A Digital Love Letter

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Engraved Scaraboid with Aphrodite Riding a Goose, about 400 B.C.E.

Aphrodite riding on a goose. Terracotta from Locri, Calabria, Italy. Made in Boeotia c. 470 – 460 BC. [this actually looks like a swan to me; look at the upper beak?].

Aphrodite on a goose, 2nd-1st Century B.C.E.

Aphrodite riding on a goose, 380 BCE, Taranto.

Relief of Aphrodite on a goose, 50 BCE-100 CE, Italy.

John Hall, 1739-1797 (After Benjamin West, 1738-1820)

Venus relating to Adonis the Story of Hippomenes and Atalanta, 1769, etching, engraving and stipple on cream laid paper, 36.03x50.48 cm

Hablot Knight Browne, 1815-1882

Venus and Adonis (Two of eighteen designs for a series of plates illustrating Venus and Adonis), n/d, graphite, brown chalk, watercolor and gouache on paper, 16.8x16.8 cm

“100/101. "O Queen who [loves] Golgoi": [Golgoi is] a city of Cyprus named after Golgos, the son of Adonis and Aphrodite. Idalium is also a city of Cyprus. Eryx is a city of Sicily [named] after Eryx, the son of Butes and Aphrodite. And the phrase "Aphrodite playing with gold" is perhaps like this: because those in love persuade the beloved with gold.”

I think Aphrodite Pandemos deserves more love, Aphrodite Areia gets all the atention but what about my goat-ridding diva?

This depiction is very humorous, a child satyr is leading her mount and Eros is flying away crying, he is so jealous

"And it is reported that the god at Delphi commanded him in an oracle to make Aphrodite his guide, and invite her to attend him on his journey, and that as he sacrificed the usual she-goat to her by the sea-shore, it became a he-goat"

-Plutarch

She transitioned a goat for no reason

-Commentary from Christine Downing on Plato's The Sysposium