Venus (mythology)
Venus is the goddess of love, beauty and fertility in Roman mythology, who was worshiped and celebrated in many Roman religious festivals and myths. From the III century B.C. C., the increasing Hellenization of the Roman upper classes identified her with the Greek goddess Aphrodite. She was the wife of Vulcano. Julius Caesar adopted her as his protector and Virgil, as a compliment to his patron Augustus and the gens Julia, pointed out that Venus was the female ancestor of the Roman people through its legendary founder Aeneas and his son Ascanius. [citation required].
In mythology
Venus was identified with the Greek goddess Aphrodite and the Etruscan Turan, borrowing aspects from both. As with most other deities in the Roman pantheon, the literary concept of Venus is covered by the clothing borrowed from the literary Greek myths of her equivalent, Aphrodite. The earlier Etruscan or Latin goddess of vegetation and gardens became deliberately associated with the Greek Aphrodite. However, according to Virgil's Aeneid, as the Roman equivalent of Aphrodite, Venus did not come to have a personality as marked in its sensuality or cruelty as the Greek, although it retained its attributes and symbols, such as the golden apple of discord.
Lucretius also dedicates his On the Nature of Things (De rerum natura), his famous poem, to Venus, in the first lines, where she brings humanity by chance, a vision that, at the molecular level, and stripped of its anthropomorphism, it is equivalent to what has been discovered by modern science. In some Latin myths Cupid was the son of Venus and Mars, the god of war.
Worship
Her cult began in Ardea and Lavinio (Lazio). On August 15, 293 B.C. C. the oldest temple on record was dedicated to him, and on August 18 the festival called Vinalia Rustica was instituted. On April 25, 215 B.C. A temple was dedicated to him outside the Porta Colina on the Capitoline Hill to commemorate the Roman defeat at the Battle of Lake Trasimeno.
Epithets
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Like other major Roman deities, Venus is given various epithets to allude to her different aspects or roles.
- Venus Acidaliawhich proceeded according to Servio of the Acidalia source near Orcomeno, in which Venus used to bathe with the Thanks, although others relate the name to the term άκιδες acids“Beware” or ‘problems’.
- Venus Armatain Lacedemonia for the victory that the women reached over the Mesenians: their temple on a hill was with another dedicated to Venus Morpho, which some have believed without reason to be Venus Armata: in the Anthologia There are many epigrams in his honor and Caesar wore the figure on his seal.
- Venus Aureagolden, according to Elieno the words aurea and purpurea they must be taken in their own sense; other authors consider them by the figure and some the epithet aurea they understand him for the richness of their temples or because young women like to carry gold and gold jewels or because this metal serves much in love or finally because the yellow color was the preferred among the ancients for the ladies' scalp.
- Venus Barbata, for their statue with beard on the island of Cyprus: the men who celebrated their cult went with women's suits and these with those of them.
- Venus Basel, Basilis or Basilisa, that is, queen of love, worshipped in the Tarentines.
- Venus Butias or Butis, by the temple that in the promontory Lilibeo, today Corporal Boro, erected it Butes or Boutés when he made it the mother of Erix.
- Venus Byblia, by the magnificent temple in Biblos, village of Fenicia, in which Adonis or Thamnuz were worshiped.
- Venus Calva, for his temple in Rome at the Capitol or in the VIII region. The Galos, when they laid room for Rome and took over the population, the Capitol was the only defense point that needed laces for the war machines: the women then cut off their long scalps and by memory erected two temples to Venus Calva. Other authors attribute this patriotic trait to the women of Aquilea that on the site of this villa they cut their hair for the ropes of their husbands' arches.
- Venus Calipigia (‘of the beautiful buttocks’), Callipygos, CallipygaFor the temple that was dedicated by two young men from Syracuse. From Venus Callipyga, also called Calliglutes or Pulchriclunia, there is an engraving in the Racolta de Maffei of the Farnesio Palace; in the garden of the Tuileries in a hole practiced near the octagon pond you see a beautiful statue made by Thierry in imitation of the previous one. Another beautiful Venus Callipyga is seen in the garden of Dresden, although it was destroyed when the site of this villa by the Prussians; in many engraved stones is also Venus.
- Venus Cloacina (‘purifier’), a fusion of Venus with the goddess of Etruscan water Cloacina, probably the result of a Venus statue prominently located near the Maximum Cloak, the sewer system of Rome. The statue was erected on the point where peace was sealed between the Romans and the Sabines.
- Venus Ericina (‘from the brezo’), by Mount Erice (west of Sicily), one of the centers of his cult. He was dedicated temples on Capitol Hill and off the Colline Porta. It characterizes "impure" love and was the patron goddess of prostitutes.
- Venus Felix (‘favorable’), an epithet used for a temple on Mount Esquilino and for another built by Adriano dedicated to Venus Felix et Roma Aeterna (‘Venus favorable and eternal Rome’) on the northern side of the Sacred Way. This epithet is also used for a concrete sculpture of the Vatican Museums.
- Venus Genetrix (‘mother’), in her role as an ancestor of the Roman people, a goddess of maternity and domestic life. A party was held in his honor on 26 September. As Venus was specifically considered the mother of the gens Julia, Julius Caesar dedicated a temple to him in Rome. This name also applies to an iconological type of statue of Afrodita/Venus.
- Venus Libertina (‘de los libertos’), an epithet that probably came from a mistake, with the Romans confusing lubentina (possibly ‘placentera’ or ‘off’) with libertine. It may be related to Venus Libitina, also called Libentina, Libentia, Lubentina or Lubentia, an epithet that possibly comes from the confusion between Libitina, a funeral goddess and the aforementioned lubentinaTaking a libitine and Venus amalgam. A temple was dedicated to Venus Libitina on Mount Esquilino.
- Venus Murcia (‘from the myth’), an epithet that merged the goddess with the little known deity Murcia or Murtia, which was associated with the tree of myrtle, although in other sources it was considered a goddess of laziness and laziness.
- Venus Obsequens (‘Cortés’ or ‘indulgent’), an epithet to which a temple was dedicated at the end of the 3rd century BC during the 3rd Samnite War by Quinto Fabio Máximo Gurges. It was built with the money of fines paid by women found guilty of adultery. It was the oldest temple of Venus in Rome and was probably at the foot of Mount Aventino near the Maximum Circus. On the day of his dedication, on August 19, the Vinalia Rustica was celebrated.
- Venus Urania (‘celestial’), epithet that was used as a title of a book by Basilius von Ramdohr, a relief by Pompeo Marchesi and a painting by Christian Griepenkerl. (See Aphrodite Urania.)
- Venus Verticordia (‘transformer of hearts’), the protector against vice, in whose honor was celebrated on April 1. He was built a tempo in Rome in 114 a. C. that was dedicated to him on April 1, with the instruction of the Sibilin Books to compensate for the infringement of the chastity of three vestal virgins.
- Venus Victrix (‘victoriosa’), an aspect of the armed Aphrodite that the Greeks had inherited from the East, where the goddess Ishtar “was still a goddess of war, and Venus could lead victory to Sila or Caesar.” This was the Venus to which Pompeii dedicated a temple at the top of the theater at the Campo de Mars at 55 BC. There was also an altar dedicated to Venus Victrix on Capitol Hill, and festivals on 12 August and 9 October, offering to him an annual sacrifice. In neoclassical art, this title is often used in the sense of "Victorious Venus on the hearts of men" or in the context of the Paris judgment (for example, the Venus Victrix by Antonio Canova, a semi-denizen portrait of Paulina Bonaparte.
Other significant epithets for Venus are: Amica ('friend'), Caelestis ('celestial').
In art
Classical art
Hellenistic and Roman art produced many variations on the goddess, often based on the Praxitelian type of Aphrodite of Knidus. Many female nudes from this era of sculpture whose subject matter is unknown are often called "Venus" in modern art history, even if they may originally have been the portrait of a mortal woman rather than a cult image of the goddess.
Some examples are:
- Venus de Milo (130 BC)
- Venus de Médici
- Venus Capitolina
- Venus Esquilina
- The Venus of Italica
- Venus Felix
- Venus of Arles
- Venus Anadiomena
- Venus, Pan and Eros
- Venus Genetrix
- Venus de Capua
- Venus Calipigia
- Pudic Venus
Postclassical art
Much later, with the recovery of Greco-Roman art as a model, Venus became a popular subject in European Renaissance painting and sculpture. As a "classical" figure whose natural state was nudity, it was socially acceptable to depict her without clothing. As a goddess of sexual health, she was warranted a degree of erotic beauty in her portraits, which appealed to many artists and her patrons. Over time, "venus" came to refer to any artistic representation of a beautiful nude woman in post-classical art, even if there was no indication that she was the goddess.
Some famous works are:
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The Birth of Venus by Botticelli (c. 1482-1484)
- Venus asleep de Giorgione (c. 1507)
- Venus of Urbino of Titian (1538)
- Venus of the mirror of Velázquezc. 1644)
- The Birth of Venus by François Boucher (1740).
- Venus Anadyomene of Théodore Chassériau (1838)
- Venus Anadiomena of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1848)
- The Birth of Venus of Eugène Emmanuel Amaury-Duval (1862)
- Olympia of Manet (1863)
- The Birth of Venus by Alexandre Cabanel (1863)
- The Birth of Venus of Bouguereau (1879)
- Venus Victrix of Canova (c. 1805)
- Venus in the bathroom by John William Godward (1901)
In prehistoric art, since the discovery in 1908 of the so-called Venus of Willendorf, small sculptures of rounded female forms are usually called «Paleolithic Venuses». Although the name of the deity actually depicted is unknown, the stark contrast between these obese and fertile cult figures and the classical conception of Venus has brought further resistance to the terminology.
Tannhauser
The medieval German legend of Tannhäuser preserved the myth of Venus long after her cult was banished by Christianity.
German history tells that the knight and poet Tannhäuser found the Venusberg, a mountain with caves containing the subterranean home of Venus, and spent a year there worshiping the goddess. After leaving the Venusberg, Tannhäuser had remorse and traveled to Rome to ask Pope Urban IV if it was possible for him to be absolved of his sins.
Urbano replied that forgiveness was as impossible as it would be for his staff to flourish. Three days after Tannhäuser left, Urbano's staff blossomed. Messengers were sent for the knight, but he had already returned to the Venusberg and was never seen again.
Other goddesses of love
In addition, Venus has been compared to other goddesses of love: Rembha (Hindu), Milda (Lithuanian), Frigg and Freyja (Norse), Ishtar (Mesopotamian), Isis (Egyptian), Inanna (Sumerian), Astarte (Phoenician).), Reitia (from the Venetians), Uni-Astre (Pyrgi sheets), Suadela, Oxúm (Yoruba) and Ushás in the Vedic religion and Aphrodite (Greek). Ushas is also linked to Venus through a Sanskrit epithet applied to her, vanas- ('adorability', 'desire', 'longing'), which is a cognate of Venus, suggesting a Proto-Indo-European relationship through the reconstructed root *wen-, 'to wish'.
Another interesting association with Venus is the Latvian god Auseklis (personification of her celestial body), whose name comes from the root aus-, 'dawn'. Both Auseklis and Mēness ('moon') are Dieva dēli ('sons of the god').