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InGreco-Roman mythology, thePropoetides (Ancient Greek:Προποιτίδες,romanized: Propoitídes) are the daughters of Propoetus from the city ofAmathus on the island ofCyprus. They refused to worship the goddess of love,Venus/Aphrodite, who then punished them accordingly, which led to a divine curse, and ultimately being petrified into stone.[1] Their short tale appears only in theMetamorphoses, a narrative poem byOvid.
In Roman literature, they are treated byOvid in hisMetamorphoses. According to Ovid, the immoral Propoetides denied thatVenus (GreekAphrodite) was a goddess, and refused to worship her. In divine anger, the goddess made them prostitute their bodies. The women lost their public reputation, their sense of shame, and even the ability to feel love or emotions. The goddess then hardened the blood in their cheeks so that they could no longer blush, and finally turned them all into hard flints.[2]
According to Ovid, after seeing the Propoetides prostituting themselves,Pygmalion determined that he was "not interested in women".[3] This drove him to create a woman of his ownin statue form, with whom he then fell in love.
The story of Venus and her vengeance on the Propoetides for failing to worship her properly is a common theme in a number of stories and poems written about the goddess.[4]
According toHerodotus, ancient tradition in Cyprus "compels every woman of the land to sit in the temple of Aphrodite and have intercourse with some stranger at least once in her life."[5] Cyprus was famous for this forcedsacred prostitution in the ancient world; this fame informed Ovid's tale of the Propoetides.[6] Historian Stephanie Budin contends that this type of prostitution was a myth, and did not actually occur in Cyprus or anywhere else in the Near East and Mediterranean.[7]
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