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Divine Lineage
A plaster cast of the two reclining goddesses from the east pediment of the Parthenon, identified as Dione and Aphrodite.

Love

Dione

ΔιώνηRoman: Dione

Aphrodite's mother in Homer, and the goddess Dodona put beside Zeus.

Plaster cast after the Parthenon east pediment — original c. 438–432 BCE

1
epithet
1
cult site
1
offspring
1
union
2
recorded births

Vitals

Kind
Titan
Generation
2
Domains
consolation, the oracle at Dodona
Accent
Love — desire, grace, marriage
Sacred symbols
the oak of Dodona, the dove
Principal cult sites
Dodona

What they were called

  • Διώνη

    the feminine of Zeus's own name

Lineage

See in the tree

Descent

MotherTethysHesiod, TheogonyFatherOkeanosHesiod, Theogony

Variant traditions

Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.1.3

MotherGaiaFatherOuranos

Apollodorus counts Dione among the Titans rather than the Okeanids.

Offspring in this roster

ChildAphrodite

Notable myths

  1. In Her Mother's Lap

    Diomedes cut Aphrodite's hand on the field at Troy and she fled to Olympos in tears. Dione took her onto her lap and listed the gods who had been wounded by men before her, told her to endure it, and wiped the ichor from her wrist so the pain stopped. Then she promised that whoever fights the gods does not come home to his children.

    Homer, Iliad 5.370-415

The account

Dione's name is Zeus's name in the feminine, which is the strongest evidence for what she originally was: the consort at an oracle older than the Olympian arrangement. At Dodona, where priests read the future from the sound of an oak, she is worshipped alongside Zeus in the position Hera holds everywhere else. Homer gives her one scene and it is a good one. Aphrodite, wounded in the hand by Diomedes at Troy, runs home to Olympos and puts her head in her mother's lap, and Dione holds her and works through a list of other gods who have been hurt by mortals — Ares shut in a jar for thirteen months, Hera shot in the breast, Hades shot at Pylos — and tells her that it does not last and that the man who did it will not live long. It is the only maternal comfort scene in the Iliad. Hesiod lists a Dione among the Okeanids; Apollodorus makes her a Titan. Both are here.

Ancient sources

  • Hesiod, Theogony 337-370
  • Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.1.3
  • Homer, Iliad 5.370-415

Where a line reference is not given, the work is cited without one rather than guessed at.

Image credit

Title
Dione and Aphrodite from Parthenon's east pediment plaster cast 03
Artist
Deiadameian
Date
Unknown
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Source
Wikimedia Commons file page