ent of all
that is graceful and lovely in womanhood. She is of medium height, and the
form is perfect in its symmetry and faultless proportions.

Aphrodite is also frequently represented in the act of confining her
dripping locks in a knot, whilst her attendant nymphs envelop her in a
gauzy veil.

The animals sacred to her were the dove, swan, swallow, and sparrow. Her
favourite plants were the myrtle, apple-tree, rose, and poppy.

The worship of Aphrodite is supposed to have been introduced into Greece
from Central Asia. There is no doubt that she was originally identical with
the famous Astarte, the Ashtoreth of the Bible, against whose idolatrous
worship and infamous rites the prophets of old hurled forth their sublime
and powerful anathemas.

VENUS.

The Venus of the Romans was identified with the Aphrodite of the Greeks.
The worship of this divinity was only established in Rome in comparatively
later times. Annual festivals, called Veneralia, were held in her honour,
and the month of April, when flowers and plants spring forth afresh, was
sacred to her. She was worshipped as Venus Cloacina (or the Purifier), and
as Venus Myrtea (or the myrtle goddess), an epithet derived from the
myrtle, the emblem of Love.

HELIOS (SOL).

The worship of Helios was introduced into Greece from Asia. According to
the earliest conceptions of the Greeks he was not only the sun-god, but
also the personification of life and all life-giving power, for light is
well known to be an indispensable condition of all healthy terrestrial
life. The worship of the sun was originally very widely spread, {62} not
only among the early Greeks themselves, but also among other primitive
nations. To us the sun is simply the orb of light, which, high above our
heads, performs each day the functions assigned to it by a mighty and
invisible Power; we can, therefore, form but a faint idea of the impression
which it produced upon the spirit of a people whose intellect was still in
its infancy, and who believed, with child-like simplicity, that every power
of nature was a divinity, which, according as its character was baleful or
beneficent, worked for the destruction or benefit of the human race.

Helios, who was the son of the Titans Hyperion and Theia, is described as
rising every morning in the east, preceded by his sister Eos (the Dawn),
who, with her rosy fingers, paints the tips of the mountains, and draws
aside that misty veil through which her