On the Kalends of April, the Romans celebrated not April Fool's Day, but the Veneralia, a festival to honor Venus. Elaine Fantham's edition of Ovid's Fasti, mentions that Ovid's treatment of the holiday involves "an otherwise unattested ceremony of washing the goddess's image in the running water of the river" as well as other customs, specifically, "bathing garlanded in myrtle," burning incense for the spirit of manly fortune, and supplicating the aspect of Venus known as Venus Verticordia.
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This is a lovely statue – interesting pose!
Weren’t there two goddesses called Venus, Venus Urania and Venus Pandemos? (this statue is obviously of Venus Pandemos, Venus Urania was always represented as stately and clothed.) Is there any indication as to which was honored at the Veneralia? Why would “vestal virgins” have a naked trollop for an icon, especially when there was such a, truly virginal, character as Venus Urania? The Greeks clearly distinguished the two as Aphrodite, Urania and Pandemos. Were they confused and combined by the later Romans, or what was the deal (if you know)?
John R. Salverda -
The Romans had various aspects of Venus, like Erycina, obsequens, verticordia, genetrix, and victrix [see "OCTAVIAN AND THE THUNDERBOLT: THE TEMPLE OF APOLLO PALATINUS AND
ROMAN TRADITIONS OF TEMPLE BUILDING," by O. HEKSTER AND J. RICH; Classical Quarterly 56.1 149–168 (2006)], but I don’t know of a Venus Pandemos — it sounds too Greek.
I see where you’re coming from. This is the birth story of Aphrodite. I’m not aware of a separate version for the Romans, but these aren’t the aspects of the Roman Venus that they venerated.
One more thing: Aspects, not different goddesses. Someone on a blog post gave a good explanation of aspects, but I don’t remember where to find it. My own take would be to associate aspect linguistically so that aspects are like moods of the goddess. When she is chaste, she is very very chaste and when she is promiscuous, she’s …. Romans could worship all of her aspects and those of their other gods or not, but the more gods they propitiated, the more likely they were to have success in whatever they were making offerings about.
Ms Gill, do you know how I could subscribe to that magazine you just referred to –Classical Quarterly? Thanks~!
You can write to journals@cambridge.org for subscription information. See: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=CAQ