Venus was not originally a Roman god. Her earliest cult remains can be traced to Lanuvium, an italic city later conquered by Rome.

A goddess of charm, seduction and nature at springtime, it was not until the late Republic that she rose to prominence in the Roman pantheon when the dictators Sulla and Julius Caesar made her their patron.

The Goddess of Grace and Seduction

Venus’s name means charm or gracefulness. From as early as the third century BC, she was the patron goddess of seduction — not only between men and women but mortals and gods.

Cicero, while agreeing with her attributes of charm and grace, also describes Venus as “she who comes to all” as in the Latin verb “venire” — “to come”. He stated that the verb actually derives from Venus’s name.

Venus and Nature

Venus was also a goddess of nature and spring. She was the lady of wild, wooded places who purified using myrtle, her sacred plant. Her earliest roman sanctuaries lay outside the city in the countryside.

On 19 August, the festival of the Vinalia Rustica, Venus was offered the first of the year’s grape harvest in conjunction with Jupiter. 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. Wine was then poured into the guttering of the temple.

Temples of Venus in Rome

The temple where the Vinalia was celebrated lay on the capitol, dated to 215BC. However, it was not the earliest of Venus’s temples. This temple lay on the Aventine by Q. Fabius Maximus Gurges after the third Samnite War. Built using the fines imposed on adulterous women, the temple was dedicated in 295BC to Venus Obsequens — “indulgent Venus”.

No further temples to Venus were built in Rome until 55 BC, when a new temple dedicated to Venus Victrix was constructed. This was followed by the temple of Venus and Roma in 121AD. The affiliation between the goddess of charm and nature with victory and the city of Rome itself reflected the new political significance Venus had acquired within the roman state.

Venus, Sulla and Julius Caesar

Venus’s role grew during the Punic Wars when she became associated with the Greek Aphrodite. The Italic goddess of nature and charm was consequently shaped into a Roman version of the Greek goddess of love.

In the late Republic, however, Venus took on a prominent role in Roman state religion. She was adopted firstly by the Roman dictator Sulla and later the Roman general Pompey Magnus as their protector. Later, Julius Caesar followed suit, claiming Venus not only as his patron but as one of his ancestors.

Caesar’s claim on the goddess meant that she became affiliated with the first Roman dynasty of emperors. The obscure goddess of flowers and seduction was one of the Roman’s major deities by the time of the empire.

Resources

Ovid (translated and edited by A J Boyle and R D Woodard) Fasti 4 1-162.. Penguin Classics

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

Grave, Robert, 1990. The White Goddess. Faber and Faber: London and Boston

Cicero, (trans. Horace CP McGregor) The Nature of the Gods. Penguin Books

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