No other vestiges of the actual name, so far as I know, are to be found, save that among certain Maniote settlers in Corsica the corrupt derivative, Ἀφροδήτησσα[259] (which would perhaps be better spelt Ἀφροδίτισσα) was until recent times at any rate applied to an equally corrupt class of women, votaries of Ἀφροδίτη Πάνδημος. In a few stories however from Zacynthos[260] the same goddess is prettily described as ἡ μάνα τοῦ Ἔρωτα[261], ‘the Mother of Love,’ a title competent in itself to establish her identity.
The first of these stories tells how a poor maiden fell in love with a youth of high degree, and went to the Mother of Love to ask her help. The latter promised to ask the assistance of her son Eros (Ἔρωτας) when he came home. Next morning went Eros with bow and arrows and sat at the maiden’s door till the swain passed by. Then suddenly he shot his arrow at him, and the young man loved the maiden and took her to wife.
Another yet more remarkable story introduces us to the garden of Eros, whither a prince once went to fetch water to cure the blindness of the king, his father. ‘There at the entrance he beheld a woman that was the fairest upon earth; she sat at the gate and played with a boy who had wings and in his hand held a bow and many arrows. The garden was full of roses, and over them hovered many little winged boys like butterflies. In the midst of this garden was a spring, whence the healing water flowed. As the king’s son drew near to this spring, he espied therein a woman white as snow and shining as the moon; and it was in very truth the moon that bathed there. Beside the spring sat a second woman of exceeding beauty who was the Mother of Eros (ἡ μάνα τοῦ Ἔρωτα).’ She gave him the water and her blessing, and his father was healed.
The distinct reminiscence of Artemis in this story will be noticed later[262]; here we need only notice a few points in the story relating to Eros and his mother. The description of the ‘boy who had wings and in his hand held a bow and many arrows’ is simply and purely classical, according exactly with the Orphic address to him as τοξάλκη, πτερόεντα[263]. The ‘woman at the gate who was the fairest upon earth’ is in all probability the same as ‘the Mother of Eros’ beside the spring, the single personality, by some vagary in the transmission of the story, having become duplicated. The roses, of which the garden was full, are the flower always sacred to Aphrodite, the sweetest emblem of love; and over these it is fitting that the ‘little winged boys’ should hover, brothers as it were of Eros, ever-fresh embodiments of love, to all of whom, in antiquity, Aphrodite was mother[264].