Welcome back to Tiny Epics.
This episode is all about Aphrodite: goddess of love, beauty, passion and pleasure.
The ancient Greeks saw her as a sensual young woman who seems to have had a general disregard for clothes.
Her romantic, wavy hair is tied back to reveal a perfectly divine face
with a smile so subtle you might miss it.
She's been the canvas, so to speak, upon which artists have projected their fantasies over the centuries.
But I wonder... can she really be contained by a frame or a name?
The Romans called her Venus, but she was worshipped as Ishtar in Babylon
and as the goddess Inanna as early as 4000 BC in Sumer, the oldest civilization known to mankind.
Long ago the Greeks were rather flexible with regards to the sexuality and gender
of their goddess of love, as Aphrodite was also celebrated under the name
Aphroditus who was a combination of both male and female in one divinity.
The poets certainly can't be trusted when it comes to her appearance.
They don't even agree on how she was born, where she was born or who her parents were.
In the world of poetry
Aphrodite is not so much a specific personality as she is the embodiment of beauty itself.
And beauty is subjective.
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The ancient poet and philosopher Lucretius
dedicated his only surviving work, an epic poem called 'On the Nature of Things',
to Venus: the Roman equivalent of Aphrodite.
It contains roughly seven and a half thousand lines
and in it he attempts to explain the entire world around us
with Venus as the great creative force at work in the cosmos.
His ideas were based on Epicureanism
and he wanted to show that the gods were not to blame for our problems
and that everything could be understood through observation and direct experience.
"All nature is thy Gift;" he wrote
"Earth, Air, and Sea: Of all that breathes, the various progeny,
Stung with delight, is goaded on by thee."
The planet Venus is the brightest object in the sky after the sun and the moon.
It appears brighter than even the brightest stars
and has long been an object of fascination for cultures worldwide.
Because of its luminosity the Greeks named the planet Aphrodite.
They had another name for the planet as it appears at dawn;
they called it Phosphorus which, for the Romans, later became Lucifer.
Now most of us think of Lucifer as the infamous rebel angel
who challenged god and was cast down to Earth.
But for the Greeks and Romans the word simply meant 'bringer of light' or 'morning star'.
But interestingly, the motif of a divinity that strived for the highest seat of heaven
only to be cast down has its origins in the motions of the planet Venus.
Now we come back to Inanna, the Sumerian equivalent of Aphrodite.
Her actions in several of her myths, including her descent into the underworld,
appear to parallel the motion of Venus as it progresses through its orbit.
In the myth she's killed and is resurrected three days later to return to the heavens.
And likewise the planet Venus seems to disappear
only to reappear several days later due to its low orbit.
Aphrodite was born from the sea after her father the sky god Ouranos was castrated.
Like the story of Inanna, a process occurs through which pain is transformed into beauty.
The death of one thing is the birth of another.
Aphrodite rises up from the sea foam in all her radiance as if to say:
It's okay. The storm is over. Take my hand
The fall of the Western Roman Empire meant that the knowledge of the classical world,
along with its worship of Aphrodite, began to fade as the long slide into the Dark Ages began.
But she wasn't completely forgotten.
Remember that poem inspired by Venus called 'On the Nature of Things'?
Well over the centuries, a copy of it was left rotting away in a German monastery.
That is until something miraculous happened.
It was discovered by chance in the 15th century by an Italian book hunter named Poggio
who brought it back with him to Florence.
'On the Nature of Things' is now considered one of the most influential works of literature of all time
and one of the sparks that helped ignite the massive cultural revolution known as The Renaissance.
Its goal was to inspire people to think for themselves; to leave shame, guilt and fear behind
and to meet the world with courage just as it is.
It taught that in order to conquer our fears
we first have to accept the fact that we and all things are transitory
and enjoy the simple pleasures that life offers us in the moment.
Starting in Florence, Italy this fresh, expressive and beautiful spirit
embodied by Aphrodite began to manifest itself everywhere.
Religion still played an important role, but Humanism was on the rise
as citizens started to look towards themselves and the natural world for answers
rather than blindly following the dictates of political and religious institutions.
This humanizing force rushed like a river, spreading throughout Europe
and opening the way for the Age of Enlightenment
and for our modern world as we know it today.
All thanks to the goddess of pleasure, beauty and above all... love!
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As always thanks so much for watching.
Oh yeah and one last note:
you can find links to each work of art that was featured in this video in the description
just in case you want to do some exploring on your own.
And please do feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. I'll see you there!