The Romans celebrated the festival of Venus Genetrix or “Venus the Ancestor” on the 26th September. Instigated by Julius Caesar, it was a festival dedicated to Venus in her capacity as Caesar’s ancestor-and divine political patron.

However, Caesar wasn’t the only Roman politician court Venus. On the face of it, the goddess seems a strange choice for those seeking political power. For initially, Venus was just simple nature goddess. So how did a garden goddess rise to become the politician’s sweetheart-and more crucially, why?

 

The Festival of Venus Genetrix

 The 26th September 46BC was the day of Caesar’s quadruple triumph over his political rivals after the civil wars. The newly consolidated dictator marked his victory with the traditional triumphal procession through the city. Then, at his newly built forum, he held the dedication ceremony for another new civic feature: a new temple to the Goddess Venus Genetrix.

Caesar regarded Venus as his divine ancestress through her son, Aeneas. However, he also saw her as his heavenly patroness. In 48BC, before the decisive Battle of Pharsalus that led to the consolidated of his power, Caesar prayed to Venus for victory and vowed her a temple.  A streak of fire then burst from his camp to that of his rival Pompey Magnus-a sign, to Caesar of the goddess’s acceptance.

The new temple and its associated festival overlooking fulfilled Caesar’s vow. The temple dominated the far end of the forum, delivering a clear message. Not only was Caesar thanking his divine ancestor for her favor; he was using her to sanction his own rule.

 

 

The Evolution of Venus.

Venus, however, started out as neither a god nor a goddess. According to the twentieth century expert on archaic Roman religion, Georges Dumezil, her name indicates she initially had a neutral gender. In other words, originally Venus was an abstract concept.

What was the exact nature of that concept? Cicero described Venus as ‘she who comes to all” and believed her name derived from the Latin verb venire-to come. On the other hand, Dumezil thought that Venus’s name derived from the verb venerare- to worship. Dumezil believed that worship was designed to attract divine goodwill by pleasing the god in return for favors.

However, once she was officially deified and personified as a goddess, Venus was not the Roman goddess of love but a goddess of spring and nature. As Venus Cloacina she was the lady of wild, wooded places who purified with myrtle, her sacred plant. Accordingly, Venus’s earliest Roman sanctuaries were situated outside of the city in the countryside.

According to Ovid, April was her sacred month. On the 19th April, the festival of the Vinalia, Venus, along with Jupiter, was offered the first of the year’s new wine. Women undressed the statue of the goddess in her temple and washed her in myrtle before redressing her and decking the statue in flowers such as roses. The women then poured new wine into the guttering of the temple.

It was during the Punic Wars of the Third Century BC that Venus began to take on a different aspect. The Roman nature goddess now became associated with Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love.  Romans now regarded Venus as the patron goddess of seductions between not only men and women, but mortals and gods.

But Aphrodite did not just influence Venus’s role as the goddess of love. By the first century BC, Venus was mutating again, this time into a deity more in keeping with Dumezil’s interpretation of her name.

 

 

The Politician’s Sweetheart

From the late Third Century BC, there was a hiatus in Rome in the building of temples dedicated to Venus. Then, suddenly in 55BC, the Roman general Pompey Magnus dedicated a new temple to the goddess. This temple honored a further aspect of Venus: Venus Victrix or  “Victorious Venus.”

Why did Pompey use this title? He used it because  Venus had become a political patron -and she owed it all to the Greek Aphrodite. For Pompey was not the first to honor Venus for his victories. Before him,  the dictator Sulla had claimed his achievements in the east were due to Aphrodite’sfavor. Sulla began to build Aphrodite temples to honor her support. He also added the epithet “Epaphroditus” or‘Favourite of Aphrodite’ to his name.

According to Dumezil, Robert Schilling traced Sulla’s devotion to the Greek goddess of love to the time he captured Athens. Here Aphrodite had an additional political significance in the form of Aphrodite Pandemos. The people of Athens regarded Aphrodite Pandemos as their champion. Sulla, therefore, believed to take Athens, he must have won the favor of Aphrodite Pandemos- -or at least he tried to convince the people of Athens that was the case.

Back in Italy, it seemed natural for Sulla to transfer this association to Aphrodite’s Roman counterpart. And so Venus the politician was born.

 

 Sources

 

Ovid Fasti 4 1-162. Translated and edited by AJ Boyle and R D Woodard. Penguin Classics

 The Oxford Dictionary of Classical Myth and Religion (2003) Ed Simon Price and Emily Kearns. Oxford University Press: Oxford

The White Goddess (1990) Robert Graves. Faber and Faber: London and Boston

Cicero: The Nature of the Gods. Trans. Horace CP McGregor. Penguin Books

Archaic Roman Religion Vol I (1996) Georges Dumezil. Trans Philip Krapp.The John Hopkins University Press. Baltimore and London.