Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- LIST OF PLATES IN VOL. II
- CHAPTER XIII ARTEMIS
- CHAPTER XIV ARTEMIS—UPIS—NEMESIS
- CHAPTER XV ADRASTEIA
- CHAPTER XVI HEKATE
- CHAPTER XVII MONUMENTS OF THE CULT OF ARTEMIS
- CHAPTER XVIII IDEAL TYPES OF ARTEMIS
- CHAPTER XIX HEKATE: REPRESENTATIONS IN ART
- CHAPTER XX EILEITHYIA
- CHAPTER XXI APHRODITE-WORSHIP
- CHAPTER XXII MONUMENTS OF APHRODITE
- CHAPTER XXIII IDEAL TYPES OF APHRODITE
- Plate section
CHAPTER XXII - MONUMENTS OF APHRODITE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- LIST OF PLATES IN VOL. II
- CHAPTER XIII ARTEMIS
- CHAPTER XIV ARTEMIS—UPIS—NEMESIS
- CHAPTER XV ADRASTEIA
- CHAPTER XVI HEKATE
- CHAPTER XVII MONUMENTS OF THE CULT OF ARTEMIS
- CHAPTER XVIII IDEAL TYPES OF ARTEMIS
- CHAPTER XIX HEKATE: REPRESENTATIONS IN ART
- CHAPTER XX EILEITHYIA
- CHAPTER XXI APHRODITE-WORSHIP
- CHAPTER XXII MONUMENTS OF APHRODITE
- CHAPTER XXIII IDEAL TYPES OF APHRODITE
- Plate section
Summary
It has been shown that in the cult of Aphrodite, Greek religion was mainly conservative of Oriental ideas; the ritual, the attributes, and most of the characteristics of the goddess are derived from the East.
On the other hand, the comparison of the monuments of the two nations proves, perhaps more than any other archaeological study, the freedom and the originality of the Hellene. ‘La déesse de la fécondité sera devenue pour les contemporains de Scopas et de Praxitele la déesse de la beauté.’ It was the signal achievement of Greek art to have replaced the Oriental type, of which the forms were often gross and at best had little more than a merely hieratic meaning, with a type that became of significance for religion through its depth of spiritual expression, and of the highest importance for the history of art through its embodiment of the perfected forms of corporeal beauty.
The debt of Greece in this worship to the art of the East, was only superficial; yet the monuments of the Oriental cult are of very great importance in their bearing on the religious question discussed in the preceding chapter; for they strengthen the conclusion derived from other evidence that Aphrodite was of Semitic birth.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Cults of the Greek States , pp. 670 - 708Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010First published in: 1896