In the giant spaghettified mess that is the pantheon of Olympian gods, there are a number
of relationships that could be charitably described as unhealthy.
It is a colossal mess of affairs and love-children and plenty of revenge that benefits precisely
nobody except Aphrodite, goddess of passion and love who enjoys nothing more than relationship
drama, and when she can’t find it, she will create it.
Though she can’t take credit for all the drama, she certainly seems to have a hand
in the majority of it, encouraging love affairs and directing Eros to break a few hearts when
it’s a slow week or she’s bored or it’s a day ending in “Y”.
But while wrecking other people’s lives is good clean fun, Aphrodite’s own love
life is a rather complicated and fraught affair, pun intended.
Early attestations from Homer in the Iliad describe her as happily unmarried and a consort
to Ares, god of war, natch, but then Homer’s Odyssey cites her as married to Hephaestus,
god of the forge and brother to Ares - while still consorting with Ares on the side.
This is a bit jarring for several reasons.
Aphrodite is the universally-desired goddess of lust and attraction, while Hephaestus is…
shall we say, not the most polished hammer in the forge.
He’s a very skilled artisan respected for his craft, but he’s also often characterized
as cunning, rude, and alienated from the rest of the Olympians, especially his mother Hera,
who in several tellings chucked him off Olympus shortly after his birth because he had a congenital
impairment and she was kind of a jerk like that.
This isn’t actually consistent, though - in other versions, including the one in the Iliad,
it was Zeus who drop-kicked him off Olympus because he was trying to protect Hera from
Zeus, and injuries from the fall are what led to him becoming disabled rather than it
being something he was born with.
This lack-of-singular-canon is very common in greek mythology, so instead of looking
for a single true narrative, because there is no point, we kind of have to look at the
general vibes - and in general, the vibe is not great.
Hephaestus is broadly respected for his work and very little else, while Aphrodite is loved
for her beauty while generally feared and disliked for how much trouble she causes.
Pairing them up is… inobvious, to put it mildly, and Homer doesn’t really explain
how it happened.
Later stories eventually came up with explanations for how the odd couple came to be, and how
a goddess who could have had any husband she wanted ended up with the guy it kinda felt
like nobody would ever pick.
One popular explanation was that Hephaestus trapped his mother Hera with a trick throne
and then demanded Aphrodite’s hand in marriage in exchange for setting her free.
In other anecdotes, Zeus was apparently tired of everyone fighting over Aphrodite and married
her off to Hephaestus to make the yelling stop.
You may note that, while these stories explain how the marriage happened, they don’t really
explore their relationship or how they feel about each other.
The general consensus is that they’re not very functional, but we rarely get a look
into how dysfunctional they actually are.
One story that gives us a rare glimpse at the mess is recounted in Homer’s Odyssey,
so let’s talk about it today!
Now our story begins very efficiently, by laying out the status quo.
Aphrodite and Hephaestus are married, but Aphrodite is carrying on a pretty steamy side
romance with Ares, who’s been wooing her with presents and flowers and squishy stuff
like that.
This is all kept very hush-hush and down-low but doesn’t escape the attention of Helios,
who has a pretty good view of everything on account of being The Sun, so he decides to
let Hephaestus know what’s been going on in his bedroom while he’s off in his kickass
volcano lair making robots and stuff.
Hephaestus is, unsurprisingly, very displeased to hear this, and responds in the same way
he solves most of his problems - by inventing something.
Specifically he fires up the forge and hammers out a huge lattice of incredibly fine chains,
nearly invisible but totally unbreakable.
Then he scoots back home and drapes them all over the bedroom, creaking an invisible net
of unbreakable chains.
Then he loudly announces he’s going on a business trip to Lemnos and won’t be back
for a hot minute and scoots around the corner to wait.
Ares, naturally, pops out of the bushes and scoots inside so he and Aphrodite can finish
their monopoly game, but they very quickly find the fun times scuttled by the golden
net, which tangles them up and leaves them completely trapped.
Hephaestus pops out of the woodwork and summons all the other olympians to come see what he’s
caught.
Poseidon, Hermes and Apollo pop down to see what all the fuss is about, but the rest of
the gods catch one glimpse of exposed god booty and decide they’ve probably seen enough
for one night.
So Hephaestus is, unsurprisingly, pretty pissed about the whole situation.
He knows he’s not exactly a prize in the looks department, while his brother Ares is
a chiseled specimen of masculine vigor, but just because he gets it doesn’t mean this
isn’t a pretty spectacular violation of the marriage agreement and he’s not about
that, so his plan is to keep them in the net until Zeus agrees to refund the dowry he paid
when he married Aphrodite.
The fact that this implies that he bought his wife and is now requesting a refund is
just a smidge fucked, but it’s not like the rest of this situation is any less fucked,
so, eh.
Now Apollo and Hermes think this situation is absolutely hilarious, but Poseidon is taking
the whole thing a bit more seriously and asks Hephaestus to let them go.
Poseidon tells Hephaestus he’ll get Ares to pay the damages instead of Zeus, since
it’s more Ares’s fault, but Hephaestus is reluctant, because what if Ares doesn’t
pay, so Poseidon promises that if Ares goes back on the deal, he’ll cover the price
out of pocket.
Hephaestus, satisfied that he’s getting a refund either way, releases the lovers.
It’s unclear if any lessons were learned that day, but the world certainly never forgot
Hephaestus’s great innovation of using
chains in the bedroom.