On This Day: Romans double-up on temples to Venus to promote harmony and cooperation - Apr. 23, 181 BC
(edited from article)
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The Second Temple for Venus Erycina. April 23, 181 BC.
By Marisa Ollero
April 22, 2020
On April 23, 181 BC Lucius Porcius Licinus dedicated the temple to Venus Erycina at the Colline gate that his father had vowed during a campaign against the Ligurians three years earlier. At first glance, this event seems unremarkable; it had long been the practice in Rome for new temples to be built following a vow made by a general on campaign, and sons had previously dedicated temples vowed by their fathers.
Most obviously, Rome already had one temple to this goddess, The Temple of Venus Erycina on the Capitoline Hill was built by the dictator Quintus Fabius Maximus. He was appointed dictator after the disastrous Battle of Trasimene in 217 BC, during the Second Punic War, and promised this temple to Venus after consulting the Sibylline Books, hoping thereby to reverse his fate.
The goddess herself is not a typical Roman deity, but rather an incarnation of a Sicilian goddess. Why would Romans build a second temple to the same goddess only 34 years after the erection of the first one? Why to this particular goddess? These questions find their answers in the matter of multiple temples dedicated to the same divinity during a major transitional period in the Roman Republic.
Many of the events of the 180´s had separated individuals or groups into various categories, and deliberately created exclusions on many levels. Bacchic worshippers throughout Italy had been isolated and repressed. The Books of Numa had been ritually excluded from Roman society by a formal sacrifice in the comitium. Individual magistrates had been marked out from the collegial body of the Senate and used as examples so that the Senate could reassert its supremacy. By 181, the Senate had to restore a sense of harmony and cooperation that was essential to the success of the Roman enterprise. A temple to Venus Erycina to straddle the Roman/non-Roman boundary, as the uniter of disparate categories, offered a prime opportunity to accomplish this goal. Through this single goddess, the Senate could not only indicate its willingness to assimilate foreign traditions, but also to work together with its magistrates. The repression of the cult of Bacchus had affected women, the lower classes and the non-Roman inhabitants of Italy, so the same message of conciliation and unity could be conveyed to them by this new cult.
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https://social.vcoins.com/twih/second-temple-venus-erycina-april-23-181-bc/
(edited from Wikipedia)
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Venus
Venus is a Roman goddess, whose functions encompass love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity, and victory. In Roman mythology, she was the ancestor of the Roman people through her son, Aeneas, who survived the fall of Troy and fled to Italy. Julius Caesar claimed her as his ancestor. Venus was central to many religious festivals, and was revered in Roman religion under numerous cult titles.
Epithets
Like other major Roman deities, Venus was given a number of epithets that referred to her different cult aspects, roles, and her functional similarities to other deities. Her "original powers seem to have been extended largely by the fondness of the Romans for folk-etymology, and by the prevalence of the religious idea nomen-omen which sanctioned any identifications made in this way."
Venus Erycina ("Erycine Venus " ), a Punic statue of Astarte captured from Eryx, in Sicily, and worshiped in Romanised form by the elite and respectable matrons at a temple on the Capitoline Hill. A later temple, outside the Porta Collina and Rome's sacred boundary, may have preserved some Erycine features of her cult. It was considered suitable for "common girls" and prostitutes.
Cult history and temples - Venus Erycina's image comes from Carthage
In 217 BC, in the early stages of the Second Punic War with Carthage, Rome suffered a disastrous defeat at the battle of Lake Trasimene. The Sibylline oracle suggested that Carthage might be defeated if the Venus of Eryx (Venus Erycina), patron goddess of Carthage's Sicilian allies, could be persuaded to change her allegiance.
Rome laid siege to Eryx and promised its goddess a magnificent temple as reward for her defection. They captured her image, brought it to Rome and installed it in a temple on the Capitoline Hill, as one of Rome's twelve dii consentes. Shorn of her more overtly Carthaginian characteristics, this "foreign Venus" became Rome's Venus Genetrix ("Venus the Mother " ).
Roman tradition made Venus the mother and protector of the Trojan prince Aeneas, ancestor of the Romans, so as far as the Romans were concerned, this was the homecoming of an ancestral goddess to her people. Soon after, Rome's defeat of Carthage confirmed Venus's goodwill to Rome, her links to its mythical Trojan past, and her support of its political and military hegemony.
The Capitoline cult to Venus seems to have been reserved to higher status Romans. A separate cult to Venus Erycina as a fertility deity, was established in 181 BC, in a traditionally plebeian district just outside Rome's sacred boundary, near the Colline Gate. The temple, cult and goddess probably retained much of the original's character and rites. Likewise, a shrine to Venus Verticordia ("Venus the changer of hearts " ), established in 114 BC but with links to an ancient cult of Venus-Fortuna, was "bound to the peculiar milieu of the Aventine and the Circus Maximus" – a strongly plebeian context for Venus's cult, in contrast to her aristocratic cultivation as a Stoic and Epicurian "all-goddess".
[Later in the Roman Republic]
Towards the end of the Roman Republic, some leading Romans laid personal claims to Venus' favour. The general and dictator Sulla adopted Felix ("Lucky " ) as a surname, acknowledging his debt to heaven-sent good fortune and his particular debt to Venus Felix, for his extraordinarily fortunate political and military career. His protégé Pompey competed for Venus' support, dedicating (in 55 BC) a large temple to Venus Victrix as part of his lavishly appointed new theatre, and celebrating his triumph of 54 BC with coins that showed her crowned with triumphal laurels.
[Julius Caesar]
Pompey's erstwhile friend, ally, and later opponent Julius Caesar went still further. He claimed the favours of Venus Victrix in his military success and Venus Genetrix as a personal, divine ancestress – apparently a long-standing family tradition among the Julii. When Caesar was assassinated, his heir, Augustus, adopted both claims as evidence of his inherent fitness for office, and divine approval of his rule. Augustus' new temple to Mars Ultor, divine father of Rome's legendary founder Romulus, would have underlined the point, with the image of avenging Mars "almost certainly" accompanied by that of his divine consort Venus, and possibly a statue of the deceased and deified Caesar.
[Hadrian and the largest temple in Ancient Rome]
In 135 AD the Emperor Hadrian inaugurated a temple to Venus and Roma Aeterna (Eternal Rome) on Rome's Velian Hill, underlining the Imperial unity of Rome and its provinces, and making Venus the protective genetrix of the entire Roman state, its people and fortunes. It was the largest temple in Ancient Rome.
Festivals
Venus was offered official (state-sponsored) cult in certain festivals of the Roman calendar. Her sacred month was April (Latin Mensis Aprilis) which Roman etymologists understood to derive from aperire, "to open", with reference to the springtime blossoming of trees and flowers. In the interpretatio romana of the Germanic pantheon during the early centuries AD, Venus became identified with the Germanic goddess Frijjo, giving rise to the loan translation "Friday" for dies Veneris.
Veneralia (April 1) was held in honour of Venus Verticordia ("Venus the Changer of Hearts " ), and Fortuna Virilis (Virile or strong Good Fortune), whose cult was probably by far the older of the two.
Vinalia urbana (April 23), a wine festival shared by Venus and Jupiter, king of the gods. It offered opportunity to supplicants to ask Venus' intercession with Jupiter, who was thought to be susceptible to her charms, and amenable to the effects of her wine.
Vinalia Rustica (August 19), originally a rustic Latin festival of wine, vegetable growth and fertility. This was almost certainly Venus' oldest festival and was associated with her earliest known form, Venus Obsequens. Kitchen gardens and market-gardens, and presumably vineyards were dedicated to her.
A festival of Venus Genetrix (September 26) was held under state auspices from 46 BC at her Temple in the Forum of Caesar, in fulfillment of a vow by Julius Caesar, who claimed her personal favour as his divine patron, and ancestral goddess of the Julian clan. Caesar dedicated the temple during his extraordinarily lavish quadruple triumph. At the same time, he was pontifex maximus and Rome's senior magistrate; the festival is thought to mark the unprecedented promotion of a personal, family cult to one of the Roman state. Caesar's heir, Augustus, made much of these personal and family associations with Venus as an Imperial deity. The festival's rites are not known.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_(mythology)
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