Aphrodite and Anchises. According to the first Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, the goddess boasted that while she had the power to force other deities to fall in love with mortals, she herself would not do so. To show his power, Zeus caused her to fall in love with the Trojan prince Anchises as he tended cattle on Mount Ida. Their union produced the child Aeneas. Although forbidden to reveal the name of the child’s mother, Anchises drunkenly bragged about his affair with the goddess and as punishment was blinded or crippled by Zeus’s lightning bolt.

Classical Sources. Homeric Hymns, first hymn “To Aphrodite” lines 45-201. Theocritus, Idylls 1.105-07. Virgil, Aeneid i.866ff. Hyginus, Fabulae 94.