Having used her power to rouse passions to incite the lord of the gods to pursue earthly women, Zeus took his revenge by inspiring Aphrodite herself to desire the embrace of a mortal, the king and shepherd Anchises. When she saw him for the first time, the young man was pasturing his flocks in solitude on Mount Ida, near Troy, and his beauty made Aphrodite fall in love with him at once. The goddess presented herself to him in the guise of a beautiful girl from the retinue of Artemis, lost in the woods. The pair made love on the skins of bears and lions that had been killed by the young man. Afterwards, Aphrodite revealed herself in all her immortal splendor and Anchises, terrified, covered his face and begged for salvation: for no mortal man could continue to live after having lain with a goddess. Aphrodite assured him of his safety, as long as he kept the secret, and revealed to him that she had conceived a child. One feast day, however, Anchises drank too much wine and boasted of his loves, provoking Zeus to strike him with a thunderbolt, laming him. He died as an old man at Drepanum, when he was traveling to Italy with Aeneas, the son born to him by Aphrodite, after the destruction of Troy.