VENUS. - A goddess of undoubted Italic origins, yet foreign to the most ancient Roman pantheon, since according to some Roman historians she was not named in the ancient carmen saliare, nor was she yet known in the age of the kings.
Prior to any Greek influence, the figure of V. was essentially rural, being the goddess protector of fields, gardens and their cultivators (Varro, De lingua latina, VI, 20; Pliny, Nat. hist., XIX, 50). By these characteristics V. belongs to that type of female divinity of flourishing nature, of spring, etc., widespread among the Italic peoples, such as, for example, Feronia and Flora. The most ancient traces of the cult of V. are found at Alba and at Gabii, while it is known that at Ardea and at Lavinium two temples were erected to the goddess, very important for the Latin peoples who gathered there.
In Rome the new goddess was interpreted as and substituted for archaic local divinities, such as Murcia, Cloacina and Libitina; indeed the temple of the latter (in a sacred grove near the Circus Maximus), once the identification had taken place, was also dedicated to V.; and the anniversary of this temple was celebrated on the day of the Vinalia rustica (19 Aug.) when the gardeners (holitores) celebrated their feast (Varro, loc. cit.).
The identification with the Greek Aphrodite (v.), a goddess widely diffused along the Mediterranean shores, would have come about with the infiltration of the cult of this goddess from the famous Sicilian sanctuary of Venus Erycina, whose image tradition held to have been brought to Rome by Aeneas himself (Solinus, II, 14). In reality, while the Romans had their first contacts with the Sicilian cult of Aphrodite during the First Punic War (Diodorus, IV, 83), after the defeat at Lake Trasimene in 217 B.C. the Sibylline Books ordered a temple to be vowed to Venus Erycina, which in the following two years was built on the Capitoline (Livy, XXII, 9, 10; Ovid, Fasti, IV, 875); in the lectisternium held at the same time (217 B.C.) V. was associated with Mars (v.). Subsequently, again through the growing influence of Aphrodite, there came Venus Felix (to whom Sulla was particularly devoted), Venus Victrix (=Nikephoros), to whom Pompey in 55 B.C. erected a temple, Venus Salacia (patroness of prostitutes), etc. After Pharsalus, Caesar built the temple to Venus Genetrix, a cult which, besides satisfying the dictator's ambitions, became dear to the Romans who, through Aeneas (the Trojan tradition of Rome), considered themselves descendants of V., so that this cult became national and ended by supplanting the others. At the same time V. was more closely connected with Mars, the father of Romulus, and a common cult was rendered to them both in the temple erected by Caesar and in that of Mars Ultor consecrated by Augustus.
Bibliography3 works
Cesare D'Onofrio