"Hephaistos pondered the proposition while Apollo and Hermes doubled up with new laughter. At length, however, the lame smith relented and loosed the mesh from his violated marriage bed and its prisoners. Off fled Ares immediately to Thrace, one of the few places he was welcome.
Laughter-loving Aphrodite betook herself to Cypros, her favorite island, where the Graces bathed her in her virginity-restoring bath and rubbed oil of ambrosia into her unflawed skin. When she returned to her husband, she radiated the innocence and sweetness of an untouched bride. Zeus did not return the dowry, nor did war-loving Ares or the earthshaker Poseidon come up with so much as a bronze ring in compensation for Hephaistos’s humiliation. Aphrodite simply charmed her way back again into her husband’s good graces, no great feat for her; and then, when all was returned to normal, again she played him false and again and again and again." –Great Zeus and All His Children by Donald Richardson..
