Why artists love Aphrodite
Aphrodite – talk about a difficult birth. Her father the Sky (Ouranos) had come to resent the fertility of his wife/mother the Earth (Gaia). They’d had 18 children already – a gamesome brood that included Titans, Cyclopes, and the 100-handed Hecatoncheires. The last of these were so hateful that Ouranos convinced himself that he would be murdered by one of them and usurped as ruler on high. Ouranos’s way of coping with his complex was to keep on having sex with his wife so as to hole up his offspring in the birth canal. Gaia urged her sons to save her, but only Kronos, the youngest of the Titans, was brave enough. While his father was still at it, Kronos went in and lopped off his genitals with a sickle.
