Venus (mythology) - Temples

Temples

Venus' first Roman temple was dedicated to Venus Obsequens ("Propitious Venus") in 293 BC, on the Esquiline Hill, supposedly subsidised by fines imposed on Roman women for sexual misdemeanours. Shortly after 217 BC, a temple was founded on the Capitoline Hill to house the image of Venus Erycina, captured from the Sicilian town of Eryx. Another temple to Venus Erycina as a fertility deity was built around 181, just outside the Colline Gate. Pompey the Great's theatre, dedicated in 55 BC on the Campus Martius, included a large temple to Venus Victrix; his rival Julius Caesar vowed and built a temple to Venus in his new-built forum. In 135 AD the Emperor Hadrian inaugurated a temple to Venus Felix (Lucky Venus) and the goddess Roma Aeterna (Eternal Rome) on Rome's Velian Hill. It was the largest temple in Ancient Rome.

In the late Roman Republican era, Vitruvius recommends that any new temple to Venus be sited according to rules laid down by the Etruscan haruspices, and built "near to the gate" of the city, where it would be less likely to contaminate "the matrons and youth with the influence of lust". He finds the Corinthian style, slender, elegant, enriched with ornamental leaves and surmounted by volutes, appropriate to Venus' character and disposition. Vitruvius recommends the widest possible spacing between the temple columns, producing a light and airy space, and he offers Venus's temple in Caesar's forum as an example of how not to do it; the densely spaced, thickset columns darken the interior, hide the temple doors and crowd the walkways, so that matrons who wish to honour the goddess must enter her temple in single file, rather than arm-in arm.