So, yeah, it’s weird being born
from a tree. But it’s Greek myth, what’re you going to do? As stated before,
Aphrodite feels a bit responsible for the death of Smyrna, so she took the baby
and locked him in a box. Perfectly normal thing to do, right? Mythologies
around the world agree that this produces perfectly well-adjusted people, so
you can throw away your parenting manuals.
Disclaimer: I am in no way
responsible for what happens if you do.
Possible side effects include:
mania, incest, patricide, matricide, fratricide, a host of psychological
problems that will never be fully entangled, and self-fulfilling prophecies.
And we’re back. So Adonis is locked
in a box for his own safekeeping, and Aphrodite hands the box off to Hera,
which makes sense because the fertility goddess would be an appropriate choice
to raise the child.
Sorry, no, never happened.
The goal wasn’t to raise the child,
merely to stash the kid in the short-term. For that, Aphrodite turns to
Persephone. I’ll grant you, it’s a bizarre choice on the face of things. The
goddess of the underworld (by marriage) and harvest (through mom) doesn’t
strike me as someone you turn to for, well, much of anything.
However, we need to look at all the
other choices to determine who would be a better keeper for the kid. Okay, I’m
not going to exhaustively look at every single god and goddess. For one thing,
there are too many in the Greek pantheon. For another, I just don’t wanna.
So the short, short version. The
gods are out. If they found a kid in a box, they probably just lose interest
and go play with something shiny. Yes, the gods tend to have short attention
spans and instant gratification mindsets. Not unlike people today.
So we need a goddess. There are two
types we’re dealing with (I know this is a gross generalization, but bear with
me), mothers and not mothers. The mothers (the larger group) will likely take
the kid to raise as their own, which is not desirable for Aphrodite. Aphrodite
has no problem being a mom. She has a large number of children, most of whom
are quite famous as both gods and mortals (but we’ll deal with them later). So
she doesn’t want a mom butting in.
Of the not-moms, we have Athena and
Artemis as the standouts. The thing is, they not just not-moms. They are
virgins who have sworn off men and child-rearing altogether. Both of them are
likely to kill the kid or just behave like one of the gods, wandering away to
do something else.
So we need a married not-mom:
Persephone.