'See you how great a goddess Aphrodite is? She 'tis that gave us and engendered Love, Whereof come all that on the earth do live.'[88]
And so Empedocles calls Aphrodite Life-giving,[89] and Sophocles calls her Fruitful, both very appropriate epithets. And though the wonderful act of generation belongs to Aphrodite only, and Love is only present in it as a subordinate, yet if he be absent the whole affair becomes undesirable, and low, and tame. For a loveless coition brings only satiety, as the satisfaction of hunger and thirst, and has nothing noble resulting from it, whereas by Love Aphrodite removes the cloying element in pleasure, and produces harmonious friendship. And so Parmenides declares Love to be the oldest of the creations of Aphrodite, writing in his Cosmogony,
'Of all the gods first Love she did contrive.'
But Hesiod, more naturally in my opinion, makes Love the most ancient of all, so that all things derive their existence from him.[90] If we then deprive Love of his ancient honours, those of Aphrodite will be lost also. For we cannot argue that, while some revile Love, all spare Aphrodite, for on the same stage we hear of Love,
'Love is an idle thing and for the idle:'[91]
and again of Aphrodite,
'Cypris, my boys, is not her only name, For many names has she. She is a hell, A power remorseless, nay a raging madness.'[92]
Just as in the case of the other gods there is hardly one that has not been reviled, or escaped the scurrility of ignorance. Look, for example, at Ares, who may be considered as it were the counterpart of Love, what honours he has received from men, and again what abuse, as
'Ares is blind, ye women, has no eyes, And with his pig's snout roots up all good things.'[93]
And Homer calls him 'blood-stained' and 'fickle.'[94] And Chrysippus brings a grievous charge against him, in defining his name to mean destroyer,[95] thereby giving a handle to those who think that Ares is only the fighting, wrangling, and quarrelsome instinct among mankind. Others again will tell us that Aphrodite is simply desire, and Hermes eloquence, and the Muses the arts and sciences, and Athene wisdom. You see what an abyss of impiety opens up before us, if we describe each of the gods, as only a passion, a power, or a virtue!"