Domain: Love, beauty, desire, fertility, victory, gardens Symbol: Dove, rose, swan, myrtle, apple Greek Equivalent: Aphrodite
Overview
Venus is the Roman goddess of love, beauty, desire, and fertility, but she was far more to Rome than a goddess of the heart. Through her son Aeneas, the Trojan hero who fled the fall of Troy and founded the line that led to Rome, she was reckoned the ancestral mother of the Roman people. The Julian family — and Julius Caesar most famously — claimed descent from her through Aeneas' son Iulus, so that the goddess of love was also a dynastic and national deity whose favor underwrote the legitimacy of Rome's rulers. Her doves, roses, swans, myrtle, and the apple of judgment are her tokens, and in myth she is bound to Mars, with whom Roman tradition linked the origins of the people.
Her many cult-titles reveal a deity broader than the Greek Aphrodite. As Venus Genetrix she was the ancestress and mother, honored in the forum Caesar built in her name; as Venus Victrix, "the Victorious," she was invoked by generals and armies as a bringer of triumph; as Venus Felix she brought good fortune; and as Venus Verticordia, "the Changer of Hearts," she turned minds from vice toward chaste love. Through these aspects she reached into war, fortune, and public morality as much as into private passion, and her association with gardens and cultivation gave her a homely, practical Roman dimension.
Her festivals reflect this range. The Veneralia on April 1st honored Venus Verticordia, when women ritually bathed her statue and sought her aid in matters of love and marriage; the two Vinalia, on April 23rd and August 19th, tied her to wine and to gardens, linking the goddess of desire to the fertility of the vine and the cultivated earth.
Against Aphrodite, born of sea-foam and famed for scandalous liaisons, Venus is more sober and more consequential. She keeps the beauty and the power over desire, but adds a military aspect, a role as national ancestress, and a genuine weight in Roman politics — a goddess of love who was also a goddess of victory and of the state.
Related
- Aphrodite - Greek equivalent
- Mars - Lover, linked with her to the origins of Rome
- Vulcan - Husband in myth
- The Empress - The Venus-ruled Major Arcana card of love, beauty, and fertile abundance
- Roman Mythology Index