Pittheus taught, alone of all the dwellers in this land of Troezen, calls me vilest of the deities. Love he scorns, and, as for marriage, will none of it; but Artemis, daughter of Zeus, sister of Phoebus [Apollo], he doth honour, counting her the chief of goddesses, and ever through the greenwood, attendant on his virgin goddess, he clears the earth of wild beasts with his fleet hounds, enjoying the comradeship of one too high for mortal ken. 'Tis not this I grudge him, no! why should I? But for his sins against me, I will this very day take vengeance on Hippolytus
Aphrodite's revenge is to cause Hippolytus' death by making his step-mother, Phaedra, sister of the string-giver Ariadne, accuse Hippolytus of trying to seduce her. In reality, it was Phaedra who tried in vain to seduce Hippolytus. A similar story is told about Bellerophon and Anteia, the wife of Proteus, only with a happier ending: Bellerophon survived the accusations.
Myrrha
Encyclopedia Mythica explains the conflicting stories of the birth of Adonis. The commonly accepted version says Aphrodite compelled Myrrha (Smyrna) to fall in love with her father, Theias (Cinyras), the king of Assyria. By the contrivance of a nurse, Myrrha slept with her father without his being aware. (Ovid has them call each other father and daughter, so in his version, the pair are aware of their crime [Meta. X.467-8].) When he found out, he chased after his daughter, who, through the mercy of the gods (or Aphrodite), was turned into the eponymous myrrh tree from which sprang Adonis, who was the beloved of Aphrodite. [See Ovid Meta. X.821-1163 for the story of Adonis and Aphrodite.]
Pygmalion
According to Encyclopedia Mythica, Pygmalion created a sculpture so beautiful and life-like he named it Galatea and fell in love with it. Pygmalion prayed to Aphrodite for a wife like his statue. She obliged by bringing the statue to life. Remembering to make the appropriate offerings to their divine benefactor, Pygmalion and his animated statue lived happily together.
Ovid Metamorphoses X.238-297.
Pygmalion is also the name of a 20th century English comedy by George Bernard Shaw that was converted to the musical My Fair Lady.
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