Venus (mythology) - Development

Development

Crispina, wife of Commodus, with enthroned Venus Felix holding Victory on reverse

The earliest known cult to Venus in Rome was the cult to Venus Obsequens, ("Propitious Venus"), vowed by Q. Fabius Gurges, supposedly in the heat of battle, in return for his victory over the Samnites. According to tradition, the temple and cult were funded by fines imposed on Roman women for sexual misdemeanours. Its rites and character were probably influenced by or based on Greek Aphrodite's cults, already diffused in various forms throughout Italian Magna Graeca. The dedication date connects this form of Venus to the Vinalia festival.

A second, rather different cult to Venus was created during the opening episodes of the Second Punic War between Rome, Carthage and their respective allies. After Rome's catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Lake Trasimene, the Sibylline oracle suggested that the so-called Venus of Eryx (Venus Erycina), who belonged to Carthage's Sicilian allies, might be persuaded to change her allegiance. In 217 BC the Romans laid siege to Eryx, captured the goddess' image and brought it to Rome. Once there, this "foreign Venus", who probably combined elements of Aphrodite and a more warlike Carthaginian-Phoenician Astarte, was shorn of her more overtly Carthaginian characteristics and installed as one of Rome's twelve Dii consentes in a temple on the Capitoline Hill. As Rome's foundation myth made Venus-Aphrodite the divine ancestor of the Roman people, this may have been understood as a homecoming, rather than arrival. Rome eventually defeated Carthage; thereafter, Venus was firmly connected both to Rome's growing political and military hegemony and its mythical Trojan past. Venus' links with Troy can be traced (via Aphrodite) to the epic, mythic history of the Trojan War, and the Judgement of Paris, in which the Trojan prince Paris chose Aphrodite over Hera and Athena, setting off a train of events that led to war between the Greeks and Trojans, and eventually to Troy's destruction. In Rome's foundation myth, this victorious Venus was the divine mother of the Trojan prince Aeneas, and thus a divine ancestor of the Roman people as a whole, in her form as Venus Genetrix. Another temple to Venus Erycina as a fertility deity was established in a traditionally plebeian district just outside the Colline Gate, beyond the pomerium.

Towards the end of the Roman republic, some leading Romans laid more personal claims to Venus' favour. Sulla adopted Felix as a surname, acknowledging his debt to heaven-sent good fortune and his particular debt to Venus Felix, for his extraordinarily fortunate political and military career. His protégé Pompey competed for Venus' favours. He celebrated his triumph of 54 BC with coins that showed her crowned with triumphal laurels, and built a lavishly appointed theatre and temple complex dedicated to Venus Victrix. Pompey's erstwhile ally and later opponent Julius Caesar went still further, claiming the favours of Venus Victrix in his military success and Venus Genetrix as a personal, divine ancestress – apparently a long-standing family tradition among the Julii. Caesar's heir, Augustus, adopted both claims as evidence of his inherent fitness for office and divine approval of his rule. Augustus' new temple to Mars Ultor, divine father of Rome's legendary founder Romulus, would have underlined the point, with the image of avenging Mars "almost certainly" accompanied by that of his divine consort Venus, and possibly a statue of the deceased and deified Caesar.

The Emperor Hadrian's temple to Venus and the goddess Roma Aeterna (Eternal Rome) made Venus the protective genetrix of the entire Roman state, its people and fortunes.