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Venus (Latin: [ˈwɛnʊs]) is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex, fertility, prosperity and military victory. She played a key role in many Roman religious festivals. From the third century BC, the increasing Hellenization of Roman upper classes identified her as the equivalent of the Greek goddess Aphrodite. Roman mythology made her the divine mother of Aeneas, the Trojan ancestor of Rome's founder, Romulus.
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Venus has been described as perhaps "the most original creation of the Roman pantheon",[1] and "an ill-defined and assimilative" native goddess, combined "with a strange and exotic Aphrodite".[2] Venus embodies sex, beauty, enticement, seduction and persuasive female charm among the community of immortal gods; in Latin orthography, her name is indistinguishable from the Latin noun venus ("sexual love" and "sexual desire"), from which it derives.[3]
Her cults may represent the religiously legitimate charm and seduction of the divine by mortals, in contrast to the formal, contractual relations between most members of Rome's official pantheon and the state, and the unofficial, illicit manipulation of divine forces through magic.[4][5] The ambivalence of her function is suggested in the etymological relationship of the root *venes- with Latin venenum (poison, venom), in the sense of "a charm, magic philtre".[6]
In myth, Venus-Aphrodite was born of sea-foam. Roman theology presents Venus as the yielding, watery female principle, essential to the generation and balance of life. Her male counterparts in the Roman pantheon, Vulcan and Mars, are active and fiery. Venus absorbs and tempers the male essence, uniting the opposites of male and female in mutual affection. She is essentially assimilative and benign, and embraces several otherwise quite disparate functions, She can give military victory, sexual success, good fortune and prosperity. In one context, she is a goddess of prostitutes; in another, she turns the hearts of men and women from sexual vice to virtue.[7]
Venus was offered official (state-sponsored) cult in certain festivals of the Roman calendar. Her sacred month was April (Latin Mensis Aprilis) which Roman etymologists understood to derive from aperire, "to open," with reference to the springtime opening of trees and flowers.[8]
Veneralia (April 1) was held in honour of Venus Verticordia ("Venus the Changer of Hearts"), and Fortuna Virilis (Virile or strong Good Fortune), whose cult was probably by far the older of the two. Venus Verticordia was invented in 220 BC, during the last tears of Rome's Punic Wars, in response to advice from a Sibylline oracle,[9] when a series of prodigies was taken to signify divine displeasure at sexual offenses among Romans of every category and class, including several men and three Vestal Virgins.[10] Her statue was dedicated by a young woman, chosen as the most pudica (sexually pure) in Rome by a committee of Roman matrons. At first, this statue was probably housed within Fortuna Virilis' temple, perhaps as divine reinforcement against the perceived moral and religious failings of its cult. In 114 BC Venus Verticordia was given her own temple.[11] She was meant to persuade Romans of both sexes and every class, whether married or unmarried, to cherish the traditional sexual proprieties and morality known to please the gods and benefit the State. During her rites, her cult image was taken from her temple to the men's baths, where it was undressed and washed in warm water by her female attendants, then garlanded with myrtle. Women and men asked Venus Verticordia for her help in affairs of the heart, sex, betrothal and marriage. For Ovid, Venus's acceptance of the epithet and its responsibilities represented the goddess' own change of heart.[12]
Vinalia urbana (April 23), a wine festival shared by Venus, in her capacity as patron of "profane" wine, for everyday human use; and Jupiter, king of the gods, patron of the strongest, purest, sacrificial grade wine, and god of the weather on which the autumn grape-harvest would depend. Men and women alike drank the new vintage of ordinary, non-sacral wine in honour of Venus, whose powers had provided humankind with this gift. Upper-class women gathered at Venus's Capitoline temple; a libation of the previous year's vintage, sacred to Jupiter, was poured into a nearby ditch.[13] Common girls (vulgares puellae) and prostitutes gathered at Venus' temple just outside the Colline gate, where they offered her myrtle, mint, and rushes concealed in rose-bunches and asked her for "beauty and popular favour", and to be made "charming and witty".[14]
Vinalia Rustica (August 19), originally a rustic Latin festival of wine, vegetable growth and fertility. This was almost certainly Venus' oldest festival and was associated with her earliest known form, Venus Obsequens. Kitchen gardens and market-gardens, and presumably vineyards were dedicated to her.[15] Roman opinions differed on whose festival it was. Varro insists that the day was sacred to Jupiter, whose control of the weather governed the ripening of the grapes; but the sacrificial victim, a female lamb (agna), may be evidence that it once belonged to Venus alone.[16][17]
Images of Venus have been found in domestic murals, mosaics and household shrines (lararia). Petronius, in his Satyricon, places an image of Venus among the Lares of the freedman Trimalchio's lararium.[18] Prospective brides offered Venus a gift "before the wedding"; the nature of the gift, and its timing, are unknown. Some Roman sources say that girls who come of age offer their toys to Venus; it is unclear where the offering is made, and others say this gift is to the Lares.[19]
In dice-games, a popular pastime among Romans of all classes, the luckiest, best possible roll was known as "Venus".
Venus's sacred signs included water, roses and above all, myrtle, which the Romans cultivated as an originally exotic import with long-established connections to the Greek goddess Aphrodite. Myrtle was admired for its white, sweetly scented flowers, its aromatic, evergreen leaves and medical-magical properties. It was used to cleanse and purify, to avert the evil eye, and to treat various ailments, including infertility and diminished libido. Myrtle was gradually assimilated to Rome's native Venus. An existing Roman cult to the ancient Romano-Etruscan water-goddess Cloacina, in which myrtle was employed as a purifier, gave rise to Venus Cloacina. Roman folk-etymology connected myrtle (Latin murtos) to an ancient, obscure goddess Murcia, later identified by Pliny as "Venus of the Myrtles, whom we now call Murcia".[20] In the Roman ovation, a lesser form of Roman triumph, generals wore a myrtle crown to purify themselves and their armies of blood-guilt; the ovation was assimilated to Venus Victrix ("Victorious Venus"), who was held to have granted and purified its relatively "easy" victory.[21][22]
Myrtle's cleansing effects were anciently associated with chastity. Through association with Venus as a goddess of fertility, seduction and unbridled libido, it was also considered an aphrodisiac. The female pudendum, particularly the clitoris, was known as murtos (myrtle); wine tinctured with myrtle oil was thought particularly suitable for women.[23] Though Venus played an essential role at the prenuptial rites, and certainly during the wedding night, custom forbade the use of myrtle in the bridal crowns; the marriage itself was a serious and solemn affair, and belonged to Juno. At the rites to the Bona Dea ("The Good Goddess", who was also considered a "Women's goddess"), myrtle, Venus and everything male were banned. The women celebrated their goddess with sacrifice and wine; not Venus' ordinary, everyday wine but Jupiter's wine, the strongest, sacrificial-grade otherwise reserved for the Roman gods and Roman men. With all signs of Venus excluded, along with everything male, the women could get virtuously, religiously drunk.[24]
Roses were a sign of Venus, offered in her Porta Collina rites.[25]
In the late Roman Republican era, Vitruvius recommends that any new temple to Venus be sited according to rules laid down by the Etruscan haruspices, and built "near to the gate" of the city, where it would be less likely to contaminate "the matrons and youth with the influence of lust". He finds the Corinthian style, slender, elegant, enriched with ornamental leaves and surmounted by volutes, appropriate to Venus' character and disposition.[26] Vitruvius recommends the widest possible spacing between the temple columns, producing a light and airy space; and he offers Venus's temple in Caesar's forum as an example of how not to do it; the densely spaced, thickset columns darken the interior, hide the temple doors and crowd the walkways, so that matrons who wish to honour the goddess must enter her temple in single file, rather than arm-in arm.[27]
The earliest known cult to Venus in Rome was dedicated on August 15, 293 BC to Venus Obsequens, ("Propitious Venus") in fulfillment of a vow made by Q. Fabius Gurges, supposedly in the heat of battle, in return for his victory over the Samnites. According to tradition, the temple and cult were funded by fines imposed on Roman women for sexual misdemeanours. Its rites and character were probably influenced by or based on Greek Aphrodite's cults, already diffused in various forms throughout Italian Magna Graeca. The dedication date connects this form of Venus to the Vinalia festival.[28][29]
A second cult to Venus was created after Rome's catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Lake Trasimene, in the opening episodes of the Second Punic War between Rome, Carthage and their respective allies. The Sibylline oracle suggested that the so-called Venus of Eryx (Venus Erycina) who belonged to Carthage's Sicilian allies might be persuaded to change her allegiance. In 217 BC the Romans laid siege to Eryx, captured the goddess' image and brought it to Rome. Once there, this "foreign Venus", who probably combined elements of Aphrodite and a more warlike Carthaginian-Phoenician Astarte, was shorn of her more overtly Carthaginian characteristics and installed as one of Rome's twelve Dii consentes in a temple on the Capitoline Hill.[30][31] As Rome's foundation myth made Venus-Aphrodite the divine ancestor of the Roman people, this may have been understood as a homecoming, rather than arrival. Rome eventually defeated Carthage; thereafter, Venus was firmly connected both to Rome's growing political and military hegemony and its mythical Trojan past.[32] Venus' links with Troy can be traced to the epic, mythic history of the Trojan War, in which the Trojan prince Paris chose Venus over Juno and Diana, setting off a train of events that led to war between the Greeks and Trojans, and eventually to Troy's destruction. In Rome's foundation myth, this victorious Venus was the divine mother of the Trojan prince Aeneas, and thus a divine ancestor of the Roman people as a whole, in her form as Venus Genetrix.[33] Another temple to Venus Erycina as a fertility deity[34] was established in a traditionally plebeian district just outside the Colline Gate, outside the pomerium.[35]
Towards the end of the Roman republic, some leading Romans laid more personal claims to Venus' favour. Sulla adopted Felix as a surname, acknowledging his debt to heaven-sent good fortune and his particular debt to Venus Felix, for his extraordinarily fortunate political and military career.[36] His protege Pompey competed for Venus' favours. He celebrated his triumph of 54 BC with coins that showed her crowned with triumphal laurels, and built a lavishly appointed theatre and temple complex dedicated to Venus Victrix.[37] Pompey's erstwhile ally and later opponent Julius Caesar went still further, claiming the favours of Venus Victrix in his military success and Venus Genetrix as a personal, divine ancestress – apparently a long-standing family tradition among the Julii. Caesar's heir, Augustus, adopted both claims as evidence of his inherent fitness for office and divine approval of his rule.[38] Augustus' new temple to Mars Ultor, divine father of Rome's legendary founder Romulus, would have underlined the point, with the image of avenging Mars "almost certainly" accompanied by that of his divine consort Venus, and possibly a statue of the deceased and deified Caesar.[39]
In 135 AD the Emperor Hadrian inaugurated a temple to Venus Felix (Lucky Venus) and the goddess Roma Aeterna (Eternal Rome) on Rome's Velian Hill, making Venus the protective genetrix of the entire Roman state, its people and fortunes. It was the largest temple in Ancient Rome.[40]
Like other major Roman deities, Venus was ascribed a number of epithets that referred to her different cult aspects and roles. Her "original powers seem to have been extended largely by the fondness of the Romans for folk-etymology, and by the prevalence of the religious idea nomen-omen which sanctioned any identifications made in this way."[41]
Venus Caelestis (Celestial or Heavenly Venus), used from the 2nd century AD for Venus as an aspect of a syncretised supreme goddess. Venus Caelestis is the earliest known Roman recipient of a taurobolium (a form of bull sacrifice), performed at her shrine in Pozzuoli on 5 October 134. This form of the goddess, and the taurobolium, are associated with the "Syrian Goddess", understood as a late equivalent to Astarte, or the Roman Magna Mater.[42]
Venus Calva ("Venus the bald one"), a possibly legendary form of Venus, attested by post Classical Roman writings which offer several traditions to explain this appearance and epithet. In one, it commemorates the virtuous offer by Roman matrons of their own hair to make bowstrings during a siege of Rome. In another, king Ancus Marcius wife and other Roman women lost their hair during an epidemic; in hope of its restoration, women unaffected by the affliction sacrificed their own hair to Venus.[43]
Venus Cloacina ("Venus the Purifier"); a fusion of Venus with the Etruscan water goddess Cloacina, who had an ancient shrine above the outfall of the Cloaca Maxima, originally a stream, later covered over to function as Rome's main sewer. The shrine contained a statue of Venus, whose rites were probably meant to purify the culvert's polluted waters and noxious airs.[44] Pliny the Elder, remarking Venus as a goddess of union and reconciliation, identifies the shrine with a legendary episode in Rome's earliest history, when the warring Romans and Sabines, carrying branches of myrtle, met there to make peace.[45]
Venus Erycina ("Venus of Eryx"), from Sicily. She was brought to Rome and given temples on the Capitoline Hill and outside the Porta Collina. She embodied "impure" love, and was the patron goddess of prostitutes.
Venus Felix ("Lucky Venus"), her cult tile at her temple on the Esquiline Hill and at Hadrian's Venus Felix et Roma Aeterna on the Via Sacra. This epithet is also used for a specific sculpture at the Vatican Museums.
Venus Genetrix ("Mother Venus"), as a goddess of motherhood and domesticity, with a festival on September 26, and as ancestress of the Roman people. She was claimed as direct ancestress of the Julian gens in particular; Julius Caesar dedicated a Temple of Venus Genetrix to her in 46 BC. This name has attached to an iconological type of statue of Aphrodite/Venus.
Venus Kallipygos ("Venus with the pretty bottom"), worshiped at Syracuse.
Venus Libertina ("Venus the Freedwoman"), probably arising through the semantic similarity and cultural inks between libertina (as "a free woman") and lubentina (possibly meaning "pleasurable" or "passionate"). Further titles or variants acquired by Venus through the same process, or through orthographic variance, include Libentia, Lubentina, and Lubentini. Venus Libitina links Venus to a patron-goddess of funerals and undertakers, Libitina; a temple was dedicated to Venus Libitina in Libitina's grove on the Esquiline Hill, "hardly later than 300 BC."[46]
Venus Murcia ("Venus of the Myrtle") was an epithet that merged the goddess with the little-known deity Murcia or Murtia. Murcia was associated with Rome's Mons Murcia, and had a shrine in the Circus Maximus. Some sources associate her with the myrtle-tree. Christian writers described her as a goddess of sloth and laziness.[47]
Venus Obsequens ("Graceful Venus" or "Indulgent Venus"), Venus' first attested Roman epithet, and used in the dedication of her first Roman temple, sited somewhere at the foot of the Aventine Hill near the Circus Maximus. The temple was dedicated on August 19 in the late 3rd century BC during the Third Samnite War by Quintus Fabius Maximus Gurges, and played a central role in the Vinalia Rustica. It was supposedly funded by fines imposed on women found guilty of adultery.
Venus Urania ("Heavenly Venus") was an epithet used as the title of a book by Basilius von Ramdohr, a relief by Pompeo Marchesi, and a painting by Christian Griepenkerl. (cf. Aphrodite Urania.)
Venus Verticordia ("Venus the Changer of Hearts"). See Veneralia in this article and main article, Veneralia.
Venus Victrix ("Venus the Victorious") was an aspect of the armed Aphrodite that Greeks had inherited from the East, where the goddess Ishtar "remained a goddess of war, and Venus could bring victory to a Sulla or a Caesar."[48] Pompey, Sulla's protege, vied with his patron and with Caesar for public recognition as her protege. In 55 BC he dedicated a temple to her at the top of his theater in the Campus Martius. She had a shrine on the Capitoline Hill, and festivals on August 12 and October 9. A sacrifice was annually dedicated to her on the latter date. In neo-classical art, her epithet as Victrix is often used in the sense of 'Venus Victorious over men's hearts' or in the context of the Judgement of Paris (e.g. Canova's Venus Victrix, a half-nude reclining portrait of Pauline Bonaparte).
Due to her early association with Aphrodite in the interpretatio graeca, it is hard to establish what characteristics the native Italic Venus may have had. In her earliest forms, as a goddess of vegetation and gardens, she was commonly associated with the Greek goddess Aphrodite and the Etruscan deity Turan, borrowing aspects from each.[49]
As with most other gods and goddesses in Roman mythology, the literary concept of Venus is mantled in whole-cloth borrowings from the literary Greek mythology of her counterpart, Aphrodite. In some Latin mythology Cupid was the son of Venus and Mars, the god of war. At other times, or in parallel myths and theologies, Venus was understood to be the consort of Vulcan. Virgil, in compliment to his patron Augustus and the gens Julia, embellished an existing connection between Venus, whom Julius Caesar had adopted as his protectress, and Aeneas. Vergil's Aeneid has Venus lead Aeneas to Latium in her heavenly form, as the morning star, shining brightly before him in the daylight sky.[50]
In the interpretatio romana of the Germanic pantheon during the early centuries AD, Venus became identified with the Germanic goddess Frijjo, giving rise to the loan translation "Friday" for dies Veneris. The historical cognate of the dawn goddess in Germanic tradition, however, would be Ostara.
Roman and Hellenistic art produced many variations on the goddess, often based on the Praxitlean type Aphrodite of Cnidus. Many female nudes from this period of sculpture whose subjects are unknown are in modern art history conventionally called 'Venus'es, even if they originally may have portrayed a mortal woman rather than operated as a cult statue of the goddess.
Examples include:
Venus became a popular subject of painting and sculpture during the Renaissance period in Europe. As a "classical" figure for whom nudity was her natural state, it was socially acceptable to depict her unclothed. As the goddess of sexuality, a degree of erotic beauty in her presentation was justified, which appealed to many artists and their patrons. Over time, venus came to refer to any artistic depiction in post-classical art of a nude woman, even when there was no indication that the subject was the goddess.
In the field of prehistoric art, since the discovery in 1908 of the so-called "Venus of Willendorf" small Neolithic sculptures of rounded female forms have been conventionally referred to as Venus figurines. Although the name of the actual deity is not known, the knowing contrast between the obese and fertile cult figures and the classical conception of Venus has raised resistance to the terminology.
In Wagner's opera Tannhäuser, which draws on the medieval German legend of the knight and poet Tannhäuser, Venus lives beneath the Venusberg mountain. Tannhauser breaks his knightly vows by spending a year there with Venus, under her enchantment. When he emerges, he has to seek penance for his sins.
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