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Venus is the Roman goddess of love.
Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love and beauty, and Venus is the Roman goddess of love and beauty. Venus is the Roman counterpart to the Greek Aphrodite, as the Romans borrowed heavily from Greek mythology. However, Venus has attributes that Aphrodite does not, including also being a goddess of victory and battle.
In the later classical art , literature and poetry Venus became one of the most widely referenced deities of Greco-Roman mythology as the embodiment of love and sexuality. She is usually depicted nude in paintings.
As the goddess of Love and sexuality Venus had several lovers and suitors, including the gods Mercury, Bacchus, and Ares. She had children with each of these suitors. Venus was also married to the god Vulcan, albeit unhappily and without children.
Venus represents love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity, and victory. In Roman mythology, she was the ancestor of the Roman people through her son, Aeneas, who survived the fall of Troy and fled to Italy. Julius Caesar claimed her as his ancestor. Venus was central to many religious festivals, and was revered in Roman religion under numerous cult titles
The importance of the worship of Venus was increased by the political ambitions of the gens Iulia, the clan of Julius Caesar and, by adoption, of Augustus.
They claimed to be direct descendants of Iulus, the son of Aeneas; Aeneas was the alleged founder of the temple of Eryx and, in some legends, of the city of Rome.
From the time of Homer onward, he was made the son of Aphrodite, so that gave his son Iulii and his decendents a divine origin. Others later sought to connect themselves with a deity grown so popular and important, one of the more notably individuals was Gnaeus Pompeius, the triumvir. He dedicated a temple to Venus as Victrix (“Bringer of Victory”) in 55 bce. Julius Caesar’s own temple (46 bce), however, was dedicated to Venus Genetrix, and as Genetrix (“Begetting Mother”) she was best known until the death of Nero in 68 ce. Despite the extinction of the Julio-Claudian line, she remained popular, even with the emperors; Hadrian completed a temple of Venus at Rome in 135 ce.
Being a counterpart, Venus had no original myths of her own. The Romans inspiration from Aphrodite as well as several other goddesses. Along with her association with the planet Venus. The planet was at first the star of the Babylonian goddess Ishtar and later of Aphrodite. Because of her association with love and with feminine beauty, the goddess Venus has been a favorite subject in art since ancient times; notable representations include the statue known as the Venus de Milo (c. 150 bce) and Sandro Botticelli’s painting The Birth of Venus (c. 1485).
Venus de Milo
Some of the celebrations in her honor.
Veneralia
Vinalia Rustica
Vinalia Urbana
Roman theology presents Venus as the yielding, watery female principle, essential to the generation and balance of life. Her male counterparts in the Roman pantheon, Vulcan and Mars, are active and fiery.
Venus absorbs and tempers the male essence, uniting the opposites of male and female in mutual affection. She is essentially assimilation and benign, and embraces several otherwise quite disparate functions. She can give military victory, sexual success, good fortune and prosperity. In one context, she is a goddess of prostitutes; in another, she turns the hearts of men and women from sexual vice to virtue. Varro's theology identifies Venus with water as an aspect of the female principle. To generate life, the watery matrix of the womb requires the virile warmth of fire. To sustain life, water and fire must be balanced; excess of either one, or their mutual antagonism, is unproductive or destructive
In some Latin mythology, Cupid was the son of Venus and Mars, the god of war. At other times, or in parallel myths and theologies, Venus was the consort of Vulcan or as mother of the "second cupid", fathered by Mercury.
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