She spoke, and as she turned, her neck shone with rose light. An immortal fragrance from her ambrosial locks perfumed the air, her robes flowed down to cover her feet, and every step revealed her divinity.

…

And then she was gone, aloft to Paphos, happy to see her temple again, where Arabian incense curls up from one hundred altars and fresh wreaths of flowers sweeten the air.

* Virgil, The Aneid, 1.494-514,trans. Lombardo

From a young age, I have been fascinated by the ancient world, particularly Ancient Greece and Rome. My enthusiasm was first sparked by reading Greek myths, and I suspect that being named after a Roman goddess also played a small part in my intrigue. This year, I have been further exploring my interest in ancient civilisations by studying the artwork created during these periods and investigating how it has influenced modern art and shaped contemporary society. I want to focus this article on Venus, the goddess of love and beauty, also known as Aphrodite, her Greek counterpart. A complication occurs when examining what is, in my opinion, the most interesting manifestation of the link between love, spirituality, desire, beauty, power and sexuality which comes not from a comparison between man and woman, but between prelapsarian and postlapsarian perceptions. I aim to explore the complete history of the goddess, examining how artistic representations of Venus/Aphrodite have shaped evolving ideologies of beauty and sexuality. Additionally, I intend to offer my unique perspective on how her image and mythology have shaped history and influenced cultural acumen.

There is a degree of confusion surrounding the origin of the goddess of sexual love and beauty. Some myths describe her as a primordial being born out of a dark night, while others, particularly ancient Greek poets and myth-tellers, offer a more unsettling version of her creation. In ‘Mythos’, Stephen Fry recounts an altercation between Gaia, the earth goddess, and her husband/son, the sky god Ouranos. Ouranos had a habit of coercing Gaia into unwanted sexual acts, and during one such morose encounter, their son Kronos, who had been hiding and watching, emerged displeased with his father’s actions. Wielding a serrated flint, Kronos violently hacked off his father’s erect penis and threw the dismembered parts into the sea. This act triggered a transcendental reaction between the blood and the water, from which the most ethereal being, the goddess Aphrodite, was born, emerging from the sea foam. This story has been depicted in numerous famous works of art, most notably Botticelli’s ‘The Birth of Venus’ (slide 1), which presents a more serene and graceful version of her origin. Botticelli’s painting, featuring a near-life-sized nude, was one of the first in the Renaissance era to capture pleasure and not just to serve God. In the Western world, nudity was always associated with shame, sin, and wickedness, through this painting Botticelli revolutionised the idea that nudity must be a symbol of shame. Hence ‘The Birth of Venus’ was a celebration of the naked human form and a departure from the traditional religious art of the time. The story of the birth of a new goddess travelled from Ancient Greece to Italy, largely through the distribution of early artworks carved from stone. The ‘Ludovisi Throne’ (slide 2) depicts Aphrodite emerging from the sea, assisted by two Horai—goddesses representing the seasons. This sculpture, created around 480 BC by an unknown Greek, was then transported to a temple in Locri, and stands as an early artistic representation of the goddess’s imagined birth.

The Venus/Aphrodite we know is a safe symbol of beauty and attractiveness, but the goddess has a far richer and vastly more complicated history and persona than it appears. Reading Bettany Hughes’ novel ‘Venus & Aphrodite: History of a Goddess’ highlighted this fact: “the deity is the incarnation of fear as well as love, of pain as well as pleasure, of the agony and ecstasy of desire.” Venus, in fact, represents the complicated mixture of human passion, the intensity of desire and lust, and our all-consuming drive to engage with one another. For over five millennia, this deity has influenced human emotional and sexual relationships, and moulded some of history’s most powerful connections, most notably between Julius Caesar and Cleopatra. Venus and her partner Mars, the god of war, were both widely worshipped in Rome, Venus for her sexual appeal and Mars for his prominent masculinity. Temples and shrines were built in both their honours, often with the two deities side by side, and soon Venus was renamed Venus Victrix—Venus Victorious. With her lover Mars, she became a symbol of not only sex, but war and courage, which at the time piqued the interest of Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar became infatuated by the fact he was of divine descent and in that way connected to the goddess. He dedicated a large temple of Venus Genetrix (slide 3) in the centre of Rome to his lover, in which he placed a statue of the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra VII in the form of the goddess. Caesar commissioned many other paintings and shrines of the deity, and as the Roman Empire expanded, so did the worship of Venus.

Through Caesar’s rendition of Cleopatra, the deity’s influence spread across North Africa and the Middle East, where her image merged with other popular goddesses. After Alexander the Great founded Alexandria, the shrines of the Egyptian goddess Isis began to resemble those of the Greek Aphrodite. Cleopatra, celebrated as a symbol of beauty in Egypt, came to be worshipped as Venus/Aphrodite herself. The Egyptian queen began adopting stylistic choices that aligned with the goddess, shaping fashion, love, and art in ways that continue to influence culture today. In fact, the most celebrated love affair in Ancient History began when Cleopatra paid homage to the sensuousness of Venus/Aphrodite, sailing up the River Kydnos dressed as Venus to consummate her love with Marc Antony. This was a strategic political move by Cleopatra, demonstrating how Venus/Aphrodite is an expression of power in femininity as well as beauty, victory, sex and love.