Academic literature on the topic 'Venus (Roman deity)'

ABSTRACTPipe-clay figurines are an important but under-examined category of Roman material culture in Britain. This paper presents the first typological catalogue of the 168 deity, animal and human figures imported to Roman London from Gaul during the first and second centuriesa.d. As in many other collections Venus figurines are the most common type, although there is considerable diversity in form. Comparison with continental collections highlights distinctive patterns of consumption between London, the rest of Britain and Gaul, with the city displaying relatively high numbers of exotic/unusual types, as appears to be typical ofLondiniumin general. The spatial distribution of the figurines is mapped across the settlement, while their contexts and social distribution on habitation, trade and religious sites throughout the city are explored. Whole specimens from burials and subtle patterns of fragmentation also provide a direct insight into the religious beliefs and symbolic practices of the people of Roman London.

Few fragments of marble sculpture have been found in the course of the archaeological excavations conducted in Sirmium between 2003 and 2005 at site 85 which is believed to be part of the imperial palace complex. The most important are two almost completely preserved heads of deities. The head of a young person made of milky white, fine-grained marble of exceptionally fine texture from Pentelicon was found under the Late Roman floor in room 7 of the residential structure. The sculpture, of exceptional quality, is from the second half of the 1st century and represents a deity, most probably Venus or Apollo. Another head made of Carrara marble, from the 4th century, was found in a secondary position and on the basis of its mural crown is identified as the Tyche of Sirmium.

The city of Aphrodisias (Aphrodisias; ) was situated in the continental inland of the Caria region in the south-west of Asia Minor. This town flourished in the Hellenistic period and the time of the Pergamon-Attalid dynasty that ruled Asia Minor from 282 to 133 BC. It was during this period that the city was named after the goddess Aphrodite (Venus in Roman religion) who had a very specific cult image in this city. Aphrodisias got its special symbolic meaning with the establishment of the Principate and the “first amongst the citizens”, Octavian Augustus, who was adopted into the gens Julia. One of the main propaganda elements of the new Augustan regime was a strong reliance on the “Aeneid story” that got its official version with Virgil’s Aeneid. Aeneas was the son of Trojan prince Anchises and Venus, whereas in Roman-Italic tradition, his son Ascanius/Iulus is considered to be an eponymous founder of the gens Julia. By advocating the “Aeneid story”, Augustus gave an emphasis to his divine origin, and Venus/Aphrodite became a deity of “special importance” for the new system. Aphrodisias was a city with many monumental facilities and buildings, statues and reliefs. The quality and amount of marble which the citizens and craftsmen in Aphrodisias had at their disposal resulted in a large number of inscriptions. Approximately 2000 epigraphic monuments have been discovered up to this point, the majority being from the Principate. Some of the monumental buildings of Aphrodisias are: 1. The temple of Aphrodite, the focal point of the entire city, transformed into a Christian basilica in Late Antiquity 2. Monumental tetrapylon 3. Bouleuterion ( ) or odeon 4. Stadium 5. Augusteum (Sebasteion, on the Greek east) containing personi- fied representations of Illyrian peoples and communities on relief The reliefs on Augusteum show the images of Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius and young Nero. The complex itself is dedicated to “To Aphrodite, the Divine Augusti and the People”. Originally it contained 190 reliefs. Iconography and reliefs can be organized into four groups divided into top and bottom lines of southern and northern temple portico: I Southern portico: the top line contained the personification of principes and deities; the bottom line contained images of old Hellenic mythology. II Northern portico: the top line contained allegories (and perhaps principes); the bottom line contained a series of ethne, i.e. the images of peoples. Each ethne was represented by a personified relief statue on a decorated base with an inscription. Relief statues were always in the form of a dressed standing girl. To this point, four statues and inscriptions have been identified for four peoples from the Illyrian territory: the Iapodes, Andizetes, Pirustae and Dardani. All four of these Illyrian peoples are mentioned by well-known and accessible source materials as the communities who were subdued by the armies commanded by Octavian Augustus after rebelling. A large number of sculptures or parts of the sculptures has not been ethnonymically identified with certainty due to damage and material fragmentation. Thus, we can assume that they hold hidden personifications or at least parts of personifications of other Illyrian peoples. The western part contained personifications of Illyrian peoples, and judging by their arrangement, peoples from the western Balkans may have been located somewhere in the vicinity.

The study is devoted to the origins of the cult of Venus of Eryx, whose temple was erected on the Capitol during the Hannibal War. After analyzing the sources, the author studied both the specific historical context of the establishment of a new cult, and the connection of the new deity with various hypostases of Venus, which became widespread in the territory of ancient Italy. The author associated the creation of the cult of Venus Erucina, firstly, with victories during the struggle between Rome and Carthage and, secondly, with an attempt to integrate Rome into the cultural space of the Greek world, since Venus was identified with Aphrodite. The scientific novelty of the undertaken study lies in the fact that the author, taking into account the famous senatusconsultum on bacchanalia, put forward a hypothesis about the conduct in 186-184 BC by the Porcii clan and their allies, a kind of religious reform, which made it possible, on the one hand, to preserve the Greek traditions of the veneration of Venus of Eryx, and on the other hand, to “cleanse” the cult of Venus Capitoline from foreign influences.

Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura has as one of its main goals the extermination of traditional conceptions of the gods, but gods pervade the poem in a variety of roles, beginning with the very first line, invoking Venus. This report seeks to analyze the ways in which Lucretius exploits popular notions of the divine while remaining true to both his Epicurean beliefs and his anti-theistic agenda, as well as the reasons behind these decisions. We begin with an exploration of the role of the poetic medium in this situation, followed by a close examination of the entire proem. Lucretius’ negative views about religio are brought to light and are contrasted with his supportive views regarding religious metaphor, partly through an investigation into Lucretius’ representation of Epicurus as divine. The final section of this report identifies some of the same dynamics at play in Lucretius in modern atheistic discourse and draws more general conclusions about the nature of anti-theistic discourse in a world dominated by theistic assumptions.
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This chapter explores the philosophical background of the Muse Calliope’s song in Metamorphoses 5, specifically the song’s representation of the goddess Venus. It argues that, while Calliope’s song is in dialogue with Lucretius and Lucretius’ Empedocles, often through the intermediary of Virgil’s Georgics, the figure of Venus in the song is not simply a version of Empedoclean Philia/Aphrodite or of the Lucretian Venus, but instead is a chiefly discordant figure akin to Empedoclean Neikos or Strife. Whereas the Venus of the Lucretian proem is called upon to bring peace to the Roman world and Empedocles’ Aphrodite is ruler of a peaceful “Golden Age,” Calliope’s Venus is a discordant figure whose cosmic imperialism sets in motion a plot resulting in the end of a Golden Age-like eternal spring on Sicily and widespread destruction. Yet, in spite of this apparent contrast with its main philosophical source texts, the arc of Calliope’s song, from springtime abundance to death, mirrors in compressed form the “plot” of De rerum natura; and Calliope’s Venus, as a deity who is capable of both creation and destruction, ultimately resembles the similarly bifurcated Venus and natura of Lucretius’ poem. In addressing the themes of the Golden Age and the cycle of creation and destruction, Calliope’s song also enters into a broader cultural discourse concerning loss and the possibility of restoration under Augustus and invites its readers to consider the career of Augustus against the actions of his divine ancestress Venus.