mpted to drown herself, but was changed
into a fish with human face (see ATARGATIS). At Hierapolis (Bambyce)
there was a pool with an altar in the middle, sacred to the goddess,
where a festival was held, at which her images were carried into the
water. Her connexion with the sea is explained by the influence of the
moon on the tides, and the idea that the moon, like the sun and the
stars, came up from the ocean.

The oriental Aphrodite is connected with the lower world, and came to be
looked upon as one of its divinities. Thus, Ishtar descends to the
kingdom of Ilat the queen of the dead, to find the means of restoring
her favourite Tammuz (Adon, Adonis) to life. During her stay all animal
and vegetable productivity ceases, to begin again with her return to
earth--a clear indication of the conception of her as a goddess of
fertility. This legend, which strikingly resembles that of Persephone,
probably refers to the decay of vegetation in winter, and the
reawakening of nature in spring (cf. HYACINTHUS). The lunar theory
connects it with the disappearance of the moon at the time of change or
during an eclipse.

Another aspect of her character is that of a warlike goddess, armed with
spear or bow, sometimes wearing a mural crown, as sovereign lady and
protectress of the locality where she was worshipped. The spear and
arrows are identified with the beams of the sun and moon.

The attributes of the goddess were the ram, the he-goat, the dove,
certain fish, the cypress, myrtle and pomegranate, the animals being
symbolical of fertility, the plants remedies against sterility.

The worship of Aphrodite at an early date was introduced into Cyprus,
Cythera and Crete by Phoenician colonists, whence it spread over the
whole of Greece, and as far west as Italy and Sicily. In Crete she has
been identified with Ariadne, who, according to one version of her
story, was put ashore in Cyprus, where she died and was buried in a
grove called after the name of Ariadne-Aphrodite (L.R. Farnell, _Cults
of the Greek States_, ii. p. 663). Cyprus was regarded as her true home
by the Greeks, and Cythera was one of the oldest seats of her worship
(cf. her titles Cytherea, Cypris, Paphia, Amathusia, Idalia--the last
three from places in Cyprus). In both these islands there lingered a
definite tradition of a connexion with the cult of the oriental
Aphrodite Urania, an epithet which will be referred to later. The
oriental features of her worship a