Cult of Gods

Venus

Roman tradition. See the whole pantheon.

Domains
love, beauty, Rome's ancestress
Symbols and attributes
Dove; myrtle; rose
Giacomo Caneva, photograph of a statue of Jupiter in the Campana collection, 1850s.
Giacomo Caneva, photograph of a statue of Jupiter in the Campana collection, 1850s.

Key myth

Julius Caesar claimed descent from her through Aeneas and his son Iulus. The temple of Venus Genetrix was dedicated in his forum. In Virgil, Venus is Aeneas's mother, which makes her ancestress of Rome.

Greek counterpart: Aphrodite on thegreekgods.org. Roman and Greek versions share names and stories in many places but began as different cults.

Primary sources

  • Virgil, Aeneid I
  • Livy I

All sources for the Roman pantheon

Place in the family graph

Choose a deity to see where it comes from. Dashed lines are links the sources describe that are not parent and child.

SaturnOpsJanusJupiterJunoNeptunePluto / Dis PaterCeresVestaQuirinusMinervaApolloDianaMercuryBacchus / LiberMarsVulcanVenus

More traditions

Odin rides to Hel, W. G. Collingwood, after the Poetic Edda.NorsePapyrus of Ani, British Museum (New Kingdom), a Book of the Dead.EgyptianA chaos monster and a sun god, drawn by L. Gruner for A. H. Layard's Monuments of Nineveh.MesopotamianVishvarupa Vishnu, Kashmir or Himachal, in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art collection.Hindu

Elsewhere in the world

Deities in other traditions who share a theme with Venus: love, desire and fertility. This is overlap in one area only.

Norse

Freyr

peace, fertility, sunshine

Norse

Freyja

love, desire, magic (seiðr)

Egyptian

Hathor

love, music, joy

Hindu

Parvati

power (shakti), marriage, mountains

Hindu

Krishna

love, divine play, the Gita's teacher

Compare across cultures