Talk:Aphrodite

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Semi-protected edit request on 20 April 2025

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphrodite_Urania#The_Symposium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphrodite#List_of_epithets

This needs to be corrected and if you don't see the problem by now I don't know what to tell you anymore. Good luck with your YY argument. XX is completely natural. 173.175.196.47 (talk) 14:53, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

File:Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Day Creature (talk) 19:50, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Golden haired

Pitman reports that "Aphrodite was often described as golden-haired and portrayed with this color hair in art". Are there any actual sources on this? Some mythological women are often described as light haired, but I have not found a single such description of Aphrodite, let alone "often". Pitman doesn't provide ancient sources. Also in art she is depicted as light haired no more often than with dark hair. Becarefulbro (talk) 21:17, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

I see Pitman does mention some sources; the Google Books view gives me "Homer ... raising her fully formed from the foaming sea wearing nothing but her rippling blonde hair." "Sappho, too, made Aphrodite golden in homage to her physical beauty. Since gold is pure of rust, she wrote, golden hair symbolised Aphrodite's freedom from pollution, ageing and death." She writes of statues "in marble, stone and terracotta, her flesh painted in natural colours, her hair coloured blonde". Her citations begin on page 265 but Google Books won't give me page previews of those so I don't know if she provides precise ones for those statements; can you see them? NebY (talk) 13:34, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

Homer definitely didn't descibe her hair color. I will check 265 page, ty. Aphrodite also wasn't described as glaukopis, you may be confused her with Athena, so my edit can be restored. Becarefulbro (talk) 15:49, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

True, I didn't check the Greek behind your edit "Her eyes were described as flashing and dark." and instead gave "glaukopis" as a famous example of the problems of translating such descriptions. That edit referenced a translation of Pindar which has only "dark-eyed", translating ἑλικώπιδος for which that site tells us LSJ has "with rolling eyes, quick-glancing", while I find the new Cambridge Greek Lexicon has "perh. black-eyed, dark-eyed, or perh. with darting eyes, quick-glancing." As that edit also veered further away from the focus of that section, depictions in classical art, and in relying on a primary source gave WP:UNDUE attention to a single instance of one poet's versification, it wouldn't be appropriate to restore it. Anyway, I'll look forward to hearing about Pitman's citations! NebY (talk) 16:16, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

Pitman also says "Homer lingered obsessively over his gorgeous Aphrodite raising her fully formed from the foaming sea wearing nothing but her rippling blonde hair. 'Golden' was the master epithet of Aphrodite in all of Homer's work". I don't find any mention of her hair color in Homer. Her master epithet is indeed "golden", but there is no evidence that it refers to her hair. Other way around, a passage from Dio Chrysostom indicates, that "golden" has nothing to do with her hair: "Now adornment of hair seems to become men more than women according to Homer, for when he discourses of the beauty of women, he does not so often seem to have recalled to mind their hair. He praises those amongst the deities who are female, in other ways, he makes Aphrodite "golden", Hera "ox-eyed" and Thetis "silver-footed"; but in the case of Zeus he praises his hair most of all: The ambrosial locks of the king floated waving from his head." A note from another Dio's work says similar thing. Becarefulbro (talk) 18:29, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

Well, we shouldn't use primary sources (that is, ancient ones) to analyse other primary sources; this is something we leave to secondary sources. The latter source you've given is indeed secondary, and it seems to roughly align with other discussions of the epithet. Brill's Companion to Aphrodite, p. 162, states that Template:Tq (though the author of this section actually argues against this interpretation). The discussion of the epithet in Cyrino (cited in the article) focuses on her beauty, and Friedrich discusses metallic and beauty-related meanings. There's no suggestion in any of these sources, though, that it relates to her hair. – Michael Aurel (talk) 04:09, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

Also, about eye colors. "Glaukopis" is most likely meant light eyes and there is a statue of Athena with incrusted gray/blue eyes, but "glaukopis" is distinctive epithet of her, she is often referred as "glaukopis maiden" in Homer, that can indicates other goddesses had non-light eyes. For example there are classical statues of Artemis with brown eyes, Aphrodite was most likely imagined by Greeks as dark-eyed too. About this word "ἑλικώπιδος", I've found some text: "We must also not neglect to mention the detailed analysis of classicist Denys Page [26] who, in agreement with the ancient testimony of Callimachus (Fr. 299.1) demonstrates that the epithet elikopes, collectively used for the Homeric Achaeans, probably meant "dark-eyed," rather than "with rolling eyes" as it was erroneously thought. Eleanor Irwin, who wrote the definitive work on color terms in Greek poetry [29] agrees with this opinion, and so does Noel Robertson who summarizes [45] current opinion as follows: "it is clear that the meaning 'black' is well-founded, whereas 'rolling' or 'twisting' rests on a misunderstanding of various compounds."

Page, D.L., 1959, History and the Homeric Iliad, Berkeley : University of California Press

Irwin, E., 1974, Colour Terms in Greek Poetry, Hakkert, Toronto

Robertson, N., 2003, The Religious Criterion in Greek Ethnicity: The Dorians and the Festival Carneia, American Journal of Ancient History, New Series 1(2), p. 20.

Becarefulbro (talk) 19:21, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

She provides passage from Alcman but it's not about Aphdorite. Pliny passage is irrelevant to her hair color too. Becarefulbro (talk) 16:15, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

Oh, that's not good. And AFAIK Hesiod has Aphrodite being born from the foaming sea, not Homer. NebY (talk) 16:44, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

Perhaps I should add that we do really want secondary sources. I'd be personally interested to know what primary and/or secondary sources Pitman's using and maybe examine them myself, and that might even help us evaluate her work as WP:SCHOLARSHIP, but especially given the extraordinary complications of translating Greek descriptions of colours, we need to follow WP:GRECOROMAN. NebY (talk) 14:29, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

For now, I've replaced Pitman with a citation needed tag, as her work isn't reliable WP:SCHOLARSHIP in this context, which I think is indicated by the author's description as a "photography critic" and the generally unscholarly language, and has been confirmed by your perusal of her claims and (somewhat lacking) citation section. As NebY says, Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus and Dione in the Iliad, and as far as I'm aware the common descriptive epithet "golden" doesn't relate specifically to her hair. Searching a few sources on Aphrodite and her iconography hasn't revealed anything about her having been represented as blonde in art, though this is far from a comprehensive survey. I agree with NebY that we shouldn't be including other descriptions from primary sources here, cited only to those primary sources. – Michael Aurel (talk) 17:42, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

Thank you. Perhaps in some minor ancient source she is described as light haired, but it's definitely not "often", so that passage does not make sense and I think it can be removed. Becarefulbro (talk) 19:26, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

I'd agree with the sentence's removal. I've just skimmed through all instances of the word "hair" in the LIMC's article on Aphrodite in the hopes of uncovering some indication of how often and on what objects she's depicted as blonde, and I didn't come across anything of the sort. At a minimum, I think we've established that this isn't something standard sources on Aphrodite mention, and if a quality source on her blondeness is discovered in future we can always restore information as appropriate. – Michael Aurel (talk) 04:13, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

Yes, we should remove pending RSs that aren't based on modern depictions such as Botticelli or Perez. Disturbingly, the lead of our article Blond has Template:Tq (and Template:Tq). That is however a fair WP:LEAD summary of the Blond#Ancient Greece section, which is heavily reliant on Pitman for direct statements and for quotations from Sappho and Alcman. NebY (talk) 09:30, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. I've removed the parts about Aphrodite, including a link to this discussion in the edit summary. I hesitated with the statement about the Aphrodite of Knidos, as it would seem that one scholar (Havelock) does in fact believe the statue's hair was painted yellow, but such a statement probably only makes sense at Blond in the context of a discussion of Aphrodite's blondeness, and I think we're agreed that Pitman isn't an appropriate source for this sort of information. In any case, we shouldn't present information about the statue as certain, and, on the specific claim about gilding, we should note that Havelock herself emphasises that this was rare in 4th-century BC sculpture.

Curiously, Havelock's reason for her view is the epithet discussed above. Looking through several other sources on the sculpture I'm unable to find similar opinions, but it probably merits some further investigation. I'd argue that such information, if significant, should probably be mentioned here (and first, of course, at Aphrodite of Knidos) before it's included at Blond, though. – Michael Aurel (talk) 09:16, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I think if we find any mention from a poet about her hair color, we can add a sentence mentioning this description and the poet's name. For the same reason, I would add that mention of her dark eyes from Pindar. But this is not necessary. Becarefulbro (talk) 16:22, 11 June 2025 (UTC)