In Greece, this day was the Festival of Aphrodite, who the Romans knew as Venus. Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, was the daughter of Zeus and Dione. She was known to the Phoenicians as Astarte and Ashtoreth to the Hebrews and King Solomon, who built a temple to her. On her birth the seas bubbled and turned rosy, and she arose, full grown and standing on a seashell, in all the surpassing glory of her loveliness and arrayed in the panoply of her irresistible charms. She floated to Cyprus, arriving in April, and as soon as her white feet touched the shore, grass and flowers sprang up at her feet and she was sweetly received by the Three Graces.