The Mythology Files: Aphrodite

I am Aphrodite.

I see you staring. Go ahead. Stare. You’ll never see anything this hot again as long as you live. That’s a fact. Carve it into stone, baby.

Oh wait! Been done.

Venus de Milo ring any bells?

Speaking of ringing bells… Alexandros of Antioch, the sculptor… well, I’m not really a girl who kisses and tells… What am I saying? I totally posed for that statue. He was never very good at carving hands.

You wonder why I can do that. Don’t you? Be unfaithful to the husband I was given to? Hephaestus. The god of fire and metalcraft. One of the strongest of the gods, if you ask me. He is also the kindest. I don’t deserve him.

And he doesn’t deserve me.

I have a reputation to maintain. Love and beauty.

You think I’m vain.

It’s okay. I know what the other goddesses say about me. That I’m vain and I have a one track mind. The gods, on the other hand, say… other things.

The truth is I’m lost.

I don’t know where I came from or how I got here.

The others — they all have a history, a lineage. They can trace their ancestry back to Gaea, the Great Mother.

What’s my story?

I floated up on the shores of Olympus on the foam of the sea. That’s it.

No mother or father. Nothing.

So why did they accept me as one of them?

Because I’m beautiful.

It’s all I’ve got. It’s all they see. I lose that one thing, and I will shrink back into oblivion, return to wherever it was that I came from.

Hephaestus doesn’t deserve the kind of baggage I bring. He is a gentle, sweet, giving soul. All I know how to do is take. I know it sounds heartless, but if I stop now, I will lose everything.

So to concede the apple to any other goddess? Yes, even to the queen… I can’t risk it.