Aphrodite walked through Olympus in a rush, as the goddess of love, pleasure, and passion, amongst many other domains, she was often exceptionally busy. With so much to do it was little wonder that Aphrodite started to feel the beginnings of an ache coming on, almost like something was growing within her. ‘Preposterous’, she thought to herself, it must surely be stress for what else could it be? Thus, although this feeling of tightness in the chest was quite foreign she ignored it and continued on with her duties. Passing by the throne room, she walked past Zeus’ newest cup-bearer Ganymede, a young pretty little thing. She would know after all, as she was the one who drew Zeus’ gaze to the previously mortal man. In a way, the relationship between Ganymede and Zeus reminded Aphrodite of one of Apollo’s past lovers, a man by the name of Hyacinthus. Both mortal men renowned for their beauty and attracting the gaze of the Olympians. Admittedly, the topic of Hyacinthus was quite a sore subject for Apollo, but there was no denying the care the two men had for each other in the short time they were together. Continuing on to the remainder of her duties, Aphrodite met with Artemis, a fellow goddess who she didn’t often meet up with due to Artemis’ stance on being an eternal maiden, in-fact the last time she could recall meeting Artemis is when she first saw that hunter Orion.
Throughout the days and weeks as Aphrodite continued on with her duties, meeting with Zeus, aiding Apollo with his newest admiration and even being called by Dionysus and his gathering of satyrs and maenads to help resolve some, shall we say, unfortunate misunderstandings, the ache remained present, the tightness in her chest growing ever stronger. As more time passed, the ache grew to one bordering on painful and Aphrodite couldn’t help but be reminded of the birth of Athena as retold by Zeus, an incredibly painful tightening of the head until the war goddess literally burst forth into the world. Wishing to avoid such an experience, Aphrodite found her way to her birthplace of Pathos in the hopes that the waters of her birth would be able to help her.
Greeted by the waters of her birthland she watched in amazement as the water from the sea came up all the way to her chest and then pulled, right where the tightness was. From her chest, assisted by the water came a form, it looked vaguely humanoid constantly shifting its features until it finally settled, pleased with its appearance for the moment. Instinctively, Aphrodite knew that this figure, this new goddess had always been apart of her, slowly growing through the interactions she had seen with others, specifically those of relationships of the same sex, but now, it had come into its own, “Euphrosyne,” she named it, the goddess of sexual orientation.
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The goal of my myth was to provide a personal interpretation of how a god or goddess of sexual orientation could come into being. Due to some of the connotations associated with sexual orientation being topics such as love or passion, it felt appropriate to include the goddess of love, Aphrodite in the origin story. Since Aphrodite is the predominant figure responsible for love and all that it entails, it made sense that if a god/goddess of sexual orientation were to be born that they would have a deep connection to Aphrodite and thus in the aetiological myth presented above, the goddess of sexual orientation, who I named Euphrosyne, is born solely from Aphrodite herself, with the absence of a father being a purposeful decision when coming up with this myth. The only aid Aphrodite receives is that of the waters from which she came forth after Ouranos’ genitals were thrown into the sea by his son Kronos (Hesiod, Theogony 189-195). Since Aphrodite was born out of the ocean, it made sense that if a goddess was born from her, that the ocean should play a role in its birth as well. While Aphrodite is a goddess with a lot of duties and responsibilities, it would make sense that she would have a more sensitive disposition than that of Zeus and if she felt as if she was going to give birth in a similar manner to which Zeus bore Athena, it is sensible to assume that she would try and find an easier solution to her problem at hand then go through what Zeus did, which is often described in a painful manner, such as having his head struck open with an axe in some iterations of the classical myth (Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.3.6). I decided on Euphrosyne coming from Aphrodite’s chest to further mirror the birth of Athena who is the goddess of wisdom and is sensibly represented as birthed from the head (specifically the temple). If a goddess of wisdom can be represented as having sprung forth from a temple, then a goddess of sexual orientation could very well have come from the chest of the goddess of love. This method of birth within the myth presented above is also in some ways similar to that of the birth of Hephaestus, albeit only for method and not motivation. Hephaestus was born from Hera out of spite and anger (Hesiod, Theogony 929a-929e) while the goddess from the myth I came up with was born through experiencing acts involving those in relationships with others apart from the opposite sex.
In order to provide an explanation of why a god/goddess of sexual orientation was able to be created, I felt the need to provide evidence of relationships in order to show that this new immortal would actually have a domain that they have power over/responsibility for. If there was no evidence of varying sexual orientation among the Greeks and specifically among the Greek Gods in classical mythology, it stands to reason that if a new god/goddess was created but their domain was severely limited and not often put into practice, that they would find themselves to be quite weak and there would be no true use for them to exist, as in my personal opinion, a god’s strength is directly proportional to the strength and number of their believers, devotees, and practitioners. Throughout the aetiological myth presented above, there are numerous examples of relationships of the gods which show the range of sexual orientations a lot of the gods possessed. Starting with Zeus, it is quite an understatement to say that he was in a lot of relationships. Most of these relationships were with women (often through less than honest means) and whether Zeus came to them as himself, as a bull (Moschus Europa 72-114), or even as the woman’s husband (Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.4.8), one of the few relationships Zeus was suspected to be in that wasn’t with a woman was with a man turned immortal by the name of Ganymede. Since birth, Ganymede was known as godlike due to his beauty which far surpassed any of his fellow mortal men at the time. As a result, Zeus kidnapped him, made him immortal and had him serve as the cupbearer of the gods (Homer, Iliad 230-235). While never explicitly stated in any of the classical poems or myths, it is very heavily implied that Zeus had either a sexual and/or romantic relationship with Ganymede much to Hera’s displeasure. It would make a lot of sense for Zeus to have a sexual orientation of pansexual for it seems he becomes attracted to a wide variety of people for seemingly little reason beyond their looks. For the myth above, I kept the ambiguity of Zeus and Ganymede’s relationship similar to what is present in classical mythology, again only implying that there is something more between Zeus and his new cupbearer. One aspect of the relationship I did change, was stating that Aphrodite was the one who introduced Zeus to Ganymede in order to better fit with my narrative that a part of Aphrodite was always responsible for various aspects of sexual orientation and that this was just one example of her going about her duties in this way.
Another example brought up in the myth above is that of Apollo and Hyacinthus. Unlike Zeus and Ganymede, most of the ancient sources discussing this pair make it clear that they were most definitely in a romantic relationship. Unfortunately, there isn’t much in terms of this relationship, as it ended pretty soon after it began. Although different translations and adaptations of the classical myths disagree on what exactly happened to Hyacinthus, the most prevalent theory is that Apollo killed him on accident after a discus Apollo threw came back and hit Hyacinthus in the head (Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.3.3). In the myth above, I didn’t go into much detail surrounding this relationship because as I mentioned before, little was written about this relationship and so, for my purposes, it worked best only as a brief mention and to serve as another example of a Greek god’s sexual orientation, in this case being bisexual or perhaps pansexual, because although I didn’t mention it within this myth, Apollo has a long list of female lovers as well.
Regarding the reference I made to Artemis, put simply I wished to include an example of a Greek god who never had a relationship, devoting herself to the hunt, surrounding herself with female hunters and remaining an eternal maiden (Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.4.1). I didn’t change anything about the character of Artemis within this story and that was because I felt that there had to be a contrast to the rest of the characters who have had a large number of lovers. I also wanted to imply that although Aphrodite doesn’t meet with Artemis as much as say her brother Apollo, she is still a presence in her life leading to my belief that Artemis is asexual, she experiences attraction but never romantically and has never felt the desire to be in a relationship with anyone else.
Finally, with my reference to Dionysus and his gathering of satyrs and maenads, there is very little in the actual poetry and stories of classical mythology about this group and are instead mainly depicted in statues and vases from that time. For my purposes, I only needed to be aware that Dionysus’ following was comprised of creatures of varied gender and race and that it would be extremely likely for them to get into trouble based on the activities they were believed to get up to (Encyclopedia Mythica 2006).
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References:
Hesiod, Theogony 1. 189-195.
Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca E. 1.3.6. 1-6.
Hesiod, Theogony 1. 929a-929e.
Moschus, Europa 1 (101). 72-114.
Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca E.2.4.8. 1-3.
Homer, Iliad 20. 230-235.
Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca E. 1.3.3. 4-5.
Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca E. 1.4.1. 6.
"Bacchantes." Encyclopedia Mythica. Encyclopedia Mythica, 17 Nov. 2006. Web. 10 Mar. 2021.
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