Venus (mythology)
Roman goddess of love, sexuality, procreation and pleasure
Venus (; Classical Latin: [ˈwɛnʊs]) 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.
The Romans adapted the myths and iconography of her Greek counterpart Aphrodite for Roman art and Latin literature. In the later classical tradition of the West, Venus became one of the most widely referenced deities of Greco-Roman mythology as the embodiment of love and sexuality. As such, she is usually depicted nude.
Etymology
The Latin theonym Venus and the common noun venus ('love, charm') stem from a Proto-Italic form reconstructed as *wenos- ('desire'), itself from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) *wénh₁-os ('desire'; cf. Messapic Venas, Old Indic vánas 'desire'). Unlike the Proto-Indo-European form, which would have been a neuter s-stem, the Latin term has acquired the feminine gender, perhaps as a consequence of its relation to a female deity.
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This entry incorporates text from “Venus (mythology)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.