▷ Venus. Goddess Of Love And Beauty In Roman Mythology (2024)

We explain in detail all the facts about the Roman goddess Venus. Discover all her sensuality and most popular legends.

Who was Venus?

Venus was the goddess of love, sex, beauty and fertility in Roman mythology. She was the Roman counterpart of the Greek Aphrodite. However, the Roman goddess had many abilities beyond the Greek Aphrodite; she was a goddess of victory, fertility and even prostitution.

According to Hesiod’s theogony, Aphrodite was born from the foam of the sea after Saturn (Greek Cronus) castrated her father Uranus (Ouranos) and his blood fell into the sea. The latter explanation seems to be more of a popular theory due to the countless works of art depicting Romana rising from the sea in a clam.

Lovers of Venus

Venus had two main divine lovers: her husband Vulcan (Hephaistos) and Mars(Ares). There is a myth about the romance of this beautiful goddess and Mars and how Vulcan cunningly trapped them in bed with a net. Thus, Vulcan and Venus had a loveless and childless marriage .

Although the goddess of love and sex was not sterile; she bore many children by different gods. With Mars, she gave birth to Timor (Phobos) the personification of fear who accompanied his father in battle, his twin Metus (Deimos) the personification of terror, Concordia (Harmonia) the goddess of harmony and concord, and the Cupids (Erotes) who were a collection of winged deities of love representing the different aspects of love.

The Roman poet Ovid recounts that Aphrodite had Hermaphrodites of Hermes, who was the epitome of effeminacy and androgyny. She was also related to Hermes or Zeus, Fortuna (Tyche) who was the personification of luck and destiny within the Roman religion.

The goddess of love, sex and beauty is attributed as the mother of the minor deity Priapus (a fertility god often characterized with an absurdly large phallus) by Bacchus. According to Pausanias, Graces was believed to be the offspring of the goddess of beauty and Bacchus, but more commonly her birth is attributed to Jupiter and Euynome. However, the Graces were part of the retinue along with the Cupids and Suadela, the goddess of persuasion in the realms of romance, love and seduction.

Mortal lovers, children and descendants

The Roman goddess of love 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 Eryx and Paethon, with whom she raised Sandocus, who was the father of the Cinyras of Metamorphosis.

Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Book X) tells how he fell in love with the mortal Adonis (either by her beauty or by Cupid’s arrow) and begged Proserpina (Persephone) to take care of him until she came for him. The two goddesses fell in love with the mortal, so they fought until Zeus decided that Adonis would spend one-third of the year with each of them and one-third wherever he wanted. Finally, he spent his time with Venus until he was killed by a boar.

Venus of Milo

According to the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, Anchises, a prince of Dardania and ally of Troy, was seduced by this beautiful Roman goddess. She disguised herself as a Phrygian princess and seduced him; only nine months later she revealed her divine identity. This goddess presented Anchises with her son Aeneas.

She warned Anchises never to boast about his affairs lest he be struck by Jupiter. Unfortunately, Anchises boasted and was crippled by Jupiter’s thunderbolt. The Trojan Aeneas, according to Virgil’s Aeneid, was destined to found Rome guided by his divine mother.

Ascanius or Iulus, son of Aeneas, king of Alba Longa, was considered by Virgil as the ancestor of the founders of Rome: Romulus and Remus together with the Gens Julia family. The Gen Julia was the family that included Julius Caesar, Augustus (Octavian) Caesar and their descendants.

Temples, cults and festivals in ancient rome

The first appearance of a temple to Venus was in 295 B.C. It was to the representation of this goddess that received the name of Obedient on the Aventine Hill by Q. Fabius Gurges. However, this temple was spread with Greek aspects (the cults of Aphrodite) and was not a new creation.

In 217 BC, the oracle of the Sibyl suggested that if Rome (at that time losing the Second Punic War) could persuade Venus Eyrcina to switch her allegiance from the Carthaginian-Silician allies to the Romans, the war would be won. Rome besieged Eryx, offered the goddess a magnificent temple and brought her image back to Rome.

It was this foreign image that eventually became the replica of the goddess Genetrix of Rome ( the mother). The cult that formed around Genetrix on the Capitoline Hill was reserved for the upper classes, but in 181 B.C. and 114 B.C. temples and the cult of Venus Eycina and Verticordia (the changer of hearts) were established for commoners.

The month of Venus was April (the beginning of spring and fertility) when most of her festivals were celebrated. On the first of April a festival was held in honor of Venus Verticordia called Veneralia.

On the 23rd was celebrated Vinalia Urbana, a wine festival that belonged to both Venus (goddess of profane wine) and Jupiter. Vinalia Rustitia was celebrated on August 10. It was the oldest festival in honor of Rome’s most beautiful goddess and was associated with her form as Venus Obsequens. September 26 was the date of the feast of Venus Genetrix, the mother and protector of Rome.

Politics

At the end of the Roman Republic, some Romans claimed her favor and vied for it, e.g., Sulla (adopting the name Felix, meaning luck in Latin, and crediting Felix to her divine favor), Pompey (who dedicated, in 55 B.C., a temple to Victris -Venus of Victory), Julius Caesar (who claimed the favor of Victrix and Genetrix), and Hadrian (who, in 139 A.D., dedicated a temple to Venus and Rome Aerna -Eternal Rome-, making Venus the protective mother of the Roman State).

Venus and the evening star

In Virgil’s Aeneid, the Trojan hero Aeneas is led to Latium by his mother in her celestial form: the evening star. This is the same star that Vergil tells of raising Julius Caesar’s soul to the heavens. This is also the secondary name for the planet Venus, because it is so bright and discernible in the night sky.

Art and appearance

Images of the Roman goddess have been found in countless forms, from sculptures to mosaics to shrines and even murals and domestic frescoes. It is said that because of her natural beauty and sexual nature, she was often depicted nude.

Most sculptures of the goddess closely resembled the Aphrodite of Knidus. However, there are many fine wall paintings from Pompeii that depict the goddess in different forms. It continued to be a popular subject for artists into antiquity and the Renaissance, even into the 20th century.