In short distance from Eleusina the temple of Aphrodite shows that they also honored another female deity who was totally connected with love, beauty, procreation and pleasure. Her cult was commonly held almost everywhere in the ancient world. However, we cannot explore the possible relations between Aphrodite and Demeter. According to the tragedian Euripides, Aphrodite induced Demeter with music to smile in her sadness while Persephone was lost in the kingdom of Hades.
To begin with, the place chosen for worship of a supernatural was often marked by a natural phenomenon: a mountaintop, a headland, a tree, a cave and so on. The sacred worship of that spot is signaled archaeologically only by a handful of votive objects and sacrificial remains.
The Sanctuary of Aphrodite at Daphne is well known from Pausanias, the Greek traveler and geographer of the 2nd century A.D., who identified it during his course to Eleusina. Unfortunately, there isn’t any other recorded information about the place or the type of the worship placed here! Archaeological remnants have proved that the shrine was in use from Classical to Roman times.
Τhe present form of the temple catches the visitor’s attention directly to the rocky hill with carved niches used as a kind of synchronous lockup where the pilgrims left their votives to the goddess. The place affirms an open-air worship of Aphrodite. Marble doves and figurine of Aphrodite and Eros that found in the excavations were probably the gifts to the goddess. On the north, the shrine communicates with the ancient Sacred Way (Iera Odos) which forked in two different paths with common terminal destination the city of Eleusina.
Visiting the shrine, an irregular rectangle about 73 x 21 meters in obvious in front of the big rock. This was probably the enclosure wall within which there are today preserved the foundations of a building with a stoa and a shrine where probably housed the goddess statue. Α Propylon with two columns and four grades of 30 cm each, was the main access to the shrine. Among Propylon and the rock is an altar or a large base which also used as another venue for offerings.
