_Le Sieur Nan_, turns on the
same opinion. The amour of Thomas the Rhymer is a mediaeval analogue of
the Idaean legend.

Aphrodite has better claims than most Greek Gods to Oriental elements.
Herodotus and Pausanias (i. xiv. 6, iii. 23, I) look on her as a being
first worshipped by the Assyrians, then by the Paphians of Cyprus, and
Phoenicians at Askelon, who communicated the cult to the Cythereans.
Cyprus is one of her most ancient sites, and Ishtar and Ashtoreth are
among her Oriental analogues. She springs from the sea--

"The wandering waters knew her, the winds and the viewless ways,
And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue streams of the
bays."

But the charm of Aphrodite is Greek. Even without foreign influence,
Greek polytheism would have developed a Goddess of Love, as did the
polytheism of the North (Frigga) and of the Aztecs. The rites of Adonis,
the vernal year, are, even in the name of the hero, Oriental. "The name
Adonis is the Phoenician _Adon_, 'Lord.'" {44} "The decay and revival of
vegetation" inspires the Adonis rite, which is un-Homeric; and was
superfluous, where the descent and return of Persephone typified the same
class of ideas. To whatever extent contaminated by Phoenician influence,
Aphrodite in Homer is purely Greek, in grace and happy humanity.

The origins of Aphrodite, unlike the origins of Apollo, cannot be found
in a state of low savagery. She is a departmental Goddess, and as such,
as ruling a province of human passion, she belongs to a late development
of religion. To Christianity she was a scandal, one of the scandals
which are absent from the most primitive of surviving creeds. Polytheism,
as if of set purpose, puts every conceivable aspect of life, good or bad,
under divine sanction. This is much less the case in the religion of the
very backward races. We do not know historically, what the germs of
religion were; if we look at the most archaic examples, for instance in
Australia or the Andaman Islands, we find neither sacrifice nor
departmental deities.

Religion there is mainly a belief in a primal Being, not necessarily
conceived as spiritual, but rather as an undying magnified Man, of
indefinitely extensive powers. He dwells above "the vaulted sky beyond
which lies the mysterious home of that great and powerful Being, who is
Bunjil, Baiame, or Daramulun in different tribal languages, but who in
all is known by a name the equivalent of the onl