Woman in Mythology (6) — Goddesses... and Mortals

... And the goddesses of Olympus looked down on the mortals making merry upon their earth, and the mortals found favor in their eyes, and they inclined toward them, loving and marrying.

There was no self-abasement in what they did, no degradation in their act; for the agent of love and the impulse of sex are one and the same in goddesses and in mortals — and it is an appetite that death does not bridle — and it made them mingle with immortals and with the perishing alike.

As for Hera, she was the model of gravity and loftiness: she loved neither god nor man, and kept her conjugal fidelity. And Minerva matched her in that.

As for Artemis, goddess of virgins and slayer of whoever assaulted them, she always made a show of being above love, and so she told gods and men. But she loved, and more than once: she loved the hunter Orion, and took to dreaming of him and communing with him in her imagination. The fates did not allow her to be happy with him — rather they made her cut the cord of happiness with her own hand. For she saw her beloved swimming one day, and did not recognize him from afar; she aimed an arrow at him and struck him down. She wept for him long, and turned him into a star in the sky.

And she loved Endymion the shepherd, and would leave her post on Olympus every evening to sit by him as he slept near his flocks, kissing him and guarding his cattle. This goddess was found out, and Aphrodite counted it a victory for herself — and what a victory! Then Zeus intervened and granted Artemis the enjoyment of her beloved for all eternity, making him keep his immortal youth and beauty — on condition that he remain forever asleep.

And Aphrodite... beyond the other goddesses, loved the youth Adonis — perhaps it was the most splendid love the myths have known — and she compelled him to love her after she had failed to tempt him.

And when he died early, her eyes ran dry with mourning for him, until she brought him back to life.

She loved Anchises the Trojan, and from her union with him came Aeneas, the hero of Virgil's epic. She loved Hippomenes, and pointed him to the trick of the golden apples, so that he triumphed over Atalanta — whom she made him marry afterward. And she loved Pygmalion, and turned his stone statue into a woman.

She loved Pyramus, but the fates did not let her grant him the happiness she wished: he perished for the sake of his love, and his beloved perished with him.

And she loved Paris, and gave him the most beautiful woman in the world — after he had refused rank and riches, and cast aside wisdom and understanding. She gave him Helen, whose beauty led to the destruction of Troy and the burning of a thousand ships!

And Aurora, goddess of the dawn, loved Cephalus and lavished upon him all she could; but she did not win his heart, and she burned with grief over him, and took her revenge on him by making him slay his wife — unintentionally — with his own hand. She also loved Tithonus and gave him immortality; but she wearied of him and left him, and was driven at last to banish him and then to turn him into a grasshopper.

They love mortals, but they take revenge on them. Here is Aphrodite avenging herself on one lover by striking him down, on another by changing him into a flower, on a third into a stone, on a fourth into a tree. And here is Aurora, and here Artemis... we have seen what those two did.

... As for mortals, they counted it a great glory to marry goddesses — indeed they were afraid not to marry them, lest there befall them what befell Narcissus, who slighted a goddess and was driven to horrors that led to his death.

And woe to woman — even if she be a goddess: how cruel she is if she does not love; and woe to her — what woe! — if she loves: how great is her jealousy, and how fearful her revenge!