Relief found in the Villa Ludovisi.
the Asiatics, at least not on the Syrians, for according to an account of Nigidius Figulus,[11] the fish of the Euphrates found a large egg in the floods and pushed it ashore, where it was brooded upon by a dove until the Syrian goddess came forth from it.
An exquisitely graceful relief pictures the birth of Venus from the foam of the ocean. She appears as a young maiden covered with a diaphanous garment, and is being lifted out of the water by the Graces. The marble is preserved in the National Museum at Rome and was discovered by excavations in the grounds of the Villa Ludovisi in 1887.
The Oriental goddess was originally the queen of the starry heaven, either the moon or the morning star, and as such she was the same figure which in other places gave rise to the development of Artemis. We may emphasize here that like the Christian Mary the pagan female divinity was at the same time both the eternal virgin and the celestial mother. Mythology cannot stand the application of logical rationalism, and we must not try to make the traditional legends rigidly consistent.
While we recognize a strong Oriental influence in the Greek construction of the Aphrodite cult, we must acknowledge that in Greece we have a new and independent origin of the divine ideal of femininity. In Mesopotamia Istar was a very popular deity, and innumerable idols have been found in the shape of a naked woman, commonly called
DETAIL FROM THE LUDOVISI RELIEF.
“Beltis” or “Lady,” but this conception of the goddess of femininity cannot be regarded as the prototype of the Greek Aphrodite who at an early period assumed a definitely Greek figure and character. Without detracting from her universal significance as the cosmic principle of generation, the artistic conception of the Greek mind at once idealized her as the incarnation of loveliness and grace, and from Phidias down to the end of paganism she has retained this ideal.