Identifier: opencourt_oct1915caru (find matches)
Title: The Open court
Year: 1887 (1880s)
Authors: Carus, Paul, 1852-1919 Open Court Publishing company, Chicago
Subjects: Religion Religion and science
Publisher: Chicago : The Open Court Pub. Co.
Contributing Library: Morris Library, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Digitizing Sponsor: CARLI: Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois

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f the islands.Certainly we cannot lay the burden of the invention of the storyupon the Asiatics, at least not on the Syrians, for according to anaccount by Nigidius Figulus^ the fish of the Euphrates found alarge egg in the floods and pushed it ashore, where it was broodedupon by a dove until the Syrian goddess came forth from it. The Oriental goddess was originally the queen of the starryheaven, either the moon or the morning star, and as such she ..the same figure which in other places gave rise to the developmc.of Artemis. We may emphasize here that like the Christian Marythe pagan female divinity was at the same time both the eternal virgin*As reported in Roschers Lexikon, s. v. Aphrodite. APHRODITE. 609 and the celestial mother. Mythology cannot stand the application oflogical rationalism, and we must not try to make the traditionallegends rigidly consistent. While we recognize a strong Oriental influence in the Greekconstruction of the Aphrodite cult, we must acknowledge that we
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i^sWe before us a new and independent origin of the divine ideal;,-!-femininity. In Mesopotamia Istar was a very popular deity,and innumerable idols have been found in the shape of a nakedwoman commonly called Beltis or lady, but this conceptionof the goddess of femininity cannot be regarded as the prototype 610 THE OPEN COURT. of the Greek Aphrodite who at an early period assumed the typewhich is now well known as Venus. Without detracting from heruniversal significance as the cosmic principle of generation, the DETAIL FROM THE LUDOVISI RELIEF,artistic conception of the Greek mind at once idealized her as theincarnation of loveliness and grace, and from Phidias down to theend of paganism she has remained this ideal. APHRODITE. 611 In Homer she is called the daughter of Zeus and Dione, andwhen later usage degraded her to a conception of promiscuoussexuality, philosophers distinguished between Venus Urania, celes-tial love and Venus Pandemus, or promiscuity. In Cnidos Aphrodite was wor

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