thing led to another. Anchises married the mysterious mortal lady, and they had a wonderful honeymoon.
Then one morning Aphrodite woke up, and Zeus’s love spell had broken. She realized what she’d done and felt incredibly embarrassed. She wasn’t supposed to get suckered into marrying lowly mortals! That was what she did to other gods!
She dressed herself hastily, but Anchises woke while she was lacing her sandals. He noticed that his new bride was glowing.
“Uh…honey?” he asked. “Are you sure you’re not a goddess?”
“Oh, Anchises!” Aphrodite cried. “I’m so sorry! I must’ve been bewitched. Otherwise I never would have fallen in love with someone like you.”
“Gee…thanks.”
“It’s not you. It’s me! I can’t marry a mortal. Surely you understand. But don’t worry. When our child is born—”
“Our child?”
“Oh, yes,” the goddess said. “I’m extremely fertile. I’m sure I’m pregnant. At any rate, the baby will be a boy. I’ll raise him until he’s five, then I’ll bring him to you. He’ll become a great prince among your people and make you very proud. Just promise me you’ll never tell anyone the true identity of his mother!”
Anchises promised. He was a little bummed about being dumped and divorced, but he kept Aphrodite’s secret. Five years later, his son arrived from Olympus. His name was Aeneas, and he did in fact become a great prince of the city of Troy. Later on, after Troy fell, Aeneas sailed to Italy and became the first leader of a new people. They called themselves the Romans.
As for Anchises, one day when he was older and not so careful, he was partying with his buddies and let it slip that Aeneas’s mom was actually Aphrodite.
Word got around. The goddess of love was mortified. She complained to Zeus, “This is all your fault to begin with!”
To make things right, Zeus whipped out a lightning bolt and blasted Anchises into ashes for breaking his promise.
Another happy ending!
Think Aphrodite swore off mortal men after that?
If you guessed no, you’re learning.
Here’s one last story about her, which shows how Aphrodite’s own curses could come back to bite her.
There was this Greek princess named Smyrna who refused to worship Aphrodite, and the goddess got so mad, she cursed Smyrna by…you know what? It’s too horrible and disgusting. I can’t go into it.
Let’s just say Smyrna got pregnant, and it was a bad, bad situation. So bad that when her father the king found out, he ended up chasing her through the woods with a sword and screaming, “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!”
Smyrna cried out to the gods, “Please! It’s not my fault! Save me! Turn me invisible!”
The gods didn’t do that, but they did turn her into a myrrh tree. I’m sure Smyrna was really grateful.
Nine months later, the tree split open, and a little baby boy tumbled out. When Aphrodite heard the kid wailing in the woods, she felt a little guilty. She went down and picked him up. He was so cute, she decided to keep him and raise him in secret.
Why in secret? Aphrodite was the jealous type. The kid was adorable. The goddess didn’t want to share his affections with anyone else. But since babies are a lot of work, and Aphrodite had a busy social schedule, she quickly realized she couldn’t keep the baby all the time.
She decided she had to trust somebody to be a babysitter. She picked Persephone, goddess of the Underworld. That might seem like a weird choice, but Persephone lived down in Erebos, so nobody on Olympus ever had to know about the baby. Persephone was pretty lonely. She was glad to have a cute baby to cheer her up. And Aphrodite figured Persephone was no threat—I mean, please! Have you seen her hair? Her outfit? Aphrodite had nothing to be jealous about.
She named the baby Adonis and kept him in a box, which served as his incubation chamber. (Another story about a baby in a box. I’m not sure what that’s about, but again, do NOT try growing babies in boxes at home. It doesn’t work.) The two goddesses shared custody, shuffling the kid back and forth between Aphrodite’s secret lair on Cyprus and Persephone’s palace in the Underworld; so as Adonis grew up, he was always forgetting where he left his homework and which house his soccer shoes were at.
Eventually he grew into a handsome young man.
No, that’s an understatement. Adonis grew into the most handsome dude who ever lived. What did he look like exactly? I don’t know. I don’t