The goddess Astarte in the Late Bronze Age The goddess Astarte As early as about 3000 BC, Astarte was a Semitic goddess of love and fertility. People worshipped her in Mesopotamia and in the [...]
Venus rising out of the ocean, from Tunisia in North Africa (300s AD) The goddess Venus was the goddess of growing things, gardens, love and fertility for the Romans. People sacrificed to [...]
Judgment of Paris -Paris is on the right (A fresco from Pompeii, ca. 79 AD) Who is the most beautiful? Once upon a time, around 1250 BC, toward the end of the [...]
Leander swimming to Hero (from Pompeii) Who was Hero? In this Greek version of an old story, Hero was a priestess of Aphrodite, whose father sent her to live alone in [...]
Atalanta (see her name misspelled on the vase?) Who was Atalanta? Atalanta was a woman who was very good at all kinds of sports (in the story; this is a story). She [...]
The god Ares, on an Athenian black figure vase from about 570 BC What is Ares the god of? Ares is the ancient Greek god of war , and so [...]
Birth of the goddess Aphrodite (from Pompeii, about 50 AD) The goddess of love Aphrodite (a-fro-DIE-tee) was the Greek goddess of love. So naturally she was always falling in love [...]
Hellenistic sculpture by Praxiteles: Hermes and the infant Dionysos A new Hellenistic style At the end of the 400s BC, Greece, and especially Athens, was devastated by a terrible war [...]
Freya wearing her necklace (about 800 AD) Who is Freya? Freya is the only important goddess of the Germans. She was married to Odin, and she's a kind of fertility [...]
