The primitive form of a bethel,[39] or as the Greeks transcribed the Phenician term, βαίτυλος, has often been represented on coins. Sometimes two columns are placed, one on each side, and the stone is frequently accompanied with the symbols of the goddess, fruit and eggs; sometimes doves perch on the sanctuary; sometimes the pillar is covered with a temple roof. We know one instance in which it bears the symbol of a Latin cross and gradually it assumes in a coarse style the features of a woman. Such is the beginning of the manufacture of idols which at first are extremely stiff and assume only gradually--indeed very slowly--an artistic shape. [Illustration: COIN OF ANTIOCHUS EUERGETES.] [Illustration: ISTAR ON A COIN OF TARSUS.] [Illustration: COIN OF EMESA.] [Illustration: COIN OF IASOS CARIA.] [Illustration: COIN OF PAPHOS, CYPRUS.] [Illustration: COIN OF IULIA GORDUS, LYDIA.] At the dawn of the historic age the oldest Greek statues and paintings of Venus show her fully robed and draped. Great numbers of Aphrodite amulets of small size and made of glazed terra-cotta have been found mainly on the Ægean islands where her cult had spread from Babylon and Syria. They resemble the Babylonian Beltis statuettes in having [Illustration: THE DIANA OF EPHESUS IN THE VATICAN. After a photograph.] [Illustration: THE DIANA OF EPHESUS. Alabaster statue now in the museum of Naples. (Roscher, _Lex._, I, col. 588.)] the arms crossed over the breast, but as a rule their hips are unnaturally broad. Some of them have a bird’s (possibly a pigeon’s) head and all have large ears with earrings. The very oldest real statues of Aphrodite, products of primitive manufacture, have been lost, and none of the temple idols have survived Christian iconoclasm, but we have information that Kanachus[40] in the sixth century before Christ, and Kalamis, Phidias and Alcamenes in the fifth, have represented the goddess as dignified and severe. We reproduce here drawings of archaic statues fully dressed. Some of them are still awkward but give evidence of the artist’s reverence. An archaic Venus of the style familiar in Pompeii was formerly regarded as a Moera but to-day after Gerhard’s interpretation it is considered as a Venus Proserpina. [Illustration: CYPRIAN APHRODITE.[41]] The statue by Kalamis which once stood upon the Acropolis at Athens and was called Aphrodite Sosandra[42] is also fully dressed, but much more graceful. A veil is tied about her hair, and in her right hand the goddess is clasping some folds of her upper garment, while her extended left hand holds a pomegranate blossom. [Illustration: ARCHAIC APHRODITE WITH DOVE. Roscher, _Lex._, I, 409.] [Illustration: ARCHAIC VENUS IN POMPEIAN STYLE.] Among the Attic votive reliefs there is one interpreted as Aphrodite and Ares,[43] which shows [Illustration: APHRODITE SOSANDRA BY KALAMIS. From Roscher, _Lex._, I, col. 412.]