APHRODITE, in Grecian Mythology, the goddess of love and beauty, one of the chief deities of Olympus. Homer calls her the daughter of Zeus, and the marine deity Dione. Hesiod derives her name from ἀφρός foam, as sprung from the foam of the sea. The Venus of the Romans had many of the attributes of Aphrodite; but there would seem to have been in the imagination of some of the ancients, a heavenly and an earthly Venus.