Venus The Goddess of Love and More in Roman Mythology

Immerse Yourself in The Glamorous World of Venus, The Roman Goddess of Love, And all The Legendary Powers and Ashplodes of The Templars.

Roman mythology , Venus was the goddess of love, sex, beauty and fertility. She was the Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Aphrodite . However, the Roman Venus had many more abilities than the Greek Aphrodite; she was the goddess of victory, fertility and even prostitution. According to Greek mythology , as presented by Hesiod in his Theogony of Him, Aphrodite was born from the foam of the sea after Saturn ( Cronus ) castrated Uranus and his blood fell into the water. This latter explanation seems to be a more popular theory, judging by the countless works of art depicting Venus rising from the waters in a shell.

Venus (Sandro Botticelli) Sandro Botticelli (Public Domain)

Divine lovers and offspring

Venus had two main divine lovers: her husband, Vulcan ( Hephaestus ) and Mars ( Ares ). There is a myth about the love affair of Venus and Mars and how Vulcan cunningly trapped them in bed with a net. Therefore, Vulcan and Venus had a loveless marriage and had no children. Nonetheless; The goddess of love and sex was not left without offspring: she had many children with different gods. With Mars she had Timor (Phobos), the personification of fear that accompanied her father in battle; her twin brother Meto (Demo), the personification of terror, Concordia (Harmony), goddess of harmony, and the Cupids (Erotes), who were a collection of winged love deities representing various aspects of love.

The Roman poet Ovid tells that Aphrodite had Hermaphroditus with Hermes , who was the epitome of effeminacy and androgyny. With Hermes or Zeus she also had Fortuna ( Tique ), who was the personification of luck and destiny in Roman religion . Venus is considered the mother of the minor deity Priapus (a fertility god characterized by his disproportionate penis) with Bacchus . According to Pausanias, the graces were believed to be daughters of Venus and Bacchus, but the most common thing is to say that they were daughters of Jupiter and Eurynome. However, the Graces were part of Venus's court along with the Cupids and Suadela, the goddess of persuasion in the realms of romance, love and seduction.

Mortal lovers, children and descendants

Venus also had several mortal lovers. The two most famous would be Anchises and Adonis , but she was also the lover of the Sicilian king Butes and mother of his son Érix, as well as she also had a son with Feton, Astinous. Ovid 's Metamorphosis ( Book Both goddesses fell in love with the mortal and ended up fighting over him until Zeus decided that Adonis would spend a third of the year with each of them and the last one as he wanted. In the end, he spent his time with Venus until she was killed by a wild boar.

Venus de Milo Jastrow (Public Domain)

According to Homer 's Hymn to Aphrodite , Anchises, a Dardanian prince allied to Troy , was seduced by Venus. She disguised herself as a Phrygian princess to seduce him and it was not until nine months later that she revealed his true identity. It was then that she introduced Anchises to her son, Aeneas . Venus warned Anchises not to brag about her affair with her so that Jupiter would not punish him. Unfortunately, Anchises boasted and Jupiter crippled him with one of his thunderbolts. The Trojan Aeneas, according to Virgil 's Aeneid , was destined to found Rome guided by his divine mother, Venus. Virgil credited Aeneas's son, Ascanius or Yulus, king of Alba Longa, with being the ancestor of the founders of Rome: Romulus and Remus along with the Gens (family) Julia. The Gens Julia was the family whose members also included Julius Caesar , Caesar Augustus (Octavius) and his descendants.

Temples, cults and festival in ancient Rome

The first appearance of a temple dedicated to Venus was in 295 BC It was dedicated to Venus Obsequens (Obedient Venus) on the Aventine Hill, by Q. Fabius Gurges. However, the temple was infused with Greek aspects (from the Aphrodite cults) and was not a new creation. In 217 BC the Sibylline oracle suggested that if Rome (which at the time was on track to lose the Second Punic War ) could persuade Venus Eryxin (the Venus of Érix) to change her alliance from her Sicilian Carthaginian allies to the Romans, then they would win the war. Rome besieged Érix, offered the goddess a magnificent temple, and brought her image to the city. It was this foreign image that would eventually become the Venus Genetrix (Venus the mother) of Rome. The cult that formed around Venus Genetrix on the Capitoline Hill was reserved for the upper classes, but in 181 BC and again in 114 BC the temples of the cult of Venus Eryxin and Venus Verticordia (Venus the that overturns hearts).

The month of Venus was April, the beginning of spring and fertility, which was when most of her festivals were celebrated. On April 1, a festival was celebrated in honor of Venus Verticordia called Veneralia . On the 23rd, Vinalia Urbana was celebrated , which was a wine festival dedicated to both Venus (goddess of profane wine) and Jupiter. Vinalia Rusticia was celebrated on August 10. It was the oldest festival of Venus and was associated with her Venus Obsequens aspect . September 26 was the date of the festival of Venus Genetrix , the mother and protector of Rome.

Crouching Venus
Carole Raddato (CC BY-SA)

Venus and politics

At the end of the Roman Republic , some Romans claimed to have the favor of Venus and competed for it, such as Sulla (who adopted the name Felix, blessed in Latin and attributed his divine favor to Venus Felix ), Pompey (who in 55 BC he dedicated a temple to Venus Victrix , the Venus of Victory), Julius Caesar (who claimed to have the favor of Venus Victrix and Venus Genetrix ), and Hadrian (who, in 139 AD, dedicated a temple to Venus and Eternal Rome , which made Venus the protective mother of the Roman state).

Venus and the Evening Star

In Virgil's Aeneid the mother of the Trojan hero Aeneas guides him to Latium in her celestial form: the evening star. It is the same star that Virgil says lifts the soul of Julius Caesar to the heavens. It is also an alternative name for the planet Venus because it is so bright and easy to distinguish in the night sky.

Art and appearance

Images of Venus have been found in countless forms, from sculptures to mosaics and shrines and even in domestic murals and frescoes. Venus, due to her natural beauty and sexual nature, was often depicted nude. Most sculptures of Venus closely resemble the Aphrodite of Cnidus and the Venus de Milo. However, many high-quality murals in Pompeii depict it in different ways. Venus remained a popular subject for artists throughout Antiquity and the Renaissance and even into the 20th century.