AGM Lecture

We are excited to announce that this year we are hosting an online lecture to mark our AGM.

'For Love AND Money: Cults of Aphrodite for Ancient Greek Mariners'
by Dr Amelia Brown (University of Queensland)

Medici Venus head from UQ’s RD Milns Antiquities Museum (inv. no. 88.016)

• When: Wednesday June 24th, 5pm (AEST)
• Where:  Online presentation via Zoom (log in details provided on RSVP)
• RSVP essential: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/for-love-and-money-cults-of-aphrodite-for-ancient-greek-mariners-tickets-106694247366

 
Abstract: Aphrodite was a widely-worshiped ancient Greek goddess, with shrines all around the Mediterranean Sea. Modern scholarship prioritises her depiction in poetry, nude cult statues and putative Eastern origins, not her everyday cultic significance. Yet she was a patron goddess for sailors and courtesans, brides and generals, even whole cities. Key aspects of her network of sanctuaries on harbours and heights, and her controversial connections with prostitution, may best be understood in relation to her role as a patron of ancient Greek mariners. Her cults from Cyprus to Corinth, Eryx to Paestum, clearly developed through travel by sea. Greek, Phoenician and Italian common use of sanctuaries is clear from archaeology, and can clarify ancient comments by Herodotus, Strabo and Pausanias. Offerings made by hopeful or grateful mariners occur at all of her shrines. Maritime Aphrodite’s cult was practiced both at the port and with a view of the sea, with a focus on statues rather than monumental buildings. Aphrodite's network of maritime cults and sanctuaries casts light on many otherwise immaterial rituals of the ancient merchant marine, and the interlocking networks of colonization, trade and religion which linked Magna Graecia with Greece, Cyprus and the eastern Mediterranean.