APHRODITE: So what’s this I hear, Selene—that you’ve taken to pausing the moon in the sky every night so you can gaze like a schoolgirl at this hunter, Endymion, while he sleeps? Sometimes, they say, you actually abandon your post and join him in his bed. Is this true? Yes, you can blame Eros, if you like. He's such a naughty boy, my son! He plays the same wicked games on his own mother, you know! First he smites me with an insatiable desire for Anchises of Troy, then before I can get my fill of that noble prince, he redirects my love pangs toward some Assyrian stripling or some Phoenician farm boy, and I’m off for Lebanon, Cyprus, Tripoli, like some crazed bitch in heat! It makes me dizzy! I can’t catch my breath! And worse, once I’m smitten, he doesn’t even leave the man to me, but makes some other goddess or mortal beauty in love with him as well, so that half the time I don’t get any satisfaction at all! It makes me so mad, I want to strangle the little devil! I’ve threatened to clip his wings and break all of his arrows—I’ve spanked his little bottom until I was blue in the face! He cries for a minute or two, promises never to do it again, and two seconds later he’s back to his games. But enough about me! I want to know about your new lover, Endymion! Is he handsome? Does he have fine, broad shoulders and a chiseled torso? That’s always a consolation in our humiliation—to have a strapping young warrior aroused to distraction by our charms. It certainly doesn’t hurt one’s ego.