In the Roman pantheon, a deity is present who is attributed primarily to love, fertility and beauty, as well as farmland and gardens; additionally she was considered predecessor of the Romans through her son Aeneas, she is the Goddess Venus and with this article we invite you to know it.
the goddess venus
The Roman goddess Venus personifies everything related to love, attention and maternal care, the generation of offspring through sexual intercourse and passion. This goddess was the most beautiful of all the omnipotences of Roman mythology, for which she was desired by both mortals and gods.
Like the Greek god Apollo, the goddess Venus was characterized by having a considerably open sexuality and of course this allowed her to have male and female lovers alike, as well as being the protector of lovers and prostitutes, as well as being a figurehead. significant in Roman religion. The goddess Venus was an adaptation of the Greek goddess Aphrodite with whom she shared a mythological tradition.
The Romans adopted this goddess in the third century BC. C. already almost in full culmination of the Punic wars (between the XNUMXnd and XNUMXrd centuries B.C.), at that time the Romans decided to consult the oracle who at that time suggested that they ask the goddess Venus for help in order to ensure victory over Carthaginians (this goddess was considered protector of the city of Carthage). The worship of her by the Romans reached its peak after bringing victory to them, and remained so until the rise of Christianity in the XNUMXth century AD.
Additionally, the goddess Venus was also celebrated as the mother of Aeneas the ancestor of Romulus who was the forerunner of Rome. Subsequently, Julius Caesar publicly linked his family's heritage to the maternal line of the goddess, making Venus the progenitor of the first Roman imperial dynasty.
The goddess Venus in mythology
The origin of the goddess Venus occurred in quite unusual circumstances. Her father, the god Uranus, was the original ruler of the cosmos and the one who created the world with the earth. So when Saturn the son of Uranus overthrew his father (a fact later repeated by Saturn's own son), the usurper cut off his father's genitals which he threw into the sea. Once there, the severed penis and testicles mixed with the sea foam giving life to the goddess Venus. In art, this scene often took the form of the goddess Venus emerging from a clam or other mollusk.
Etymology of Venus
The word "Venus" comes directly from the classical Latin noun venus, which expresses "love." This noun was frequently used to show love or desire especially sexual, it was also directly related to the verb form venerari denoting "to love or revere", also the root of the English word "venerate".
Some researchers have contemplated that "Venus" was concerned with the Latin word venenum, a noun denoting "poison", "potion", "charm" or perhaps even "aphrodisiac" noting its apparent control over love intoxication.
Attributes and power of the goddess Venus
As the goddess who embodies love, passion and sex, Venus had the ability to make mortals and gods madly fall in love. So her main attributes and instruments of power were merely charm and erotic attraction where many fell victim to them, according to the mythological narrative.
It was normal for the figure of the goddess Venus to be found in homes. Among the various appearances of this goddess, her figure was accompanied by allegories such as the rose as a symbol of fertility, sexual passion and female genitalia. Also, this she used to wear a crown of myrtle (a bush with long-lasting deep green leaves with white flowers), this crown became one of her essential distinguishing features.
Seashells were another common motif linked to this goddess, as these shells served as a reference to the birth of Venus from the sea and as another of the many erotic emblems of Venus. This goddess is also capable of attracting prosperity and good fortune for those who worship her. Additionally, because of her relationship with the land and gardens she can bring life from underground to the surface just by her passing over it, causing both plants and flowers to appear on her trail.
The lovers and children of Venus
The goddess Venus had two main lovers who were also gods: her husband Vulcan and Mars (respectively Hephaestus and Ares in Greek mythology). There is a myth about the love story of Venus with Mars, where being in the middle of the sexual act in bed they are caught with a net cunningly by Vulcan.
As a result of Venus's dissatisfaction and her infidelities, she and Vulcan did not have a love-filled marriage and for this reason there were no offspring of them as a couple. However, this goddess was not barren, and through her love affairs she managed to have many children with different gods. With Mars for example, she gave life to:
- Timor (Phobos) the representation of fear who attended the contests with his father, and his twin Metus (Deimos) the image of terror.
- Concordia (Harmony) the goddess of negotiation, compression and harmony.
- Cupids (Erotes) who were a set of winged love deities who symbolized the various appearances of love.
The Roman poet Ovid recounts that Aphrodite (Venus) gave birth to Hermaphrodites from Hermes (Mercury), who was the epitome of effeminacy and androgyny; and also to Fortuna (Tyche), who was the goddess of luck and destiny within the Roman religion. Venus is attributed by Bacchus as the mother of the minor deity Priapus (a fertility god often characterized by an absurdly large phallus).
According to Pausanias the Graces were thought to be the offspring of Venus and Bacchus, but more commonly their birth is attributed to Jupiter and Eurynome. However, the Graces were part of Venus' entourage along with Cupids and Suadela the goddess of persuasion in the realms of romance, love and seduction.
Venus also had various mortal lovers, the two most famous being Anchises and Adonis but she was also the mistress of the Sicilian king Butes with whom she had a son named Erice. She also copulated with Phaethon with whom she sired Sandocus, known to be the father of Cinyras of Cyprus.
Ovid's Metamorphoses (Book X) recounts how Venus fell in love with the mortal Adonis (either because of his beauty or because of Cupid's arrow), where she implored Proserpina (Persephone) to take care of him until she came for him. The two goddesses were enraptured by the mortal, so they fought until Jupiter decided that Adonis would spend a third of the year with each of them and a third where he wanted; in the end, he spent his time with Venus until a boar killed him.
According to the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, Anchises, prince of Dardania and an ally of Troy, was seduced by Venus. She camouflaged herself by pretending to be the Phrygian princess and captivated him, where she nine months later revealed her celestial identity by introducing Anchises to his son Aeneas. Venus warned Anchises that he should never boast about his adventure so as not to be struck by Jupiter; unfortunately, Anchises gloated and was paralyzed by Jupiter's lightning.
The Trojan Aeneas, according to Virgil's Aeneid, was destined to create Rome guided by his divine progenitor, the goddess Venus. The son of Aeneas, Ascanio was the king of Alba Longa for which he was recognized by Virgil as the ancestor of the precursors of Rome: Romulus and Remus together with the Gens (family) Julia; the Gen Julia was the family that included Julius Caesar, Augustus (Octavian) Caesar, and their descendants.
Venus and the evening star
In the mythical tradition of Virgil's Aeneid, Venus was chosen as the mistress of Anchises, a member of the Trojan royal family. According to this tradition, Venus disguised herself as a beautiful virgin and seduced Anchises, revealing her true identity only after she became pregnant. She soon gave birth to Aeneas, who became a mighty Trojan hero. Then after the fall of Troy, Aeneas ventured into the Mediterranean to fulfill a prophecy that he would one day found a great Italian empire.
In the Aeneid the goddess Venus served as the main mover of events, as well as her son's relentless defender in battle. Venus came to Aeneas' aid after discovering that Juno had sent a massive storm to prevent her fleet from reaching Italy. Venus also appealed to Jupiter, who interceded to quell the storm before guiding his child safely to Carthage. Disguised as an old woman, she led Aeneas and his followers to the lovely Queen Dido, so during that interim to Queen Venus she protected her son's party from hostile eyes:
«She hid them, the goddess became a thick blanket of clouds so that no one could see or touch them, so that no one would know, nor will they seek the cause of their arrival.»
Later when Aeneas sailed from Carthage to Italy, the goddess Venus pleaded with Neptune to allow her to cross the Mediterranean safely; Neptune agreed on the grounds that the unfortunate Captain Palinuro would be sacrificed.
Upon Aeneas' arrival in Rome, Venus provided him with weapons and armor that had been created by Vulcan. These weapons would be used in the next war against the Latins. On Aeneas's shield, Vulcan represented the future triumphs of the Romans, such as Augustus's victory over his enemies at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. C. (as a contemporary and survivor of the bloody civil war that ended in Actium, Virgil had every reason to appease Augustus and present his triumph as a pivotal moment in Roman history).
Finally, in the penultimate moments of the Aeneid, the goddess Venus intervened as a mother and healed her son Aeneas after he had been struck by an arrow.
Cult and temples of the goddess Venus
The first known temple of Venus was dedicated to Venus Obsequens (Obedient Venus) on the Aventine Hill in Rome, around 295 BC. However, her cult was based in the city of Lavinium, and her temple there became home to a festival known as Vinalia Rustica (this temple spread with Greek aspects (cults of Aphrodite) and was not a new creation ).
In 217 BC C., the Sibylline oracles suggested that if Rome (by this time losing the Second Punic War) could persuade Venus Eyrcina (Venus of Eryx) to change her allegiance from the allies of the Carthaginian Sillegos to the Romans, the war would be won. Rome besieged Eryx (a Carthaginian fortress), offering the goddess a magnificent temple and carrying the image of the goddess from this place to Rome.
It was this foreign sculpture that later became Rome's Venus Genetrix (Venus the Mother). The cult that was established around Venus Genetrix on the Capitoline Hill was restrained for the Romans belonging to the families of power, but in 181 a. C. and 114 a. C. the temples and the cult of Venus Eycina and Venus Verticordia (Venus the changer of hearts) were established for the commoners.
The month of Venus was April (the beginning of spring and fertility) and it is at this time that most of her festivals were celebrated. So every first of April a festival was held in honor of Venus Verticordia called Veneralia, on the 23rd Vinalia Urbana was celebrated, which was a wine festival belonging to both Venus (goddess of profane wine) and Jupiter.
While Vinalia Rustica was held on August 10, it was the oldest festival of Venus and was associated with its form of Venus Obsequens. Finally, every September 26 was the date of the festival of Venus Genetrix, the mother and protector of Rome.
Epithets of the goddess Venus
The goddess Venus was distinguished by a series of epithets, each one revealing a different personality of the goddess, including:
- Venus Caelestis or "Venus of the heavens".
- Venus Erycina, or "Venus of Eryx", related to her representation of the city of Carthage.
- Venus Felix or the "lucky Venus", for her role in turning the tide of battle, as she did during the Second Punic War.
- Venus Genetrix, or "Venus the creator", a title raised by none other than Julius Caesar based on the role of the goddess in the formation of the Roman state.
- Venus Murcia or "Venus of the Arrayanes", for being a loving protector of Rome.
- Venus Obsequens or “Venus that adores”.
- Venus Victrix or "Venus who brings Victory".
Venus in art and literature
During the early Paleolithic period, people carved small female figures which later archaeologists named Venus figures. They are usually curved and rounded with some degree of thickness in the middle, and often have no faces, just the representation of voluptuous female bodies.
Perhaps the best known is the small statue originally called the Venus of Willendorf, now known as the Willendorf Woman or Willendorf Woman. In recent years, scholars have stopped naming these pieces after Venus, because they are not linked to the goddess Venus; in fact, they predate it by many thousands of years.
In contemporary art, Venus is almost always portrayed as young and beautiful. Throughout the classical period, different artists produced a number of statues of Venus, such as the popular Aphrodite of Milos statue (better known as the Venus de Milo), which depicts the goddess as a classically beautiful woman with feminine curves and a knowing smile. This statue is believed to have been made by Alexandros of Antioch, around 100 BC
During the European Renaissance period and beyond, it became fashionable for upper class ladies to pose as Venus for paintings or sculptures. One of the best known is that of Pauline Bonaparte Borghese Napoleon's younger sister, where Antonio Canova sculpted her as Venus Victrix, reclining in a salon, and although Canova wanted to sculpt her in a gown, Pauline apparently insisted on being portrayed nude.
In literature, the writer Chaucer regularly wrote about Venus in addition to her conspicuous presence in several of his poems, as well as in The Knight's Tale in which Palamon compares his lover Emily to the goddess. In fact, Chaucer uses the turbulent relationship between Mars and Venus to represent Palamon as the warrior and Emily as the beautiful maiden in the flower garden.
venus and politics
At the end of the Roman Republic, some Roman celebrities claimed the favor of Venus and competed for it, such as:
- Sulla (accepting the Latin qualifier Felix for luck and glorifying Venus Felix in his divine favor).
- Pompey (offered in 55 BC, a temple of Venus Victrix – Venus of Victory).
- Julius Caesar (sued the favor of Venus Victrix and Venus Genetrix).
- Hadrian (in 139 CE, built a temple to Venus and Roma Aeterna, eternal Rome, making Venus the guardian mother of the Roman state).
Other goddesses of love
Although Venus is no longer widely worshipped, she persists in Western consciousness as another significant link in the historical chain of erotic female figures within ancient mythology, including the Norse goddesses Frigg and Freyja, the Mesopotamian Ishtar, the Astarte Syrian-Palestinian and Aphrodite the Greek counterpart of Venus.
As a representation of beauty, Venus has inspired a number of famous images throughout history, as well as a glut of contemporary imagery, and as such has become one of the most identifiable images of the goddess in the Western world.
Venus in today's culture
Venus has remained relevant in modern pop culture as a symbol of love and eroticism. Thanks to its associations with beauty and sexuality, Venus has been appropriated by several notable cosmetics brands, including companies:
- Gillette created a line of shaving products for women named after the goddess.
- Venus Skin Care, which also used the name of the goddess as a marketing ploy.
The name of Venus has also been used in several movie titles, as is the case with the film productions mentioned below:
- Venus (1984), a French film that focused on the adventures of two American businessmen as they traveled in search of a model for their line of cosmetics (named, of course, "Venus").
- Three other films have used the title Venus, one of these most recent films focused on the life of a transgender woman who comes clean about her sexual identity.
Venus has also appeared in multiple musical productions songs, among which the following releases stand out:
- "Venus de Milo" by Miles Davis in 1957.
- Shocking Blue's "Venus" in 1969 which was a hit.
- Lady Gaga's "Venus" in 2013 whose lyrics directly invoke the goddess and her ability to inspire irrepressible sexuality: "I can't help what I feel / Goddess of love, please take me to your leader / I can't help it. Keep dancing / Goddess of love! Goddess of love."
Finally, Venus also lent its name to the second planet from the sun; As befits its namesake, Venus is the brightest planet in the solar system.
If you found this article about the Goddess Venus of Roman mythology interesting, we invite you to enjoy these others: