Aphrodite Pandemos was originally an extension of the idea of the goddess Aphrodite to family and city life to include the whole people, the political community. Hence the name was supposed to go back to the time of
Theseus, the reputed author of the reorganization of
Attica and its
demes. Aphrodite Pandemos was held in equal regard with Urania; she was called
σεμνή semnē (holy), and was served by priestesses upon whom strict
chastity was enjoined. In time, however, the meaning of the term underwent a change, probably due to the philosophers and moralists, by whom a radical distinction was drawn between Aphrodite Urania and Pandemos.
The Symposium According to
Pausanias's dialogue in Plato's
Symposium, there are two goddesses named Aphrodite, "the elder, having no mother, who is called Aphrodite Urania (heavenly or spiritual), she is the daughter of Uranus; the younger, who is called the Aphrodite Pandemos (terrenal or common), she is the daughter of
Zeus and
Dione." Pandemos was equated by Pausanias with sexual gratification and attraction towards the body of a lover, born of a man and woman and embodying attraction towards women and boys, while Urania was associated with a nobler attraction to the mind and soul, born without the involvement of a woman and embodying attraction towards young men. The same distinction is found in
Xenophon that after
Solon's time
courtesans were put under the protection of Aphrodite Pandemos. But there is no doubt that the cult of Aphrodite was on the whole as "pure" as that of any other divinities, and although a distinction may have existed in later times between the goddess of
legal marriage and the goddess of
free love, the titles Urania and Pandemos do not express that idea. Homosexual artists and activists in the
Early Modern and
Victorian eras would further emphasize the distinction between attractions towards men versus women, leading to the adoption of "
Uranian" as a term for male homosexuality. The term would be used by many homosexual figures such as
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs or
Oscar Wilde to describe what they saw as the nobility and legitimacy of "uranian love".
Anadyomene Hesiod's description of Urania's birth from the sea foam was artistically depicted through a widespread motif of
Venus Anadyomene ("Venus Rising from the Sea"), an epithet notably revived during the
Renaissance with works such as
Sandro Botticelli's
The Birth of Venus. ==Worship and iconography==