Aphrodite
(Venus)

"The Goddess of Love and Beauty, who beguiled all, gods and men alike; the laughter-loving goddess, who laughed sweetly or mockingly at those her wiles had conquered; the irresistable goddess who stole away even the wits of the wise."
-- Edith Hamilton

In the Iliad she is the daughter of Zeus and Dione. Hesiod, however, gives the following account of her origin, her name, and her character. After Cronus, the Titan son of Ouranos and Gaia, castrates his father,

The genitals, cut off with adamant
And thrown from land into the stormy sea,
Were carried for a long time on the waves.
White foam surrounded the immortal flesh,
And in it grew a girl. At first it touched
On holy Cythera, from there it came
To Cyprus, circled by the waves. And there
The goddess came forth, lovely, much revered,
And grass grew up beneath her delicate feet.

Her name is Aphrodite among men
And gods, because she grew up in the foam,
And Cytherea, for she reached that land,
And Cyprogenes from the stormy place
Where she was born, and Philommedes from
The genitals, by which she was conceived.
Eros is her companion; fair Desire
Followed her from the first, both at her birth
And when she joined the company of the gods.
From the beginning, both among the gods and men,
She had this honour and received this power:
Fond murmuring of girls, and smiles, and tricks,
And sweet delight, and friendliness, and charm.
-- Theogony (trans. Dorothea Wender)

The Greek word for "foam" is aphros, hence Aphrodite.

She is often represented as the unfaithful wife of Hephaestus. The Odyssey tells of how Aphrodite was caught in a compromising situation with Ares. This was not the goddess's only affair, and she is represented as the mother of Aeneas, the son of Anchises:

And fair-crowned Cytherea felt sweet love
For the hero Anchises, and she lay with him
And bore Aeneas on the mountaintop,
In Ida, with its many-wooded clefts.
-- Theogony

In the Iliad, Aphrodite is the protector of the Trojans. She is wounded while protecting Aeneas from Diomedes. She also protects Paris (to whom she had given Helen) from the wrath of Helen's husband, Menelaus.